That moment when...

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Vezzra
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Re: That moment when...

#16 Post by Vezzra »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Mercury is close to the sun, and wikipedia says it has a max surface temperature right under the sun of about 700 K, but a wide variation down to 80 K, so not what I'd think of as an inferno. For comparison, Venus' mean surface temp is given as 737 K. But to be an "inferno", I'd think it should have a molten surface, so thousands of degrees K higher than those, so Venus would instead be Toxic.
Yes, that makes sense.

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MatGB
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Re: That moment when...

#17 Post by MatGB »

I've been looking through various sources for figuring out whether our descriptions, even names, for planetary environments could be better, one of the better ones I found was for Eve Planet - EVElopedia, in which Inferno worlds are called Lava worlds (I think of Io as an Inferno, Venus as Toxic, Mercury and the Moon are definitely Barren). Main reason I was doing the research was Eleasar suggested awhileback that rather than scrapping Radiated (which he'd planned when we still had Food as a game concept) we should instead rename it, so I was looking for ideas, the closest I've found, again from Eve, is a Plasma world, but I don't like all the aspects that implies, I quite like radiated as is anyway.

Most actual science descriptions tend to lump all the rocky types under Terrestrial and move on. Our descriptions for all the species that inhabit Inferno worlds definitely imply an Io like environment, so if there's confusion between Inferno meaning Hot and Inferno meaning Lava then we ought to try to clarify that a bit, but it's not a major priority.
Vezzra wrote:I think that's a very important fundamental concept for our planet type mechanic. Each planet type represents a category that encompasses a rather broad range of environments, which, while in reality quite different, are still sufficiently similar so we can summarize them under a common type.

And here is where I object to summarize hot and cold wastelands under the same type. Antarctica/Hoth/etc are a far too different environment than Sahara/Dune are, and therefore these environments shouldn't be summarized under the same type. A species that thrives in one will (assuming typical scifi lore "realism") do very poorly in the other. That's why I'd prefer to categorize ice worlds like Hoth and cold deserts like Mars as tundra rather than desert. These would of course perfectly fit orbiting a black hole.
That's why I'm more confused by your preference for lumping all cold places as Tundra and all warm places as Desert, because the wheel as is says that if you're a Desert species then a Tundra world is adequate, and vice versa. It makes more sense, to me, to have 'desert' indicate a certain level of precipitation/plantlife and 'tundra' indicate a different level, and not worry too much about the heat levels.

Having said that, never been too keen on Tundra as a descriptor for a world type regardless, but they're all meant to be a rough fit and the system as is works fairly well overall.
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Dilvish
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Re: That moment when...

#18 Post by Dilvish »

MatGB wrote: It makes more sense, to me, to have 'desert' indicate a certain level of precipitation/plantlife and 'tundra' indicate a different level, and not worry too much about the heat levels....but they're all meant to be a rough fit and the system as is works fairly well overall.
My sentiments are pretty close to this as well.
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: That moment when...

#19 Post by Geoff the Medio »

MatGB wrote:...never been too keen on Tundra as a descriptor for a world type...
I think they are partly intended to cover most narrative planet settings... From Star Wars, Tundra = Hoth, Desert = Tatooine, Swamp = Dagobah, Ocean = Kamino, Terran = Endor's Moon / Naboo, Inferno = Mustafar, Gas Giant = Bespin (Cloud City), Asteroids = the Hoth asteroid belt... Barren covers common airless rocky type planets, and Toxic covers Venus types. Radiated is perhaps a bit of an outlier, though maybe there are uses in fiction of similar settings...

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