And after that you want new colonisation techs. You look to near systems and see an Ocean and a Veldt planets. Ocean needs unlocking "Colonise flooded", let's look at it:

Now Ocean is into the purple box. But wait, what would happen if I decided pick "colonise warm" and go for veldt, instead of the ocean one? Look at this:

Now "accidentally" swamp also falls into the purple box. This way you researched two techs and unlocked 4 planet types. Image you follow this reasoning: if I go like a square I can unlock lots of planet types with few techs, so I'll researc tow more techs and go like this:

That way you researched 4 techs and got 9 planet types. I grows almost quadratic!

Look at the following table, it shows number of humidity unlocked techs in rows and unlocked temperature techs in rows, in the corresponding cells are the number of planet types you can colonise with this unlocked techs:

Well if you reached here, You may be asking, what the hell did you wrote all that mesh? Cause I think this system has it's advantages:

• Makes faction homeworld type important, that gives more immersions.
• Each faction has different chart, which allows to colonise different planets types at game start. These types are meant to be coherent with each faction background.
• Having each faction different planets types from start, could generate more competition to grow outposts in systems with outposts from various factions. I have the feeling that with actual system, there's no competition, because lots of system has only one colonisable planet, that to be worst is the same for all factions. I makes who go first he system owner after a little wait in most cases. I though Amplitudes idea of competing outposts is very good, but how actually colonisation techs are distributed I think is not working well.
• This system can allow to colonise all planet types with a fewer number of techs. If you look at the table, that's 9 techs to research, to colonise 30 planet types (I know there are some holes in original image, but think of them as full.
• It still makes interesting choices: What I have to research? A tech that will unlock 3 planet types, but without excessive value, or a tech that will unlock only one, but with luxury and strategic resource next to me?

Of course, it has its cons:

• Not very intuitive. Will need a tutorial or something to explain.
• The quadratic growth only gives lots of planets in mid-game. On early game there's few planets per unlocked tech, and in end-game you'll have few types to unlock, and may be some techs will be worthless.
• Ideally you'll need a feedback somewhere to know which planet types yo'll be able to unlock having in account your actual techs and the new you're going to research.
• That's a lot of work for Amplitude.

Until here my original idea. In tow following posts I'll explain how I think you can fit this idea into actual tech system.

Fitting into actual tech system, but without era consistence.

If you look at this two good posts, you'll have an idea of how actually planets are distributed:

https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/65-general/thread/21424-planet-type-charts-census

http://imgur.com/a/gjpp6

Yes, there's not the original image. Actually there are:

• 6 planet types: Temperate, Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry and gas
• 4 planet tiers.

So, how can you match it with this system?

Well I think this is simple: in our columns will put the tier (and some name lore like "colonise welcoming", "colonise hospitable", "colonise inhospitable" and "colonise extreme" as an example), and in our rows we will put our new planet types. that leaves the table of colonisable planet types depending on  techs unlocked as follows, assuming that your homeworls planet type is unlocked from start, and tier 1 is free at start only for this planet:

This allows to unlock all 24 planet types researching only 9 (5 per planet types and 4 per tiers) techs to distribute into all 5 eras.

Obviously it has its pros:

• Most of stated in previous system.
• The quadratic growth is not remaining, but still you can get a big growth on coloniseable systems at mid-game
• Also you only have to distribute 9 techs within 5 eras, solving, at least partially, the issues/complaints stated at the start of this thread.
• Of course the starting tech will be lowest tier.
• The first techs you'll be able to research will be the planet types closes to your homeworld. As examples if your homeworld is wet, you'll have temperate / cold in Era II and hot / dry en more advances Eras, on contrary if your homeworld is hot, you'll have access to research dry/temperate in era I and have cold/wet in more advanced eras.

And its cons:

• Most of previous system.
• It's unclear how to fit asteroid, gas giants, and other celestial objects that can be added into this system. May be they should have specific techs?

If your eyes still doesn't bleed, lets go for next idea into next post.

------

UPDATE 08/nov/16 (european format date)

To show in a graphical way this proposition, this graphic shows all planets in actual system, in  a scheme like the original dev's idea:

Have in mind that actually all temperate are tier 0 (free at start) and there are more gas giants types that in this chart, and also they have and unknow order, so I put both types with my own criteria, only to show the idea.

This second chart follows the color code of unlocking planets in type axis, and are grey-coded in tier-axis:

To put an example, the Sophons would have a chart like this:

• Homeworld: Cold, unlocked for free. The tier 2 to 4 unlocks with respective techs (the same for other types).
• Type 2A/2B: Temperate/Wet. Two separate techs avaliable to research in Era I
• Type 3A/3B: Dry/Hot. Same as before, but unlocked at Era III.
• Type 4: Gas giants. Unlocked at Era IV.

This will correspond to the following table:

Have in mind that Tier 2 tech will be in Era I (total 3 colonization techs), Tier 3 in Era II (total 3 colonization techs) and Tier 4 in Era III (total 2 colonization techs, leaving only 1 colonization tech in Era IV).

This way, it allows to do freak thing like in Lumeris case, that imo should have Wet planets as homeworld type, but you can justify putting Dry in Type 2 (A or B), because they're obsesses with dust to a point that they'll do anything to colonize this planets faster.

Other freak things may be factions having the Gas gients as Homeworld, or whatever occurs to dev's / community.

----

Fitting it with era system.

To end all that explanation, my last proposal, to fit this to era system, is to eliminate the tech related to planet tier, and instead of them , make all era equivalent o a tier, so on Era I you'll automatically get Tier 1, on Era II Tier II and so on.

It leaves 5 techs to distribute within 5 eras (assuming homeworld type is free), that will allow you to put all 24 planet types within 5 techs.

For that I want to make some considerations:

• It has some pros of previous systems regarding lore and factions consistence.
• Also maintains the pros regarding competition for outpost.
• Going from actual 12 techs in Era III to only 5 may be breaking, so I propose to split it a bit, left for Era IV the colonisation of complex bodies (asteroids and all that), and put 2 colonisation techs in Era I to Era III. I know era V will be depleted at this respect, but at this stage you'll probably have all needed colonisation done.
• May be in Era I and Era II if factions has too much different starting techs, there will be some inconsistencies when colonising. For this reason I think is good putting two techs in this eras. It allows factions being able to colonisa same types of planets (at least coincide in some types) by Era III.
• This system may solve the problem of complexity of two previous ones, as one element (eras) is not researched, but automatically unlocked).
• Like the preceding idea, your colonisation techs will be placed in eras depending on your homeworld, as example if it's dry, you'll have temperate/hot before wet (see previous idea). I think this is very susceptible to balance and opinions, but idea is there.
• This is and special case, in that if you never research any colonisation tech, as you unlock eras, you'll have at least one tech to colonise per era, because you got the free starting colonisation fro your homeworld type in era I.
• As consequence of previous statement, you can unlock planets in an era, only reaching it, as long as you have unlocked techs for planet types (or only have that of your homewold).

---- EDIT: 18/11/16

Terraforming

Many comments in forums, not only in this thread made me aware that if I want this to be consistent, I should propose an idea for terraforming techs. My proposition is the followiong:

There are various tiers of terraforming techs, you can name as "Basic terraforming", "Complex terraforming", "Unbelievable terraforming", etc... What they do is to allow you to terraform one level of humidity/temperature in first proposition, or one level of type/tier in the following propositions, from the original planet type.

As an example the tier 1 tech should allow you to turn a  Forest into a ocean/swamp/terran/boreal. If you want to turn a Forest into a Jungle, you'll need the tier 2 tech, and the tier 3 tech to turn into a lava.

This terraforming are done one by one step, so you have to do Forets->Swamp->Jungle->Lava, and can't skip the intermediate steps even with higher tier terraforming techs.

Note that to terraform a planet to an specific type, you need the corresponding terraforming tech and also have unlocked the initial, final and intermediate planet types colonization techs.

that's a short, but I think easy idea. If you want it developed further, just ask and I'll made a specific post in this same thread.

------

Well if you're still reading, many thanks.

What I hope with this post, is not to make Amplidtude change all colonisation techs system, but giving them ideas to solve the problems and complaints with actual systems 1 tech = 1 planet type, that makes 4 mandatory techs in Era I and almost mandatory in following eras if you want to keep expanding at reasonable rate.

Keep on guys, you're doing a good job!

Hi,

After playing a bit and reading lots of posts (not all), I have the sense that there are some issues/complaints/suggestions, regarding how actually colonisation techs are distributed, that repeatedly appear, and I agree with some of the them. From what I see main problems are:

• They're or seems to be mandatory techs. Like in ES1 colonising as many planets as you can is good for having FIDSI enough. No sure if Amplitude intention, but is like this.
• They make you leave aside other techs that can be important to go for techs of next era, or on the contrary delay next era to colonise only one planet. I li Amplitude idea of making players to choose, but here doesn't seems working well.
• 4 tech per Era out of 10 for next era. Seems too much to me.

With that in mind, I'll explain some ideas I got when reading first GDDs, may be a year ago (?). I think they're interesting to create a different system for unlocking planet colonisation. Let's go:

--- EDIT: 18/nov/16:

My post is only related to unlocking of colonization techs. If you want to read a good post from XorUnison about how FIDSI production can be made more consistent with planet types, here's the link

----

My first idea:

This is based on this picture in first GDD:

Sure most of you have seen it. My idea is to make also your faction homeworld an important choice, as the new system distributes all techs departing from your home system and making harder to get techs as how different is a planet from your faction home planet.

It works as follows:

1. Each planet has a coordinate with humidity and temperature.
2. Each tech unlocks a "line" or temperature or humidity.
3. You can colonise all planets which you got the "line" for humidity and temperature unlocked.
4. The row and column corresponding to your homeworld are unlocked at no cost from game start.
5. Adjacent rows and columns will grow in research cost and be further as they go far from your homeworld.
6. Each faction will have their tech in tech tree positioned depending on this homeworld.

To explain it with an example, think you're playing with Cravers, so your homeworld is forest, then this is your chart:

[Time for apologies: I'm not graphic designer]

To read this, the main colours are:

1. Blue: Tier 0 / Era I
2. Green: Tier 1 / Era II
3. Yellow: Tier 2 / Era III
4. Red: Tier 3 / Era IV

So, you can see, Forest is where blue column and row are crossing. As another example, if you start on Atoll, this will be your chart:

As you can see, now temperate planets are in Tier 2 instead of Tier 0. Also same happens with temperature.

Assuming that, each faction have its chart. To follow, how the hell you unlock planets? That's it: you'll need having its specific humidity and temperature unlocked. So you don't research colonise "tundra", instead you research "colonise cold" + " colonise humid"

Oh, what? Two techs to unlock a planet type? Well, just wait and see this example:

Here you have your home planet being forest, and unlocked "Colonise Temperate" and "Colonise Wet" from the start, cause you're playing Cravers.

Have in mind that I'll use same colour legends for Tiers/Eras that explained before. Also the purple square, indicates which planets you're able to colonise.

From image before, for any reason you decide to colonise a beautiful terran planet in a system next to your homeworld. This is temperate and humid, so you have to unlock "Colonise humid", because you already have "Colonise temperate". This leaves the following image (notice terran is now into the purple square):

[Seems post too long, follows the next comment]

This idea is very great. As some people already stated, this would make feel every faction even more unique IF the starting planet differs. (No point if 50% of all factions start on terran. ;))

I think, however this will make getting into the system of colonization technologies more difficult. (Not that I'd mind.) It would probably help if there was an additional grid-like overview just like in your first post.

Edit: Another point I'd like to add: I just started as Lumeris and viewing all the planets... I wondered why I couldn't just colonize ocean planets asap or just with a little research effort. I mean, come on. These guys are basically talking fish, so to speak. They start on an atoll world, but struggle with an oceanic world till era 3? No sense at all. 

lo_fabre wrote:

Sotnik wrote:

3) I did not clearly understand if unlocking new planet types require researching techs or only achieving the next era. Anyway, unlocking new humidities and temperatures shall not be at cost of techs because as you described them, they would be far too OP. As an option, at the beginning of an Era you choose humidity and temperature types to be unlocked at the end of the era.

Thinking again if it's OP. Why? All factions will use the same system.

Maybe the mid-game square increase in colonizable planets looks it, but as I understand fits better in lore sense: first you can colonize few planets very close to your homeworld (early game), the develop techs to colonize almost everything (mid-game), and at last you develop techs to colonize the most adverse environments like gas giants, which are very few places in your empire (end-game).

I meant these techs will be OP in comparison with other techs in mid-game: you learn one tech and get 4+ new colonizable planet types. 4+ times more beneficial than at the current tech system. Without it, you will not be able to compete with other players which means this tech is an obligatory one - and that is never welcome. 

It's a different story if the cost of this new tech scales with # of planet types it unlocks. Actually, it is better than my previous proposal (free unlock with era progress) because it would let "isolationists" be more compatible. We will probably see a major faction or at least a custom faction focused on surviving at 1 or few nodes.