I would love to find either a Green Glowing Gas Giant, or a Super Shiny Gas Giant. There are only a small handful of each known.
Agree with this. Claiming a Tag on a GGG or GWG is an exploration goal of mine. But with only four of each known in the Galaxy so far, the odds are very, very low.
I've come across a couple of ElW and a lot of water worlds many of which have been terra-formable but until this system I'd no idea u could find high content metal worlds that are candidates for terraforming.
The planet just looked a weird colour yellow so I gave it a scan and bingo high content metal world that's a TF candidate as was its neighbour, so every day is a school day as they say. Only problem is I'm now wondering what else I've missed in my ignorance and also the journey backs going to be a long one if my OCD kicks in on the metal worlds.
Every star has a "Goldilocks zone", the area within which it is not too hot, not too cold, and an Earth-like planet can theoretically exist. The current atmospheric composition, surface temperature and presence/absence of water is irrelevant. Any planet orbiting within the Goldilocks zone is likely to be a terraforming candidate, so long as it is (a) not too heavy - surface gravity below 4 G; (b) not too light - surface gravity above 0.08 G; and (c) orbit not eccentric i.e. so elliptical that the planet regularly swings in and out of the Goldilocks Zone.
When scanning planets in the Goldilocks zone, don't ignore the moons. Moons in the Goldilocks zone are always Rocky, but if they're above 0.08 G, they are likely to be terraformable too.
After exploring for a while, you tend to get a feel for roughly where the Goldilocks zones are for the different star types. But look at Sol as an excellent example: Sol is a typical G-class star and Earth is 500 Ls away from Sol and right in the middle of Sol's Goldilocks zone; so for G-class stars, 400 to 800 Ls is a good typical range to hunt for terraformables. For smaller, dimmer stars (eg K class) the zone is closer, for hotter, brighter stars, it's further away.
Multiple-star systems tend to throw off these calculations, as the stellar forge considers the heat supplied by each star to be additive. But as a general rule, multiple stars tend to make the Goldilocks zones larger and further out.