Apart from gas giants and asteroids, the planets in ES are basicallly categorized according to the climatic zones on Earth: Arctic, Tundra, Paris ;-), Dry (Mediterranean) and Desert. Arctic logically leads to Barren, Desert to Lava. And Paris can be replaced by Jungle or Waterworld.



Now terraforming should be in accord with this scheme. It should not be possible to turn a lava planet into an arctic planet or a dry planet into a waterworld in one step. This mod deletes those unrealistic options.



Now there are two distinct paths:



Barren --> Arctic --> Tundra --> Earth/Waterworld,



Lava --> Desert --> Dry --> Earth/Jungle.



Barren and Lava are still convertible with each other, and Earth is open in every direction.



The mod is based on 1.0.49, but tested with 1.0.60, and since I only changed two files, the only conceivable problems with v. 60 would be about a bugfix concerning the sowers. As it happened, I tested the mod playing the sowers, and I didn't have any problems.



RealisticTerraforming.zip

Nice work, more realism doesn't hurt (so long as it doesn't bug down the gameplay). You could also increase the cost of Terraforming as well, by the time it comes around it takes like 3-4 turns (if you don't just by it off), it's no longer a big investment to change a planet into something else. I would put it to several times the production cost so we would only do it when it's worth it...

Nice idea. It is indeed totally unrealistic that terraforming a whole planet is just a simple affair like building a single starship. At least, it should take much more time. But AFAIK we modders can only change the time needed by changing the cost. And if we increase this considerably, terraforming of one planet will prevent the whole system from other actions for a long time. That would also not be realistic.



Another conceivable problem: How would the AI cope with such changes? Will it take the higher costs into account? Or will it just follow the same hardwired routines and get into serious trouble?

Klaus wrote:
Nice idea. It is indeed totally unrealistic that terraforming a whole planet is just a simple affair like building a single starship. At least, it should take much more time. But AFAIK we modders can only change the time needed by changing the cost. And if we increase this considerably, terraforming of one planet will prevent the whole system from other actions for a long time. That would also not be realistic.



Another conceivable problem: How would the AI cope with such changes? Will it take the higher costs into account? Or will it just follow the same hardwired routines and get into serious trouble?

You should not worry about how the AI will cope, it is already smart enough to not start building stuff that would take more than a few turns to do; if the cost is high enough it may not attempt terraforming at all on system that don't have a strong industry.

Good to know that, but since terraforming is always one of my main concerns (I'm a biologist in RL), I have no interest in mods that will selectively hamper TF.



And if you look at /#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/10005-terraforming-is-it-worth-it, the game in this respect respect seems to be balanced quite well. We would like to have more realism, but games are for fun.

Klaus wrote:
(I'm a biologist in RL)

Cool me too. And yes, it has always astonished me how unspectacular and easy the TF seems in the game. So this mod is a really good idea, I will test it later!