In the ED universe, which Earth-like planet is the closest to Sol?

Sapyx

Sapyx
Besides Earth and Mars, obviously.

This is a question to test the general knowledge of the lore-masters around here. You can look up the answer by a quick filtered search on EDSM, but have a guess before you do.

The answer might surprise you. It surprised me.

Corollary question: which is the nearest naturally-occurring (i.e. not listed as "This planet has been Terraformed" in the system map) ELW to Earth in the ED universe? Again, the answer may surprise you, especially if you're a veteran of the old FE2/FFE games. With the overall reduction in probability of ELWs in ED, many of those "naturally-occurring ELWs" originally present in the prequel games and carried across to ED have lost their "natural" status.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
And the answer to the first question is...

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Merlin, in the Ross 154 system. Well-known to lore-masters as the starting system in FE2, and a system carefully designed (in FE2) to be impressive when you first start the game. Ross 154 is 9.69 LY away from Sol. Without looking it up, I would have answered "Taylor Colony, Tau Ceti", as that was the destination for the first generation ship. But Tau Ceti is 11.94 LY away, and there are nine other ELWs that are closer to Earth than Tau Ceti.

The answer to the second question is...
TRAPPIST-1 4, 42.36 LY from Sol. Which is, of course, still uninhabited.

As TRAPPIST-1 was created after game launch, the nearest "natural" ELW to Sol at game launch was...
Antinica 3, 90.57 LYs from Sol.

The answers to the second question might surprise those familar with the old FE2 map, in which many of the nearby Earth-like worlds, such as Taylor Colony (Tau Cetu), Feynman (Eta Cassiopeia), Reagan's Legacy (Delta Pavonis), were marked as "naturally-occurring Earth-likes" as opposed to "terraformed Earth-likes". It just goes to show how rare ELWs have become, compared to the old FE2 universe.
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
Merlin, Ross 154, is a terraformed Earth-like world in ED. In the original FE2 planetary classification system, naturally-occurring "Earth-like worlds" had four varieties: "Normal", Desert, Jungle and Ice. "Terraformed" and "Small sustained terraformed" were two additional inhabited-world classes. Merlin was an Ice world. The nearest "Normal" ELW in FE2 was indeed Taylor Colony, Tau Ceti - which is presumably why Tau Ceti was selected as the target for the first generation ship. In ED, the entirely fictional (i.e. procedurally-generated) Duamta system is closer than Tau Ceti.
 

Ragga Muffin

R
Its only been 15years since i played FE dude totally forgot Merlin was ice world, (water, ice ahhh whats the difference), and Titan will "tell us" if trappist is really un-inhabitted. At some point i need to get back up to Ross 128 154, Wolf 359, and all the other stomping grounds.
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
Maggie_Oz said:
Is Mars considered "earth like" ?
Click to expand...

In ED, yes, because it's been fully terraformed. If present-day Mars were in-game, it would not be classified by ED as "Earth-like" - it would be a HMC.

It is one of the differences between a sci-fi universe such as ED, and the real-world science of planet-hunting. Out there in the real world, astronomers and exoplanetologists define an "Earth-like planet" as "a solid rocky planet", as opposed to a gas giant, or lava world, or iceball, or some other object class. Under that real-world definition, all four inner planets of Sol system (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) would all be called "Earth-like". So when you read headlines about them discovering a "New Earth-like planet in such'n'such star system", don't get too excited, as it's far more likely to be an exoMercury or exoVenus that they've found, rather than an exoEarth. We haven't quite got the tech necessary to actually detect a truly Earth-like atmosphere around such a planet yet, so the real-world science definition makes sense... for now.
 
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