Habitable vs Terraformable?

[Barefoot]

I've seen a lot of different lists, charts, tables, and infographics about how much I can expect to be paid for a given type of stellar body.

That's all well and good, and I just made 37 million on my 5k journey to unlock Palin, so I think I'm doing pretty okay... but then I noticed something odd.

Terraformable High Metal Content worlds are pretty high value... not the highest, but definitely well worth scanning (and a lot of snipers miss them! XD)

But in one system that had 2 Terraformable HMC worlds, there was also one HMC world, dead in the middle of the Goldilocks zone, that was shirtsleeves -habitable-. As in, 285K, .85 N2-O2 atmosphere... the game even specifically mentioned that this was a world with a "human-breathable atmosphere and indigenous life".

Now... I should have written it down, and checked when I turned in my data. If I had, this would be a bug report.

Instead, it's just a strong suspicion that that world was worth -less- than its Terraformable neighbors, because it didn't have the words "This is a candidate for terraforming" in its description. In other words, a neighboring planet that some corporation or government will have to spend (presumably) trillions of credits terraforming, isn't worth as much as one where they can just land, strip down, and go skinny-dipping comfortably. This... clearly isn't right!

Can anyone confirm this suspicion? Or does anyone know FOR SURE, that the payout for a habitable High Metal Content world is suitably high? I.E. on par with or above an equivalent mass Terraformable Water World?

 

[Redfox]

Bodies which are *not* Candidates for Terraforming (as per system map) have payouts which follow a formula which entirely depends on the body's mass. More on that here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/232000-Exploration-value-formulae

The values of HMC and WW which *are* Candidates for Terraforming are within a range, of which the underlying attributes have not yet been figured out. These attributes might have sth to do with the body being 'habitable', but just don't know that (yet). This visualisation might help (taken from the thread linked above):

Spoiler

 

[LP Garnell]

ED Discovery would help you backtrack to that planet, if you are so inclined.

One of the big reasons that HMCs in the middle of the habital zone aren't terraformable is gravity. If it is 2G or above, or below .4G, it's out.

 

[iain666]

An ELW can definitely be worth less than a terraformable water world - if they're the same mass and the WW gets the full bonus they should be about the same but a big CFT WW can be worth significantly more than a small ELW beside it.

An ELW that's worth less than an HMC CFT would be a rarity (if the game said "human-breathable atmosphere and indigenous life" then it's an ELW, not an HMC anymore) but it's within the bounds of possibility, especially if ELWs can get less than the full bonus.

 

[Sapyx]

Any planet that says "human-breathable atmosphere and indigenous life" in the description is an Earth-like world, not a HMC. These aren't terraformable because they don't need terraforming; people can in theory live on such a planet without the need for further geoengineering of the planet or genetic modification of the colonists.

There are as-yet-poorly-understood "levels" or "ratings" for terraformable worlds. These ratings presumably reflect the difficulty a terraforming organization would have in terraforming the planet; a world that is "almost, but not quite Earth-like" would be more valuable than a planet that needs an awful lot more work done to it. By the current payout regime, a top-rated terraformable water world is worth just as much money as an Earth-like world. But Earth-like worlds tend not to form above 2 Earth-masses, whereas terraformable waterworlds can go all the way up to 4 Earth-masses. Since the payout for a planet increases with planet mass, then it is certainly possible for a terraformable waterworld to be worth more than an Earth-like planet.

 

[LP Garnell]

Any planet that says "human-breathable atmosphere and indigenous life" in the description is an Earth-like world, not a HMC. These aren't terraformable because they don't need terraforming; people can in theory live on such a planet without the need for further geoengineering of the planet or genetic modification of the colonists.

There are as-yet-poorly-understood "levels" or "ratings" for terraformable worlds. These ratings presumably reflect the difficulty a terraforming organization would have in terraforming the planet; a world that is "almost, but not quite Earth-like" would be more valuable than a planet that needs an awful lot more work done to it. By the current payout regime, a top-rated terraformable water world is worth just as much money as an Earth-like world. But Earth-like worlds tend not to form above 2 Earth-masses, whereas terraformable waterworlds can go all the way up to 4 Earth-masses. Since the payout for a planet increases with planet mass, then it is certainly possible for a terraformable waterworld to be worth more than an Earth-like planet.

You're right, I was thinking about the water worlds, such as the one below with "carbon-water-based-life". The primary is a non-terraformable WW, but the moon is a terraformable WW.

In general it appears that the terra cutoffs are more closely tied to surface gravity. For HMC, it is pretty hard and fast set from .4 to 1.999 Gs. For WW, lower limit is .4 G's, but upper is either somewhere shy of 2 (1.9?) or I just haven't seen enough data points (450 so far).