Planets (long-winded)

from Stardock Forums
The new kick-ass planet list has inspired some questions and ideas about planets in the current game and in the future.

First, what does a planet's class mean, exactly, and what determines how a planet's class increases over time? That is, what can I do (if anything) to encourage the class to grow?

Planets that start in the high teens or twenties seem to gradually increase their class throughout the game while planets that started out below 16 or 17 tend to never progress beyond about class 16 no matter how advanced the social projects they complete or how high the morale until you get to the Terraformer project. If I don't colonize the 14s and the 15s, someone else will, which leads to questions about the direction of GalCiv:

Will there eventually be the ability to send a terraforming ship to a planet to increase its class prior to colonizing it? I've notice in long games that population tends to plateau out eventually.

Space Habs--I somehow got the idea into my head that star bases were going to be some kind of space habs. They are obviously not but is that an idea you're entertaining? If star bases sound like impractical places for growing populations you could do something like replace the occasional planet with an asteroid belt. At some level of research you could deploy "hab constructors" to asteroid belts (you could even "class" asteroid belts in terms of their initial raw resources, I suppose). Habs would naturally grow and multiply but belt communities would be treated as single entities like planets, but they would have the potential to "out-class" planets eventually. Sending additional hab constructors to a belt could "upgrade" the capabilities of the belts the way star bases are upgraded. This could eventually evolve to crazy ideas like ring worlds and Dyson spheres. Once you have researched and developed your way to a Ring, all habital planets would be evacuated to the ring and the system would effectively have one big-ass planet. With further research, that could progress to multiple rings or a Sphere. As the population grows, the star would seem to dim...

Please feel free to fail to comment on some of my crazier ideas. I could go much, much further, but I'll leave some ideas for another day... ;)

-Robert
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I like the idea of colonizable asteroid belts. Maybe make them a bit different from planets, in that they start significantly lower in habitability, but with a series of expensive social improvements (and the tech to build them, of course), they can grow to be better. Maybe have a high-tech ability to canablize an unihabited planet or two in the same system to turn the belt into a high-hab ringworld.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
'First, what does a planet's class mean, exactly,'

That is an estimate of a planet's habitability.

'and what determines how a planet's class increases over time? That is, what can I do (if anything) to encourage the class to grow?'

Building things to make the planet more inhabitable.

'Planets that start in the high teens or twenties seem to gradually increase their class throughout the game while planets that started out below 16 or 17 tend to never progress beyond about class 16 no matter how advanced the social projects they complete or how high the morale until you get to the Terraformer project.'

Planets as low as class 14 can improve to 16 with just Soil Enhancement and Habitat Improvement. The earthworms event can cause up to a 51% improvement if you take the evil choice, which can, if you're lucky, allow class 8s to reach class 17.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry, Class 10s can reach 17. Class 8s get stuck at 14.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
There is no rounding on the class improvement projects. Soil Enhancement improves a planet class by 10%, but that means that planets below class 10 get no benefit from Soil Enhancement allone, planet classes 10-19 get an improvement of 1 class, and classes 20-29 get an improvement of 2 class points. And so on.

Also, the "percentate" increase of multiple planet class improvement projects is NOT cumulative (at least, not at the current level of the game, perhaps it should be). So the formula is: Original planet class * (Soil enhancement percent (10%) + Habitat Imprevement percent (10%) + terraforming (50%)). Without earthworms the best a class 26 planet can get is class 44, and a class 1 planet will never improve (a class 2 planet can improve only to a class 3).

I have yet to discover whether earthworms changes the Original class of a planet or if it just adds in with the social improvements. That will take some serious tracking and recording to do.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
It just adds to the social improvements, judging by appearence.

And you're correct that rounding doesn't occur, but (as you note yourself earlier when you pointed out to me that class 31 planets come fro ma base of 26, not 27 as I had originally thought) when you build another improvement, the remainer does factor in.

A class 8 with just Soil Enhancement is still only class 8, but when you build Habitat Improvement, it does go up to class 9.

That class 8, with the earthworms event causing a 51% improvement(the percentage was chosen for sake of argument, as the 30% average doesn't leave a remainder) becomes class 12(.8). Soil Enhancement brings it up to 13(.4). Habitat Improvement yields 14(.2), which is what I corrected myself to (the original error was due to bad math). With Terraforming it goes up to 18(.2).
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Arturus Magi,

Rather than saving the remander, what I suspect they do is save the original planet class and the total percent improvement (110% if you have soil enhancement, 120% if you have soil enhancement + habitat improvement, etc. Such a sceme would have some use when examining saved games sent in for error analysis. It looks like they keep a lot of other planet related things the same way.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I just did a run at the calculator with your class 8 planet. I got:

Earthworms at 51% --- 8*1.51 = 12.08
+ soil enh. at 10% --- 8*1.61 = 12.88
+ Hab. Imp at 10% --- 8*1.71 = 13.68
+ Terraf. at 50% --- 8*2.21 = 17.68

Odd how those little things can create such strange and unexpected results. Should we be lobbying for a more reasonable rounding?
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
'Rather than saving the remander, what I suspect they do is save the original planet class and the total percent improvement'

Either method should yield the same results, when taken step by step, as I did. And you're probably right as to the actual method.

I will yield to your math on the results. I should stop trying to do odd multiplication in my head...it usually doesn't work. -.-

As for whether planet class should be rounded or not, I don't know. It would allow for a slight improvement to class 1 planets without the earthworms event if it does round. Even with the event, the best a class 1 can reach now is class 2(.21).
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Arturus Magi,

I think the definition of the Earthworms event tells us what the maximum percent improvement in class it can generate is where it says "EvilValue 40". So it looks like the maximum is 40%.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmm... I'm fairly certain it's come up higher than that before, but that could be a change in one of the last couple of updates too.

The 51% is the highest I've personally seen occur, and that was why I used that particular value the first time.

Something concerning planet class I just thought about that would suggest that rounding would be a good idea though. What exactly happens when you choose the good response to the earthworms event on a class 1 planet? Class 1's are already down to 50 morale with only 1M population and several +10% morale techs/trade goods....
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
With no rounding? I learned rather quickly not to even try a class 0 on the OS/2 version.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Heh.

*ponders re: temporarily altering the earthhworms event to see if anything (other than a crash) would occur with a class -1 planet*