I have started working on a mod to implement changes similar to the suggestion by XorUnison Rework the entire planet grid (https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/ideas-redirect/2-rework-the-entire-planet-grid).
I am still struggeling with the implementation and will ask for help here. This thread is intended as an overview to explain the goal of my mod to better understand the questions I will have to ask to move forward.

Vision
Each planet has two attributes, a temperature (Cold, Cool, Temperate, Warm, Hot) and a humidity (Dry, Arid, Humid, Wet). There are 20 combinations of these two attributes, and each combination is associated with exactly one planet type.

• Wet is associated with Food, Dry is associated with Industry, Cold is associated with Science, Hot is associated with Dust.
• Every pair of planet types should feel noticably different.
• Planet types are a bit more balanced around the approval penalty. This means that planets with low habitability (high approval penalty) have a higher FIDS total, but are more specialized.

This system has some consequences for other parts of the game as well:

Colonization
There will be one colonization technology for each temperature (minus Temperate) and one for each humidity. Colonization of a planet type is possible when the two technologies for the planet type's temperature and humidity have both been researched. This brings down the total number of technologies for colonization to eight (from 13 right now if I counted correctly). It also means that there are no planets that can be colonized without research.

Current Status
Playtest is pending. This seems to mostly work at the moment, I only have minor problems:

• The popup panel with information on a planet currently not colonizable shows the missing technologies with the internal name (e.g. TechnologyColonization1) and not with the name defined in the GuiElements.xml.
• The technology overview in the research screen no longer shows which technology allows the colonization of which planet type.
• Another problem are the home worlds. I am still looking for a way to change the base planet type of a home world.
• Last open problem is the penalty for colonizing a planet without the respective technologies. I have an idea how to do it.

Terraforming

Terraforming means moving through the grid by either warming up a planet, cooling it down, increasing or decreasing humidity. There will be the four terraforming technologies, making the system more intuitive (in my opinion).

One problem with terraforming in ES1 was that it lead to uniformly terraformed empires. To combat this, the cost for terraforming should increase by a significant factor (without having tested anything I would suggest something around 2, so doubling the cost each time). Also the number of times a planet may be terraformed should be limited, for example by the number of terraforming technologies researched.

Current Status

This is something I am currently working on.

Jaecaron wrote:

• ... Dry is associated with Industry, ..., Hot is associated with Dust.

It's vice versa, actually.

Sublustris wrote:

Jaecaron wrote:

• ... Dry is associated with Industry, ..., Hot is associated with Dust.

It's vice versa, actually.

Sorry, I should have made it clearer that I was talking about my mod. Perhaps I should give an overview of the current FIDS values in the mod to demonstrate:

What was the logic behind the change?

Are you going to redo terraforming at all, putting Terran in the center as some sort of middle ground between all other options? Also are you planning on having any planets focus on Population specifically?

Changes to terraforming were one major motivation behind the grid. Terraforming as implemented by the mod means either changing the temperature or the humidity of a planet, thus momving up or down (for temperature) or left or right (for humidity) on the grid. For example: If you want to terraform a lava planet (hot, dry), you either cool it down and turn it into an ash planet (warm, dry) or you humidify it and turn it into a xeric planet (hot, arid).

This solves two issues I am having with the original terraforming system: It gives you freedom to terraform however you want (I reallly dislike how you are limited to the predefined terraforming paths) and it is intuitive (I also dislike that I have to remember which terraforming path leads to which tier 1 planet).

I acknowledge that this new system has to be balanced and somehow limited to avoid uniformly terraformed empires (which I consider boring). I have two ideas for this: Increase the cost with each terraforming process and limiting the number of total terraforming processes a planet may go through. This requires some modding I am unsure how to do. It would require changing a variable of the planet with the terraforming process, and I have to figure out how to do this.

CaptainCobbs wrote:

Also are you planning on having any planets focus on Population specifically?

I am currently not planning on doing this. I assume that such a planet would be a clear best choice, something I would like to avoid. At the moment, the number of population slots are unchanged by the mod, but this is up for debate.

You could add a new "branch" of completely new planets assuming you'd want to make the textures, no stats, just tons of population or something like that. A purely industrialized / governing planet type like Coruscant.

CaptainCobbs wrote:

You could add a new "branch" of completely new planets assuming you'd want to make the textures, no stats, just tons of population or something like that. A purely industrialized / governing planet type like Coruscant.

That is a very interesting idea, thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately I have not experience in making textures, so for now I will concentrate on the current scope of my mod. But I will definitely keep this in mind for the future.

Awesome, I could show you how to make planets but anything artwise is out of my understanding. Possibly someone like Mr. Riceman could show you, but that's all I know other than the tutorials.