At the moment Endless Space seems to only uses three types of celestial bodies.



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Rocky Terrestrial: all of the planet types except gas and asteroid would likely fall under this category.

Gas Planets: separated into the three types.

Asteroids

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However this is not the extent of the celestial bodies humans know of, here are other non-stellar celestial bodies.

• Ice Giants: Uranus is an example of one of these planets, they are different from gas giants in that they have a significantly thinner gas membrane and a much higher proportion of both ice and rock than gas giants.
• Venus Class Terrestrial Planets: While the physical structure of a planet like Venus is near identical to a terrestrial planet like Earth or Mars, its atmosphere has far greater amounts of greenhouse gasses, creating a ridiculous heat trap
• Mercury Type Planets: Often typed as a terrestrial planet, these planets are in fact significantly different. During their formation most of the rocky crust is stripped away leaving these planets to be comprised mainly of metals, in the case of mercury it is 70% metallic in nature.
• Orrt Cloud: a massive, though diffuse, sphere of comets around a solar system.
• Planetary Nebulae: Massive and diffuse clouds of gasses, these we know through spectrograph analysis to have massive amounts of complex and simple organic compounds contained within them.
• Dwarf Planets: I suggest looking at Wikipedia for an in depth look at these, but to give an idea there are many dwarf planets in our solar system some were considered planets such as Pluto and others were considered asteroids such as Ceres, but recently this new classification was made.
  
  

Another thing to note is if you just look in an obvious place like Wikipedia you can find a huge amount of information on known variations on planets this barely scratches the surface on what could be out there as we can barely even detect planets outside our solar system and even now we constantly are discovering new things about this solar system



As for stellar celestial bodies, it seems that it as likely for life to develop in a high energy place such as a star as it is anywhere else. In some cases it seems actually more probable, for example some Y class brown dwarfs have temperatures that are at 85 degrees Fahrenheit.



I would like to see more types of celestial bodies along with variation in what races are adapted to which type of celestial bodies.



I think a race that evolved on Stars would be freaking amazing!

The Endless lived on stars!(?) maybe



I like the idea of more variation in celestial bodies, but it doesn't really feel like it's necessary. There's already a huge variety, more than most games have anyway.

Although if they did add more, I'd like for them to first upgrade the size of the galaxies (which they said they would)

I think seeing more natural evolution of systems:

- seeing the planets orbit

- more planet and bodies type

- seeing little details like comets

- feeling little details like more random events that are related to the planet types you have colonised (Arctic storms, great floods, water shortages, great discoveries beneath the ice flows)



Will make it feel that the colonies and the colonising of them are much more alive, and the actual colonising the people management of systems could actually come back as a more prominent concern in terms of management.

I'm all for anything (almost) that adds more variation to the setting!

Fenrakk101 wrote:
I like the idea of more variation in celestial bodies, but it doesn't really feel like it's necessary. There's already a huge variety, more than most games have anyway.

Although if they did add more, I'd like for them to first upgrade the size of the galaxies (which they said they would)

I'm going to echo this. As cool as it would be, I don't think it's currently necessary. I think most of those have been suggested anyway but I would like to see more objects at some point, but currently I'd rather they address more pressing issues such as diplomacy and combat depth and concentrate on expanding the game post release.

Nycidian wrote:

• Ice Giants: Uranus is an example of one of these planets, they are different from gas giants in that they have a significantly thinner gas membrane and a much higher proportion of both ice and rock than gas giants.
• Venus Class Terrestrial Planets: While the physical structure of a planet like Venus is near identical to a terrestrial planet like Earth or Mars, its atmosphere has far greater amounts of greenhouse gasses, creating a ridiculous heat trap
• Mercury Type Planets: Often typed as a terrestrial planet, these planets are in fact significantly different. During their formation most of the rocky crust is stripped away leaving these planets to be comprised mainly of metals, in the case of mercury it is 70% metallic in nature.
• Orrt Cloud: a massive, though diffuse, sphere of comets around a solar system.
• Planetary Nebulae: Massive and diffuse clouds of gasses, these we know through spectrograph analysis to have massive amounts of complex and simple organic compounds contained within them.
• Dwarf Planets: I suggest looking at Wikipedia for an in depth look at these, but to give an idea there are many dwarf planets in our solar system some were considered planets such as Pluto and others were considered asteroids such as Ceres, but recently this new classification was made.
  
  

Ice giant : Why not, another type of gas giant could be a good thing but what could be the specialisation of this planet. Each of the actual gas giant has a specification : Helium for science, Hydrogen for Dust and Methane for Industry.

Venus type : It's a barren planet with a negative anomaly in fact. I'm not sure it's so good to add another difficult type of planet to live on. I find this kind too often

Mercury : This one is a barren of lava with an anomaly. There is one about metal and I think it's a negative one because it avoids farming.

Orrt Cloud : Not a planet or even an asteroide Belt. Each solar system has one and in general the Orrt cloud is always far far away from the planets. Indeed the Oort cloud isn't afected by the gravity of the sun the same why as planets are. That's why an Orrt cloud is always a sphere around the system and not a circle like an asteroide belt can be.

Planetary Nebulae : There are not planets or related with planets except with the name. They are the rest of sun which finished their lives and so, they can't be in a solar system because they were the middle of a solar system.

Dwarf planets : We already have tiny class of planets.



In my opinion, We already have so much type of planets. Gas giants and asteroides belts are exception and can maybe being improved but I'm not sure for the rest. If I can give an idea, it would be unique planets where lived Endless.

One or two planets per galaxy with a special name and special bonus/malus. Like heroes planets. Why not.

On one side: there's no such thing is to many celestial bodies. But on the account of game balance and necessity i am of an opinion that the dev's wil include more division in future updates, but more probably in future DLC's. On the other side, non-essential diversification has always been a subject for modding.

Photon_Ventdesdunes wrote:
Ice giant : Why not, another type of gas giant could be a good thing but what could be the specialisation of this planet. Each of the actual gas giant has a specification : Helium for science, Hydrogen for Dustbarren planet with a negative anomaly in fact. I'm not sure it's so good to add another difficult type of planet to live on. I find this kind too often

Mercury : and Methane for Industry.

Venus type : It's a This one is a barren of lava with an anomaly. There is one about metal and I think it's a negative one because it avoids farming.

Orrt Cloud : Not a planet or even an asteroide Belt. Each solar system has one and in general the Orrt cloud is always far far away from the planets. Indeed the Oort cloud isn't afected by the gravity of the sun the same why as planets are. That's why an Orrt cloud is always a sphere around the system and not a circle like an asteroide belt can be.

Planetary Nebulae : There are not planets or related with planets except with the name. They are the rest of sun which finished their lives and so, they can't be in a solar system because they were the middle of a solar system.

Dwarf planets : We already have tiny class of planets.



In my opinion, We already have so much type of planets. Gas giants and asteroides belts are exception and can maybe being improved but I'm not sure for the rest. If I can give an idea, it would be unique planets where lived Endless.

One or two planets per galaxy with a special name and special bonus/malus. Like heroes planets. Why not.

Ice Giants

Ice Giants are not another type of Gas Giants, they are in fact a completely different type of planet. As for what FIDS it would give I would guess since water and rock is readily available on a Ice Giant along with some gases but minerals are not, then it would likely give a high amount of Food and Science but no Industry or Dust.



Mercury Type Planet



The Earths Crust is made up of around 60% silicate oxides and 15% aluminum oxides only 5% is Iron oxides, the earth is a terrestrial planet. The reason a mercury type planet would be different from this is because this type of planet instead of having around 10% metallic content(besides aluminum) as the Earth does has around 70%, because metals are very important for industry, one can imagine that a increase of metals of a factor of 7 would drastically increase industry. Such an increase would be of a much greater increase than an anomaly could account for, also more importantly much like how gas giants can not be terraformed into a terrestrial planet a mercury type planet could not be terraformed into a terrestrial planet as a mercury planet lacks the silicates to create soil.



Venus Type Planet

whether you find it hard or not, a common anomaly should exist that mimics Venus, at the very least. To not have a venus type planet in the game is ridiculous considering Venus does exists and is rather iconic to our notion of space.



Orrt Cloud

Considering how easy it is to mine ice from the Oort Cloud compared to trying to mine it from gravity wells and the fact the game already has asteroid belts it seems silly not to have this. And to say that gravity of the star having little effect on it in any way impacts choosing to implement it is not relevant at all. If I were to implement it I would have it have a base of one population giving 10 Food and nothing else, to simulate the water that could easily be given to the rest of the system using simple robotic fusion rockets using the cometary material itself as propellant.



Planetary Nebulae

I never said they were related to planets, what I stated is they have organic materials and hence could possibly develop or support life. Also many nebulae have stars within them and likely planets as well, so having a band of denser nebulae in a star system to colonize would not be unreasonable.



Dwarf planets These are not tiny planets, dwarf planets were classified as something other than planets for a reason, Pluto was in effect demoted because Pluto and it brethren do not behave like planets. If nothing else Ddwarf planets at best have just above half the diameter of the Earth's moon and are far less massive. I would suggest reading my link above if you care to know more.



Stars

You completely ignored this aspect, which again I think would be a great and unique addition. Even without races that could live on a star naturally, it is a common fixture in high science fiction to have advanced races creating vast power arrays using at minimum solar farms close to a star, some even feed stellar matter into black holes to create massive amounts of energy thereby feeding multiple systems.

The planets are already classified in 5 types.

To create new planets, it should fit in this classification and still be balanced. That's why Ice Giant, Mercury and Venus type could be a good idea with more specification.

Now, It looks mercury would be a small barren/lava, venus a medium barren with anomaly, Earth a medium terran, mars a small desert, The four gas planets... gas planets.

To have more planets, they need to be really different from what we have and so add details.



Oort cloud can't be in a solar system because it's always something around. It's all I said. But considering there is an Oort cloud around every star system, some techs could use that fact for the bonus you wrote.



If some systems were born in planetary nebulae, and are in, a planetary nebulae can't be in a star system and so can't take the place of a planet. But, once gain, it can be the start of a suggestion. Why not invent the system anomalies. If planets can be special and have anomalies, we could have star systems with a general good or bad anomalies. Part of a planetary nebulae, near of a black hole, in the axis of a neutron star, too close from a supernova... (connection with the warp... no, this is W40K )



About star, I didn't talk about it

But ok, a place on the first position of every star system could be reserved for special space stations once you get the good techs. Another good suggestion !



I don't try to crush ideas (yours in this case), I try to take interesting detailed suggestions from them if possible.

Mercury:



Lava, barren, or desert planet all qualify. The negative anomaly would be Metallic Ground.

Draco18s wrote:
Mercury:



Lava, barren, or desert planet all qualify. The negative anomaly would be Metallic Ground.

Agree, this negative anomaly kind of captures the essence of a Mercurylike planet.



Perhaps a better suggestion: more anomalies and more skins for the planettypes? Because one thing that is a bit strange is that every Terran, Oceanic and Jungle planet looks exactly like Earth (besides the shape of the continental plates). Even if per planet 2 more slightely palletteswapped skins were introduced, the diversity would be greatly improved. The same naturally applies to other planet types.

Anything that would really give the galaxy a better feeling of being 'alive' is a good idea. It would be nice to see a much larger variation of planets, both aesthetically as well as what they are comprised of.

I like the idea of having a couple palette-swaps for the planets. Maybe a bounded-random hue-shift applied to each planet. I know that in Spore I enjoyed finding or making life-rich planets in shades of bright pink.



I would suggest that to represent a Venusian world, what you really want is an inverse of the Garden of Eden world. You want an 'Extreme Hostility' anomaly applying -1 (or so) penalties to all the FIDS and a massive penalty (-40) to happiness on the world. Instead of specifying exactly what is wrong with an Extreme Hostility world, describe in general terms that the planet's lethality is beyond the ability of simple countermeasures to handle, and that productivity is ruined in every field by the hostility of the environment. Include a blanket recommendation against colonizing the planet. The anomaly should be removable with Extreme Anomaly Reduction (unlocked by Soil Revivification). Just make sure that the AI understands it shouldn't colonize these planets ever until it has that tech.



You want to know why we haven't managed to map the Venusian surface? It's because when we land any kind of sensors on it, they immediately get struck by lightning, flooded with astonishingly complex corrosives of various forms, and swept away by intense winds. Most or all of these things occur within minutes of hitting the atmosphere. Sensors tend not to survive long enough to touch the ground in any recognizable form, and re-entry heat isn't the problem at all. This really does go beyond merely acid rain. There's a moon of Jupiter that would (if it were a full-fledged planet) be a Barren world with Acid Rain. Venus, on the other hand, isn't a Barren world at all. It's a Desert world with hideous weather. Maybe even an Arid world. There's no shortage of the chemistry or resources needed to maintain life (insofar as we can even tell, which is mostly limited to analyzing the cloud layer due to the difficulties of dropping things through said cloud layer).



A unique anomaly for a Venusian world seems appropriate to me... as long as the AI understands how these worlds affect appropriate tactics. If the AI isn't going to handle the anomaly correctly, it's probably not worth including, at least not in single-player.



The best part about describing 'Extreme Hostility' in generic terms (as opposed to making it clear you're referring to Venus) is the room for interpretation it leaves open. If I saw a Jungle or Ocean world described as having lethality beyond the ability of simple countermeasures to handle, I would envision a world covered in hideously invasive plant and animal life, rife with nightmares of every sort, breaking into and destroying every attempt to establish an outpost of civilization. If I saw it on a Lava world, I would imagine a world where continental drift happens on the scale of days, where whole continents can vanish under apocalyptic seas of lava. These are analogous to Venus in their sheer uncolonizability. Like Venus, attempts to even probe the environment would require the most advanced technology of the empire, let alone attempts to settle it.



On that note, I would suggest that Extreme Hostility have a benefit. A major system defense boost due to the extreme hardening that affects every structure on such a hell world. Not just bunkers, not just critical industries, but every structure built would have to be as impenetrable as the toughest defense system the civilization would build elsewhere. Local fast food joints could hold off an army for a week - without reinforcement. The system defense bonus should probably halve when the anomaly is tamed. Once life is reasonable in that environment, construction costs will ensure that only legacy buildings remain indestructible.