Soulinet wrote:

MikeLemmer wrote:

Gas Planets have massive production in either Industry, Dust, or Science. Given there's 5 types of them, but they focus on 1 of 3 resources, I suspect they are all unlocked by a single tech in Era 5.

I doubt it because of how the Tech Ui would react to this.

Right now in the XML files, each planet type has its own colonization action, each of those being gated behind a specific tech.

Now I tried and succeeded in unlocking colonization of planet types that are not available in Era 1, 2 or 3. It was actually pretty simple : just make the colonization action point to an existing tech within those eras. I tried making all uncolonizable planets unlock by researching the same tech, and the UI didn't like it. It didn't  crash at all, but it looked like a mess so I had to spread them between several techs (all of the existing colonization-related techs actually).

So I'm inclined to believe that they won't tie the colonization of gas planets to a single tech, if they actualy end up as tech-unlocked actions. Could be a quest unlock too.

If the UI is the only issue, then that is not an issue at all. They've had the "Tooltip override" function since ES1, and I'm pretty sure it will make a return.

Essentially, all the gas giant colonization actions all get a tag that states "Tooltip=hidden" and then the actual technology gets a custom tooltip tag that calls on a string saying "Unlocks gas giant colonization."

Klondike wrote:

For me I've found monsoon planets to actually be fairly common. I've played through about 5 or so full games on the Vodyani, and in 2 of them I had a monsoon in my starting system, or one in another system very nearby.

I've seen some apparent screwiness in how systems are generated. In the test galaxy I have in the savefile above, I only found 2 Veldt planets in the whole galaxy... until I reached a single system with three of them.

And in my recent game, I've found a system where all 3 of the planets are Tier 1 insta-colonizable. It feels strange there can be just as many T1 planets in a single system as in the rest of the galaxy combined.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

In my opinion, Tier 1 planets are always the best planets. The small amount of additional total FIDSI output comes at the cost of a massive approval penalty. I feel the higher tiers should be more difficult (later era unlock and approval hit) but more rewarding (higher total FIDSI).

In the current system, once terraforming is added, it will once again boil down to "Always terraform up" like in ES1.

I agree to your bell curve suggestions regarding the rarity of planets, though.

I think the whole Planet Unhappiness penalty is weird, simply because it doesn't matter how many people are living there. You could have a completely empty colony on an Ash planet and still have a -15 hit to Happiness. I'd rather get rid of the flat Overpopulation and Planet Type penalties and replace them with a "-X happiness per population" penalty depending on the planet.

In my opinion, Tier 1 planets are always the best planets. The small amount of additional total FIDSI output comes at the cost of a massive approval penalty. I feel the higher tiers should be more difficult (later era unlock and approval hit) but more rewarding (higher total FIDSI).

In the current system, once terraforming is added, it will once again boil down to "Always terraform up" like in ES1.

I agree to your bell curve suggestions regarding the rarity of planets, though.

For me I've found monsoon planets to actually be fairly common. I've played through about 5 or so full games on the Vodyani, and in 2 of them I had a monsoon in my starting system, or one in another system very nearby.

I do agree that Tier 1 planets are a little too common, but I would also argue against making the whole batch rarer. I can probably count the number of Forest planets I've seen across all those playthroughs on both hands, not counting Husk because I play with 1 of each faction. I feel that Forest planets are much rarer than the other 3, with veldt being second rarest, then monsoon and terran. And that makes me sad haha because I really like the visual design of the forest planet!

On a different note, I've put together a couple of charts for the planets, if you would like to peruse them. I think looking at the resource output of the planets, combined with their approval hits and ease of colonization is a better idea than purely colonization.

Terrestrial Planets: http://imgur.com/a/gjpp6
Gas Giant Planets:  http://imgur.com/a/IdmJk

So, lets look at combined FIDS output per planet tier, as well as approval hits:

Tier 1: 17 FIDS, No Approval Change

Tier 2: 15 FIDS, -5 Approval
Tier 3: 16 FIDS, -10 Approval
Tier 4: 17 FIDS, -15 Approval
Tier 5: 19 FIDS, -20 Approval

Tier 6: 26 FIDS, -25 Approval

Wow that's actually really interesting. I hadn't combined the outputs before, and I'm actually surprised that the combined outputs are so well rounded. Granted, they become extremely specialized in Tier 3, providing 10 in one resource and only 2 in the other three, but this makes Tier 1 planets even more valuable in my opinion, since they are just kinda flat better than Tier 2 planets. I cant wait for terraforming :D

So, I would argue based on this data and the era in which each type is colonizable, that Tier 1 and Tier 6 should be the rarest, with Tiers 3 and 4 being the most common. By making a bell curve like this you add some scarcity to the nicer to live on planets, and on the "Oh god why did I decide to live here" resource producers.

syscryp wrote:

 

'Goldilocks' zones

Something that bugged me about ES1 was the placement of planets within a system, and it's still annoying me in ES2. Currently homeworlds are always the planet closest to the sun, and the climate of a planet bears no relation to its proximity to its sun. You might have an Ice planet in close orbit, where it should be hotter, with a Jungle planet on the outer edge of the solar system where it should be cold.

I think it would be better if the planets were distributed within systems in a way that made more intuitive sense. That means hotter/dryer planets closer to the sun, and colder/wetter planets further from it. It should also be reflected in planet difficulty, so planets go hard>easy>hard - basically an inverted bell curve that represents the 'goldilocks zone' for habitable planets, and where homeworlds should be located. Obviously, the type of star would still affect the likelhood of each climate, and where the easiest planets will be. This would add much more immersion, and would probably be a better way of balancing the planets in systems than the one we have at present.

I agree with you. Asked to devs many times to put an option in galaxy generation to order planet from warmer to colder, beginning by the one closest ot its sun. I understand their argument: lots of players will find all system the same (visually) if you order the planets. This is why I'm asking for an option. 

syscryp wrote:

Currently the balance of planet difficulty skews toward the easy end, when it should be the reverse. Or at least, the difficulty setting should affect it.

The number of each type of planet should scaled with their difficulty. So Era 1 and 2 planets should be distinctly less common than Era 3 - that's the trade off for being so hospitable. Doing it that way also means there's still room for late game progression and expansion; at the moment there's barely any point researching the Era 3 planets as there are so many Era 1s and 2s available to settle. Fewer easy planets also makes far more sense in terms of immersion: real planets that can support life at all are incredibly rare - so even with artistic license and lore, these planets should still be rare in the game.

However, the bonuses on system upgrades should be tweaked to accout for this. Some are currently linked to very specific and rare planet types. They should be more versatile. E.g. Sustainable Farms should be +5 F, +10 F per Monsoon, and +5 F per Water. Xeno-Industrial Infrastructure should be +5 I, +10 I per Forest, and +5 I per Hot.

Agreed. Those Era-I buildings that were boosted by, say, Monsoons or Forests were nearly incomprehensible to me because I didn't see any Monsoon/Forest planets until my 2nd/3rd match. I even mistakenly thought the Sustainable Farms were referencing an Eternal Monsoon anomaly I found.

werewolf_nr wrote:

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

What settings are you playing on? In my games, I usually run into a lot of Tier 3 and Tier 4 planets, with only few Tier 1 and 2 planets.

In EA, the galaxy age doesn't affect anything. All ages have the same weights.

That just makes me wonder even more about this. I usually have Tier 1 planets (Atoll, Tropical, etc.) in at most half of the systems, and usually just one per system, and that is really not what I would call common. Not rare, but not common either.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:

What settings are you playing on? In my games, I usually run into a lot of Tier 3 and Tier 4 planets, with only few Tier 1 and 2 planets.

In EA, the galaxy age doesn't affect anything. All ages have the same weights.

What settings are you playing on? In my games, I usually run into a lot of Tier 3 and Tier 4 planets, with only few Tier 1 and 2 planets.

That said, I agree about the Goldilocks zone, but the devs think this way adds visual variety.

MikeLemmer wrote:

• Temperate Planets feel too rare ATM, at just 10% of the available planets. It was so bad, I didn't see a Monsoon planet until my 3rd match, and for a while I thought the only Forest planets currently in the game were the Craver homeworlds.
• The 10 cold planets seems like an anomaly, especially since the other types of planets all have around 30 each. Is it a fluke? Or is there some screwy swings in the RNG that makes discrepencies like this in almost every game?
• There's several planet types with only 1-3 planets in the whole galaxy, compared to 6-8 for the others. I would like these numbers more even; I hate the thought of a colonization tech only having 1-3 relevant planets in a whole galaxy.

Planet frequencies

There do seem to be a general shortage of Cold planets. I've noticed this a lot.

I disagree with you about the rarity of planets. I think Temperates should be rare. Remember that they're all just variations of the generic Temperate planets you used to get in ES1, which were very rare, valuable and highly sought after. Temperates should remain prime real estate, and I don't think it's a problem if they are almost unique. 

Likewise, Tier 1 and 2 planets are also far too common at the moment. We now have a far broader selection of easily habitable planets, while the harder ones are still quite generalised in their categories. Compare ES2 to ES1's heirarchy of planet difficulty. In ES1:

Tier 0: Temperate, Jungle, Ocean

Tier 1: Arid, Tundra

Tier 2: Desert, Arctic

Tier 3: Lava, Barren

Tier 4: Gas, Asteroids

In ES2:

Era 0: Monsoon, Forest, Veldt, Terran

Era 1: Atoll, Tropical, Tundra, Boreal

Era 2: Swamp, Jungle, Steppes, Snow

Era 3: Ocean, Ash, Arid, Arctic

Era 4: Ice, Lava, Desert, Barren

Era 5?: Gas?

Currenlty the balance of planet difficulty skews toward the easy end, when it should be the reverse. Or at least, the difficulty setting should affect it.

The number of each type of planet should scaled with their difficulty. So Era 1 and 2 planets should be distinctly less common than Era 3 - that's the trade off for being so hospitable. Doing it that way also means there's still room for late game progression and expansion; at the moment there's barely any point researching the Era 3 planets as there are so many Era 1s and 2s available to settle. Fewer easy planets also makes far more sense in terms of immersion: real planets that can support life at all are incredibly rare - so even with artistic license and lore, these planets should still be rare in the game.

However, the bonuses on system upgrades should be tweaked to accout for this. Some are currently linked to very specific and rare planet types. They should be more versatile. E.g. Sustainable Farms should be +5 F, +10 F per Monsoon, and +5 F per Water. Xeno-Industrial Infrastructure should be +5 I, +10 I per Forest, and +5 I per Hot.

'Goldilocks' zones

Something that bugged me about ES1 was the placement of planets within a system, and it's still annoying me in ES2. Currently homeworlds are always the planet closest to the sun, and the climate of a planet bears no relation to its proximity to its sun. You might have an Ice planet in close orbit, where it should be hotter, with a Jungle planet on the outer edge of the solar system where it should be cold.

I think it would be better if the planets were distributed within systems in a way that made more intuitive sense. That means hotter/dryer planets closer to the sun, and colder/wetter planets further from it. It should also be reflected in planet difficulty, so planets go hard>easy>hard - basically an inverted bell curve that represents the 'goldilocks zone' for habitable planets, and where homeworlds should be located. Obviously, the type of star would still affect the likelhood of each climate, and where the easiest planets will be. This would add much more immersion, and would probably be a better way of balancing the planets in systems than the one we have at present.

How is terraforming going to work in the game then?

MikeLemmer wrote:

Gas Planets have massive production in either Industry, Dust, or Science. Given there's 5 types of them, but they focus on 1 of 3 resources, I suspect they are all unlocked by a single tech in Era 5.

I doubt it because of how the Tech Ui would react to this.

Right now in the XML files, each planet type has its own colonization action, each of those being gated behind a specific tech.

Now I tried and succeeded in unlocking colonization of planet types that are not available in Era 1, 2 or 3. It was actually pretty simple : just make the colonization action point to an existing tech within those eras. I tried making all uncolonizable planets unlock by researching the same tech, and the UI didn't like it. It didn't  crash at all, but it looked like a mess so I had to spread them between several techs (all of the existing colonization-related techs actually).

So I'm inclined to believe that they won't tie the colonization of gas planets to a single tech, if they actualy end up as tech-unlocked actions. Could be a quest unlock too.

Gyumaou wrote:

MikeLemmer wrote:

Makes me wonder why they have 6 different types of Gas Giants when pairs of them are identical.

Variety, perhaps? Leaving food aside there are 3 resources, 2 planets per resource (probably with slightly different weightings). The 6 types also go with the different planet categories, Wet, Dry, Hot, Cold, and the two extremes - Frozen and Burning. All in all it fits in.

It adds to the visual variety, but as you can see in this thread, it also adds to confusion.

We could instead get something like this:

• Frozen: Science + Industry
• Cold: Science
• Temperate: Science + Dust
• Warm: Dust
• Hot: Dust + Industry
• Burning: Industry

(Or shift all the combinations one notch up so you start with pure science on frozen and stop at Industry + Science on Burning)

MikeLemmer wrote:

Makes me wonder why they have 6 different types of Gas Giants when pairs of them are identical.

Variety, perhaps? Leaving food aside there are 3 resources, 2 planets per resource (probably with slightly different weightings). The 6 types also go with the different planet categories, Wet, Dry, Hot, Cold, and the two extremes - Frozen and Burning. All in all it fits in.

MikeLemmer wrote:

werewolf_nr wrote:

Digging through the XML today I found that there are a lot of variables that go into the chances of a particular planet type. Age of the galaxy influences star types, which in turn influences the planet types.

Figured. Got any hard constants/variables involving those?

\Endless Space 2\Public\GalaxyGenerator\WeightTableDefinitions.xml

There's a lot of weights, but if we just look for the temperate planets, we see that Yellow, Binary, White Dwarf, or ideally Dyson sphere give the best odds of a temperate planet. Currently the Galaxy Age doesn't matter because they all have the same weights. Also of note, it looks like the temperate planets also favor Tiny and Small sizes.

werewolf_nr wrote:

Digging through the XML today I found that there are a lot of variables that go into the chances of a particular planet type. Age of the galaxy influences star types, which in turn influences the planet types.

Figured. Got any hard constants/variables involving those?

Digging through the XML today I found that there are a lot of variables that go into the chances of a particular planet type. Age of the galaxy influences star types, which in turn influences the planet types.