Terraforming

[Sapyx]

We can do the maths, to find out how many terraforming completions there "ought to" be.

Assumptions:

• Terraforming takes an average time of 50 years. Chosen because it both fits the "it takes decades" lore and because it's a nice roundish number.
• All terraforming takes about the same amount of time. This might not be a reasonable assumption, as one would logically assume that the "easier" planets were terraformed first, meaning that the current ones are over-represented with the "hard cases" that take much longer or require many more resources to complete.
• The rate of new terraforming projects is constant. That is, there hasn't been a sudden surge in new terraforming projects commencing in the last 50 years or so. Thus, a randomly selected terraforming project is at some random point in time-to-completion, somewhere between 0 and 50 years.
• No terraforming projects have started in Colonia yet. I am forced to make this assumption as EDSM has a limit of 5000 LYs on its planet search.

Statistics:
- Number of planets "being terraformed" in the galaxy right now: 2130. (Source: EDSM search for "terraforming" status, no other qualifiers, 5000 LY search radius)

Calculation:
Number of terraforming projects completed each year = 2130 / 50 = 42 planets per year.

You would, of course, need 42 new terraforming projects kicking off each year too, to keep the numbers in equilibrium.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

Realism? In this game?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

• The rate of new terraforming projects is constant. That is, there hasn't been a sudden surge in new terraforming projects commencing in the last 50 years or so. Thus, a randomly selected terraforming project is at some random point in time-to-completion, somewhere between 0 and 50 years.

Given that the numbers you get are way off what we actually see, I'd probably go for this being the most likely assumption to be wrong: if the majority of current terraforming projects were started in the 3290s as the FSD kicked off a new wave of in-bubble expansion and settlement, that would explain the lack of finishing.

• No terraforming projects have started in Colonia yet.

They haven't- and with a population of just over 9 million, and advanced orbital hydroponics providing food, there's not a huge need to right now. There's a bunch of inhabited systems with candidates - we probably should terraform one of them in case we need the space later. (Trakath might be the best option - conveniently central, but not a lot else going on there right now)

 

[Ser Xav]

Awesome posts, Sapyx and Jay. Clearly lots of practical and ‘reality’ hurdles to such an idea. But extending the concept out a bit, and again straying into base building territory, but what about extraction mines or gas extraction or other sorts of gameplay that leverages the core assets of the game currently? Again, exploration, carriers, mining typologies, and associated economies. Obviously some of these may not require atmospheres at all.

It would be good to try to leverage the atmospherics to see if this could instigate new types of play loops, but also ones with more steps in the chain beyond go from A to B, do something, come back to A.

And to the ‘own goal’ observation, yes very true, when mentioning the terraforming post originally it was sort of with the idea that it could work with tenuous atmospheres whilst they sorted out (or not) full atmospherics.

In other words, what can be done long term with tenuous atmospheres in the gameplay?