Rectification : Only Helium is an atom. The methane is CH4 and the Hydogen, is in fact Di-hydrogen H2, so both molecule.

melancholy wrote:
Well, I'm interested to join the topic, but my ideas are not exactly on topic...



Instead of the stellar scale construction of terraforming a gas giant, here's some other ideas.

• Most gas giants have moons, rings, etc. that have a huge amount of mass. Colonizing 14-20 moons would certainly have a lot of room for people.
• Steal a page from Avatar or Star Wars. Pandora and Endor were Earth sized moons... of gas giants.
• You can have a dyson sphere around a gas giant, using tidal and deep core heat as energy.
• Steal a page from 2001, 2010... Let's ignite the sucker and use it as another energy source!
  
  

Here's the other big kicker:



Instead of terraforming, why aren't we genetically engineering populations? Jovian populations (See Master of Orion 3) were terrible races all around. And the other races kept destroying good planets (due to terraforming!). I mean you had great populations on gas giants, but the idea was the individual had to have a very small physical density to ride the gas currents and stay buoyant and not fall into the intense gravity.

Like your Ideas as well. Good alternatives.

Well, I'm interested to join the topic, but my ideas are not exactly on topic...



Instead of the stellar scale construction of terraforming a gas giant, here's some other ideas.

• Most gas giants have moons, rings, etc. that have a huge amount of mass. Colonizing 14-20 moons would certainly have a lot of room for people.
• Steal a page from Avatar or Star Wars. Pandora and Endor were Earth sized moons... of gas giants.
• You can have a dyson sphere around a gas giant, using tidal and deep core heat as energy.
• Steal a page from 2001, 2010... Let's ignite the sucker and use it as another energy source!
  
  

Here's the other big kicker:



Instead of terraforming, why aren't we genetically engineering populations? Jovian populations (See Master of Orion 3) were terrible races all around. And the other races kept destroying good planets (due to terraforming!). I mean you had great populations on gas giants, but the idea was the individual had to have a very small physical density to ride the gas currents and stay buoyant and not fall into the intense gravity.

Terraforming a gas giant? oO !! Here are some wacky useless thoughts:



1. Stay away from a Hydrogen Gas Giant when a rookie Cravers pilot fires up it's engines.

2. Terraforming a Methane Gas Giant would be a very smelly job.

3. An Ozone Gas Giant will bring nostalgic memories of post industrial Earth provided that "smell o vision" becomes a reality in the year 3000.

4. Nitrogen Oxide Gas Giant are planet types that Sowers and Automatons should stay away from.



Just my two cents worth

Ok, not sure if I entered the discussion too late, but here is my opinion on that topic:



First to say: I am no scientist (math, chemistry,physics). But I like a good sci-fi game with as much real science related technics as possible.

On behalve of the Gas-Giants I can say this:



I like the Gas Giants as they are presented right now, but still feel that (similar to Asteroids) I would really love to see some possibilities to play with them more.

The "Terraformation" (or perhaps Gasformation?) of a Gas Giant into another sounds intriguing but should have an impact on the game. Right now I don't see much differences between the Planettypes except the Design and to have just Jungle or Oceanworlds in the game because you are able to terraform everything would be boring. Perhaps by making the three types diffrent in ressources with heavy impact on the game, terraformation could be usefull (like perhaps Amoebea need more Helium, while Sowers harvest Nitrogen). But perhaps you are right with the namechanges (Methane to Nitrogen).



To make those Planets more interesting, I assume we would need some "jovian species" in the game, starting on Gasgiants and only able to colonize them fully satisfying. But such a species couldn't be measured by our own terms (food production, industry would look and work very different!).



I allways wanted to suggest something, but am not fully into the science, so I waited for someone more trained in physics and chemistry to do the dirty work.



I also support the idea of Planetsize beeing more impressive. Additional to variaty, I would be very interested in what other types of Gas-Giants could be and how they would make life (im-)possible.



Another Idea from an RPG, concerning floating citys is this:

'Venus' is a very interesting colonialization target, because it has an atmosphere which would allow struktures filled with breathable Air to float in an upper atmosphere whith similar temperatures to earthground. This floating cities provide anything needed to survive, while a citizen just needs a breathmask (or biological upgrade) to get outside a city without any other protection to enjoy the warm winds of Venus (except there is a storm).

The Ground is used for mining only, since it is not habitable because of high presure, volcanos and lavaseas.

My point is: Why not having such Planets as well? This kind of Planet can be terraformed (in the RPG they decide just to melt some iceteroids in the atmosphere to provide a basis for aerial lifeforms, artificialy designed) and can be (like arid, desert or barren) a inbetween stage like the other planets before turning them to terran/ocean/jungle. But with the posibillity to let them the way they are, as minor "gas-planets" for our beloved floating cities.

I understand that gas giants COULD be converted from one dominant gas type to another but doing so would require so much work and effort the end gain so insignicant. At this time they are all worth the same FIDS so adding terraforming to them would be pointless at best. If anything they should change gas giants to always spawn as GIANT sized as indicated by their name and have a fixed maximum population.

Have to say a very thorough and well thought out subject here KNC. +1 from me. I actually learned something from this thread lol.

I'm more inclined to go with seeing a specialised Jovian Tech Tree that deals with modifying their natural Gas Giant habitats but not in the way your suggesting by conversion from one dominant gas to another.



If their natural environment was say Methane Rich GGs for example then that would be the equivalent to Terran Bonuses for Terrans, the other GG compositions being the equivalent of Barren or Tundra to them and totally unjovaformable save planetary improvements from their Tech Tree.



Tbh the whole concept of replacing a GGs Gas with another Gas composition? I'm not even sure that makes a whole lot of sense story and game wise. The energy required and level of technology to go about such a process on such a scale would indeed be Godlike! It would probably take an entire Empire's worth of preparation and materials to even try on the most favourable GG they come across. So maybe the Endless have something to do after all... or its another Intergalactic Wonder players can work on...



Infact the best solution to colonising a GG for non-Jovian species is artificial satelites at a safe distance unless there are stable natural satelites that fall into these zones, some GGs produce so much radiation and have such incredible gravitational fields that they are more useful as giant energy producers than home away from home.



To have a Jovian species for a Faction concept is pretty far out there for a start, all worlds other than their own highly pressurised vats of heat, radiation and massive storms would seem like death traps to them.



I would not even think they could design or build anything except through the use of some sort of Psionic tech or the like where they create portals between other GGs and fold space to get to these points. No one would want to invade them because it would be impossible for non-Jovians who were not Godlike, you'd need to literally find a way of influencing their GG colony's orbit to send them hurtling towards thier respective local star. Unless ofc you dust off your favourite MOO WMD. lol

Zenicetus wrote:
The colonization potential in star systems is already much higher than I remember from GalCiv2, where you could find systems that were basically worthless. With just a small investment in research, it's ridiculously easy to settle on a "hostile" planet. So we need at least a few things like gas giants in ES that aren't ideal for colonization.

I already know most of the information and read most of the pages around gas giants and stuff, I know the numbers, but we are talking about a different scientific level than here on earth. I know how much bigger gas giants are and I still think that with the technology to be able to do solar mining, terraforming a gas giant is possible.



As for the quote, you missed a vital point here. I'm talking about terraforming gas giants between their 3 types. That doesn't make them any more habitable for non-jovian species, hence they still will never be ideal for colonization, just like you suggest.

KNC wrote:
I don't think terraforming an normal planet is that much easier than doing something similar to a gas giant.

Just the sheer quantity of the dominant gas type would make it very different in scale. The game hides that scale, by showing gas giants on the system screen at roughly the same size as other terrestrial-style planets. In reality, they'd be so large they wouldn't fit on that screen. It's an acceptable gameplay mechanic, but it still doesn't mean gas giants wouldn't be vastly harder to "terraform," even if it just means changing the gas type.



Even aside from the transubstantiation issues, you would be dealing with matter in a very different state than we encounter on small terrestrial planets due to gravity and pressure. Like the metallic hydrogen I mentioned in the thread about ideas for the new Amoeba race. Start here with the Wiki page: it has some interesting info about gas giants (check out that image of the possible metallic hydrogen in Jupiter):



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_giant



A game like this doesn't have to be strictly scientific to be fun. But if you depart too far, it devalues the other more-or-less fact based aspects of the universe presented in the game. Also, I think it's great that we have planets that are limited in the amount of population and resources we can extract. Limits are good, in a game like this.



The colonization potential in star systems is already much higher than I remember from GalCiv2, where you could find systems that were basically worthless. With just a small investment in research, it's ridiculously easy to settle on a "hostile" planet. So we need at least a few things like gas giants in ES that aren't ideal for colonization.

Ghost73 wrote:
Assuming you could terraform gas giants, and then taking science into account:

A gas is much less dense than it's respective liquid or solid forms. A Gas Giant is made of mostly gas with a very small solid core. The average density of Saturn is estimated to be less than that of water (it floats!). These gases: Helium, Hydrogen, and Methane (which are all molecules by the way, and occur commonly throughout the universe), have a very low density. So, even if you could terraform Gas Giants, they would become Tiny in size because of changing Gas into a Solid/Liquid. So if you had a population filled Solar System, what would you do with the displaced population?

You are missing the point, I was talking about to "terraform" one type of gas giant into another, not a gas giant into a planet.

And you have to take into account that our gas giants still have more mass than earth, so even if you would turn one into a planet you'd have a planet much bigger than earth.

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
Rectification : Only Helium is an atom. The methane is CH4 and the Hydogen, is in fact Di-hydrogen H2, so both molecule.

Yes, of course you're right but I felt that'd be taking the detail here a little too far. Oxygen also tends to float around as O2 or O3 and not as pure element.

But since these molecules are only cosisting out of their respective element I didn't feel like I had to include that.

I have a few suggestions about gas giants to make I'm sure no one else made yet.



First a short summary about gas giants:

Right now we have 3 types:

Hydrogen

Helium

Methane



The current factions colonize gas giants through platforms floating in the atmosphere.

And they can't be terraformed in any way.



I assume the inspiration for the types has been taken out of our solar system which is kind of fine, if I remember right other games handle gas giants similar. The thing is that 2 of them are classified by elements (Hydrogen/Helium) and one by a molecule (Methane), and I see 2 things here which should be improved. Swap Methane for Nitrogen and allow terraforming of gas giants.



1. Methane and Hydrogen are related, as Hydrogen is one of the elements found in methane, which means that terraforming between those types would be a lot easier, leaving helium standing alone. Thus I suggest to swap methane for nitrogen (or oxygen, though I deem nitrogen gas giants to be more likely possible in the real world), in order to have the game a little bit more realistic when terraforming for these types is included. Methane would then belong into the Hydrogen category.



2. We should be able to terraform (or whatever you'd actually call it, I'll stick with terraforming for now) gas giants between the existing 3 types.

(Can't turn a gas giant into an ocean world or something like that [wellwithasignificantamountofoxygenyouprobablycouldturnahydrogengasgiantintoanoceanworldbutthat'snotthepoint])

Why I think we should be able to:

• When we are talking about 3 types here it doesn't mean the atmosphere really has only one type of gas, it means that type is dominant. In some cases changing 20% of the surface gas might just be sufficient.
• Turning a barren planet into an ocean world doesn't require less effort, not really. Terraforming normal planets isn't trivial. You often need big amounts of resources you have to gather from outside that planet.
• Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen and Oxygen are pretty low in the periodic table. All of these elements could be gathered from specific suns and then released into the atmosphere of the gas giant while removing sufficient amounts of the other existent gases. Solar mining is already available in the tech tree so I'd see nothing stopping me from doing that either.
• Considering all these facts, in the end we need for the terraforming of both planets and gas giants materials we get from outside this specific planet, and suns are generally great to get most of the necessary materials. Not to mention there are suns everywhere and they won't complain if you take some stuff from them either.
  
  

Quality:

Jovian species living on gas giants should get bigger bonuses than other species on their respective planets because gas giants aren't as common, but usually a lot bigger.

Considering huge Ocean/Terran/Jungle has 10 Population slots Jovian species should get 20 population slots on their respective gas type and 12-15 for the other types.

For large I'd suggest 16 for their respective type and 10-13 for the other types.

(12-15 and 10-13 because I'm still not sure how to exactly balance it, as for Tiny/Small/Medium, I don't think there are gas giants with that size, which is fine)



Descriptions:

More a side note than a suggestion but when races which naturally live on gas giants are implemented, the descriptions and pictures of the planet types should be changed accordingly.



I'm still not fully content about all suggestions but I definitely think something should be done to the gas giants.

Assuming you could terraform gas giants, and then taking science into account:

A gas is much less dense than it's respective liquid or solid forms. A Gas Giant is made of mostly gas with a very small solid core. The average density of Saturn is estimated to be less than that of water (it floats!). These gases: Helium, Hydrogen, and Methane (which are all molecules by the way, and occur commonly throughout the universe), have a very low density. So, even if you could terraform Gas Giants, they would become Tiny in size because of changing Gas into a Solid/Liquid. So if you had a population filled Solar System, what would you do with the displaced population?

Made some more changes to the suggestion to make it more comprehensive.

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
A normal terraforming is more a less the change of climatic conditions. Burn the atmosphere, send dust (not the money) in atmosphere...

Here You would need soooooOOOOO much chemistry product. You could almost empty a gas giant to change the atmosphere of another one... not very interesting

I don't think terraforming an normal planet is that much easier than doing something similar to a gas giant.

KNC wrote:
Why I think we should be able to:

• When we are talking about 3 types here it doesn't mean the atmosphere really has only one type of gase, it means that type is dominant. In some cases changing 20% of the surface gas might just be sufficient.
• Turning an barren planet into an ocean world doesn't require less effort, not really. Terraforming normal planets isn't trivial. You often need big amounts of resources you have to gather from outside that planet.
• Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen and Oxygen are pretty low in the periodic table. All of these elements could be gathered from specific suns and then released into the atmosphere of the gas giant while removing sufficient amounts of the other existent gases. Solar mining is already available in the tech tree so I'd see nothing stopping me from doing that either.
• Considering all these facts, in the end we need for the terraforming of both planets and gas giants materials we get from outside this specific planet, and suns are generally great to get most of the necessery materials. Not to mention there are suns everywhere and they won't complain if you take some stuff from them either.
  
  

Igncom1 wrote:
(Can't turn a gas giant into an ocean world or something like that [wellwithansignificantamountofoxygenyouprobablycouldturnahydrogengasgiantintoanoceanworldbutthat'snotthepoint])



DDDDDD: DO you know how much oxygen you would need!!!



lol but wouldent it be more like Chemaforming (Chemistry terraforming)



Really all you could do with a gas giant is learn how to better extract its gasses (And to not be killed my mega-storms), but the possiblitys for a race that lives in them could possibly be similar to normal terraforming.

I agree.

A normal terraforming is more a less the change of climatic conditions. Burn the atmosphere, send dust (not the money) in atmosphere...

Here You would need soooooOOOOO much chemistry product. You could almost empty a gas giant to change the atmosphere of another one... not very interesting

(Can't turn a gas giant into an ocean world or something like that [wellwithansignificantamountofoxygenyouprobablycouldturnahydrogengasgiantintoanoceanworldbutthat'snotthepoint])



DDDDDD: DO you know how much oxygen you would need!!!



lol but wouldent it be more like Chemaforming (Chemistry terraforming)



Really all you could do with a gas giant is learn how to better extract its gasses (And to not be killed my mega-storms), but the possiblitys for a race that lives in them could possibly be similar to normal terraforming.

KNC nice idea! Expand that a bit and I will support you without limits

Kainen wrote:
Speaking of which, what do the colonists actually live on when they colonise gas giants?

Don't they live on Doritos and Redbull like the rest of us?



Seriously though, I think it's an interesting idea, KNC, that bears further discussion.

Kainen wrote:
Interesting idea.... get's the brain working.

I think it would fall under a different category to terraforming - which means earth shaping... because there isn't really any earth to shape.



Speaking of which, what do the colonists actually live on when they colonise gas giants?

I assume Endless Space so far has the same ideas for that as other 4X space games, that would be platforms floating in the atmosphere of the gas giant. The pictures in the game you see on gas giants support my theory.

If there will be species which live in the atmosphere alone the pictures should be slightly adjusted as well.

Interesting idea.... get's the brain working.

I think it would fall under a different category to terraforming - which means earth shaping... because there isn't really any earth to shape.



Speaking of which, what do the colonists actually live on when they colonise gas giants?

Nice idea KNC will look at later today