Making terraforming less useless and isolation less hopeless

[Voker57]

Currently, terraforming is basically useless since it's way more cost-expensive to just expand. Colony ship costs ~150 PP, terraforming average adequate planet costs 600 PP, which is prohibitevely expensive and gives only a meager boost.

I propose cost of terraforming tech should to lowered to 100 and cost of terraforming round base multiplier to 40, bringing abovementioned typical early task cost down to manageable 240 PP. Still a bit high but good poor man's expansion option.

Another way to make terraforming useful would be to give it an actual GUI and allow terraforming outposts instead of using kludgy buildings, but that's more complicated story.

[L29Ah]

Not sure if it would make much sense as it would add lots of repetitive actions in the midgame :/

[Voker57]

Not sure if it would make much sense as it would add lots of repetitive actions in the midgame :/

Expanding is still much more economically viable, no real reason to do repetitive actions.

[afwbkbc]

Terraforming cost must directly scale with planet size.

[Voker57]

Not necessarily directly, bulk tends to be cheaper.

[Krikkitone]

Not necessarily directly, bulk tends to be cheaper.

From a game balance perspective not RL

[Voker57]

From a game balance perspective not RL

Why would game balance require exact 1:1 scaling?

[Krikkitone]

From a game balance perspective not RL

Why would game balance require exact 1:1 scaling?

Benefit:Cost

the balance between the value of small and large worlds.

[Dilvish]

Benefit:Cost
the balance between the value of small and large worlds.

I personally don't see any problem with the cost:benefit ratio varying by planet size, and indeed I can see some upside to it, to help make Terraforming worthwhile at more specific locations without making it a build-everywhere kind of thing.

[MatGB]

The current costings for terraforming were changed by me within the last year or so so that they did scale depending on both planet size and distance from original type, this was partially to reflect that small worlds were less useful when terraformed and partially to encourage settlement by more suitable species initially.

I disagree that terraforming is useless but also do favour an expansionist approach: I tend to terraform planets as/when they're close to maxed out production, same for gaia transforms. We have, repeatedly, discussed terraforming and What To Do With It, I think the most recent thread previous to this had some more concrete ideas, it's probably worth someone, or a group, taking those ideas and scripting them up early in the next cycle so we can see where we're going with it.

[mem359]

There was a different discussion on the Growth techs, where I had to be reminded that they (and related game concepts) are not balanced currently.

At some point, Terraforming might be a viable strategy for empires that don't invest in the technologies necessary to inhabit less-than-Good planets. (But that discussion should probably wait until after the eventual tech rebalancing.)

[Oberlus]

I'm probably adding nothing, but here's my (yet to be settled) view:

If playing a research-focused species, techs to increase pop cap of hostile/poor planets are more than affordable. Around turn 100, if not being harrased and forced to crank out combat ships, you may have most of those growth techs and be able to colonise most planets. Thus you only need to terraform late game (when you have also more production), to get some extra pop cap.

If playing production-focused species, unless you are unlucky with the natives you find, you can resort to outposts and colony building and later on, once you got some growth techs, switch to a better species through concentration camps or evacuation and new colony building and then terraform.


The following may have been suggested already, but I couldn't find the terraforming thread that MatGB mentioned:
The only thing I think is missing, to better balance the options for industry-based species (that seems a bit behind on this), is the ability to terraform a planet for a given species prior to its colonisation, because very often you can not colonise it at all because of the red numbers.
For example, using the same mechanics from the colony building: you've got an outpost in place and you get the option to build several "terraforming for <SPECIES>", one for each species you have (or, with some extra code, "terraform to <ENVIRONMENT>", that could look more aesthetically logical for some players but would need some extra thinking as you have to remember the environment for each species). And then you can build the colony for that species on green numbers.