I haven't played Riftborn in a while, and never really noticed it before, but it seems that their "reverse" terraforming reduces available pop (even though they are supposed to be ok with hostile environments). Is this intended? I thought I'd be able to terraform terran planets into lava and have huge production & pop, but perhaps that's a mechanism to prevent that from happening. Sounds a little weird, though, considering how Riftborn work...

One more question -- regarding the "construction completed" screen. I've been getting it sometimes even if I don't build anything (in which case it's empty) and in other cases it has not enough entries in it (some systems are missing, even though they don't have a build queue). I saw a similar bug-report, but it was ~2 years old, perhaps, this is some other issue?

Yes, sterile planets have lower capacity (less habitable zone). Riftborn prefer it, because at the same time these worlds host less biodiversity. From a balance standpoint, sterile planets provide a lot more FIDS per slot, so slots are limited further.

There are few techs that increse slots on sterile planets, so if you research all of them you can increase capacity to almost Fertile-world levels.

Empty "consdtruction completed" notification? Yes, you've actually completed construction, it just isn't shown there. The only known trigger for it is to uprage ship that you've just built on the same turn. You shouls relaunch the game process and it will be fixed on the next turn.

Sublustris wrote:

Empty "consdtruction completed" notification? Yes, you've actually completed construction, it just isn't shown there. The only known trigger for it is to uprage ship that you've just built on the same turn. You shouls relaunch the game process and it will be fixed on the next turn.

Thank you for suggesting his trigger! I actually do that a lot these days (e.g. in the early game I build cheaper settlers and outfit them with engines for dust, or upgrade scouts), so now I know why that happens! Still, it would be annoying to reload the game so much :(

Sublustris wrote:

Yes, sterile planets have lower capacity (less habitable zone). Riftborn prefer it, because at the same time these worlds host less biodiversity. From a balance standpoint, sterile planets provide a lot more FIDS per slot, so slots are limited further.

There are few techs that increse slots on sterile planets, so if you research all of them you can increase capacity to almost Fertile-world levels.

Thanks, I thought as much, the only thing that's kinda unsettling is -- what techs are those? I'm well into the last 2/3s of my science tree and unlocked the last tier of the influence / government tree, but when I attempt to terraform a small arid to lava, I still get one pop slot in there (which doesn't look to be worth it :( )

Thank you.

Also, it's kind of weird -- I have an un-terraformed Tiny Ash planet, and it has a pop cap of 4. Yet, when I terraform a tiny terran planet to ash (after several stages), I get pop capped at 2. Why? 

Does the planet have an anomaly or moon shrine which grants population? Does the system have a building which grants population? Those would be my guesses.

Nope, there is only the "Tunneled Crust" anomaly; there was one building that increased pop, but I built it after I wrote the post above.

Actually, this looks like a bug. I have a Medium Terran planet, when I mouse over it, it says "Maximum Population: 7", yet when I check the possible terraforming list for Jungle, it says "Maximum Population: 7 (-1)" (i.e. the Jungle will have 1 less pop, but it still remain 7, which is nonsense).

jiallombardo wrote:

Thank you.

Also, it's kind of weird -- I have an un-terraformed Tiny Ash planet, and it has a pop cap of 4. Yet, when I terraform a tiny terran planet to ash (after several stages), I get pop capped at 2. Why? 

You already have some technologies/affinities that increase pop slots by 2.

I don't think so. Most techs, as far as I saw, enable a building that gives more pop slots. In the case I mentioned here, though, there appears to be a bug in the terraforming menu that doesn't take certain parameters into account. There's a little bit of weirdness, for example, when I terraform to a sterile planet with less pop slots, the "reduced" slots actually become locked out, and the tooltip on them says that I'm supposed to build a System Development project. I mean, now I know how it works, but initially it was very confusing, and the numbers, as you can see on the screenshots above, are just wrong.

jiallombardo wrote:

Here are two screenshots to describe what I meant

This is correct. Tiny Ocean has 6-slot capacity, and Tiny Boreal offers 1 slot less, that's why it warns you with -1 change.

Right, so improvements/affinities that will affect slot capacity and should be available to Riftborn:

1. Biophobic affinity will decrease slot capacity by 1 on Fertile planets and increase by 1 on Sterile
2. Eco Habitats improvement gives +1 population slot on Sterile
3. Cosmetic Genetics improvements gives +1 population slot on bot Fertile and Sterile
4. Deep Atmosphere Habitats provides +3 population slot on Gas
5. Lunar Suburbs provides +2 population slots on Lunar Anomaly on Planets
6. Isolationists Cells is Empire Improvement that will automatically give +1 population slot on all your Sterile planets
7. Borrows improvement provides +2 population slot on Sterile
8. Floating Superstructures improvement provides +1 population slot on Medium and Large Gas Giants, +2 on Huge
9. Explored moons anomalies might give up to +2 population slots on Planet

If you still think something isn't right feel free to share your save and I will point out what are you missing.

Regarding Terraformation tooltips, they show basic planet stats you are going to terraform into, not only slot capacity, but FIDSI too, that's why it confused you.

i.e. they don't account for affinities, specialization and improvement bonuses that might change from changing climate/biodiversity type etc., unlike normal planet tooltip, that takes into account all calculations.