my biggest issue with terraforming is that it is pretty much mandatory:

1) you get more population slots. having more pops on  planets is usually better than having pops that get benefits from a certain planet type

2) you need that happiness

which leads to any empire i play having the same planet types. it feels way too easy to transform whole planets. i don't think turning a lava planet into a lush pardise should be easy and common

I think this would be useful for the discussion: Endless Space 2 - Terraforming guide - Waervyn's World

Deyric wrote:

Vorell wrote:

Deyric wrote:

cyrusmagnus wrote:

The forgiving aspect of ES1's terraforming, was that if you terraformed to something and later decided that was no longer optimal, you could change your planet. So you could make jungle planets for that early boost to filling out your infrastructure, then make all your systems ocean once infrastructure has been built to optimize your science production

Probably why they did it right there.  Ridiculous min maxing. 

Isn't that one of the four corners of any good 4x game?  (Exploit)

No it really isn't. 

LOL. 

Deyric wrote:

cyrusmagnus wrote:

The forgiving aspect of ES1's terraforming, was that if you terraformed to something and later decided that was no longer optimal, you could change your planet. So you could make jungle planets for that early boost to filling out your infrastructure, then make all your systems ocean once infrastructure has been built to optimize your science production

Probably why they did it right there.  Ridiculous min maxing rather than dealing with a system that isn't perfect.   It also gives you a reason to use and move around various minor factions that benefit differently from different worlds. 

Which you do just for fun on random whims right? 

Ok I can understand not being allowed to terraform in the wrong way up or down. Maybe your people wouldn't accept that.

But sideways in a tier, that's got to be added. If I get an ice world then it's silly not to allow a few minor adjustments into an arctic world. Or a forest into terran or whatever, we did that already to our own planet without anything more than an axe.

Also please fix adding the climate tag. Not-hot lava worlds? That's just a ball of rock, right? Riftborn terraforming is pointless right now.

cyrusmagnus wrote:

The forgiving aspect of ES1's terraforming, was that if you terraformed to something and later decided that was no longer optimal, you could change your planet. So you could make jungle planets for that early boost to filling out your infrastructure, then make all your systems ocean once infrastructure has been built to optimize your science production

Probably why they did it right there.  Ridiculous min maxing rather than dealing with a system that isn't perfect.   It also gives you a reason to use and move around various minor factions that benefit differently from different worlds. 

I created an Idea to try to spark interest in this.  It would be great if other people could add to it, so we can get to an easier to understand and use system of mechanics.

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas/740-starting-colonization-types-displayed-on-research-screen

The way terraforming is right now is a mess. The tooltip information is useless gibberish; when I get a tech I want to know exactly what it does prior to getting it. The way the terraforming tooltips are now would be equivalent to all the dust techs just saying "Gives more dust per population." with no specifics. How aggravating would that be? Quite.

Also, as a race with access to science that can terraform an entire planet, it makes no sense, lore or otherwise, that they can't terraform it in any direction they like. Do you have planet altering technology? Check. Can you make a huge planet of lava into a lush jungle given enough time? Check.

But you can't make a jungle into a huge planet of lava? This makes zero sense. It's downright cognitively dissonant. A simple core disruption could make Earth a lava planet toot sweet!

The forgiving aspect of ES1's terraforming, was that if you terraformed to something and later decided that was no longer optimal, you could change your planet. So you could make jungle planets for that early boost to filling out your infrastructure, then make all your systems ocean once infrastructure has been built to optimize your science production (if you wanted pop and fervent, or you could go back and make arctics, though tech generally favored higher "level" planets).

Conversely, in ES2, we have "haha, you picked forest, you just screwed yourself out of making jungle and then atoll which is higher production. hahahahahaha" which just does not seem very player friendly with no planet trees, and useless tooltips.

And then there's aesthetics. One of my favorite parts of ES1 terraforming was making all my systems all oceans. They were beautiful and blue and showed my techno-industrial might. Now if I get a system with a terran or forest planet, that's it, that's all it can ever be. Unless I'm Riftborn, in which case if I get an ice planet, that's it, it can never be made into snow or artic, because somehow, somewhere along the way, that made sense to someone.

Please, just find the dev who made the decisions on terraforming and put them in time out so they can rethink how they made this system, because it's utterly ridiculous at the moment.

This is my aggravated version. Below is my [TL;DR] nice version.

Terraforming is poorly explained in game by the tooltips. It is unintuitive that planets can only be terraformed one direction, and with the various options at certain levels, snow/ice/artic, for example, it becomes even more of a mess trying to terraform to the optimal planetoid. All three come from tundra, so you'd think it'd be quite easy to make any of them into tundra, and then back into the type you'd want (this was a Riftborn example). Much like how terran/forest/jungle(atoll) can't all go back to arid or savanah or steppes or whatever it is they come from, with no published terraformation guide or map it can be a bit confusing keeping all of them straight.

So much potential for awesome, getting hung up on such a simple thing. Allow terraforming to go both ways, problem solved. Complaining and confusion allayed, because people can just terraform a planet back if they accidentally picked the wrong type, or if their skill just improves to such an extent that they realize they really want all cold, fertile planets so they want to make a bunch of boreals, not terrans, they can actually do that. Or if they just WANT a system of all savannahs for their own internal RP aesthetic, they can do that. Empower the players!