Terraform...um...bility?

[Sapyx]

Many of us have probably noticed this sort of thing: a planet that "should be terraformable", but for some weird reason the Stellar Forge doesn't want to classify it as such.

A case in point I have just stumbled upon: the worlds of the Boeft BV-F d11-59 system. Specifically, the three planets B8, B9 and B10. It's a binary system, so there's the complication that calculation of Goldilocks Zones is difficult.

Here's B8: 1.30 G HMC, 240 atmospheres CO2 atmosphere: a typical Venus-class planet, except that it's terraformable.

Now we have planet A9: a Water World, 1.67 gravities, 16 atmospheres high-ammonia atmostphere, kind of a proto-Earth. NOT terraformable.

Finally, planet B10: 1.49 G HMC, 0.72 atmospheres nitrogen atmosphere, a "large Mars" or perhaps a "warm Titan"; terraformable.

Why is B9 not terraformable, where B8 and B10 are? It's not a pressure problem, because B8 is higher than B9. Is it gravity? Is the co-orbiting eccentricity causing tidal heating? Anyone have any ideas?

 

[varonica]

Many of us have probably noticed this sort of thing: a planet that "should be terraformable", but for some weird reason the Stellar Forge doesn't want to classify it as such.

A case in point I have just stumbled upon: the worlds of the Boeft BV-F d11-59 system. Specifically, the three planets B8, B9 and B10. It's a binary system, so there's the complication that calculation of Goldilocks Zones is difficult.

Here's B8: 1.30 G HMC, 240 atmospheres CO2 atmosphere: a typical Venus-class planet, except that it's terraformable.

Now we have planet A9: a Water World, 1.67 gravities, 16 atmospheres high-ammonia atmostphere, kind of a proto-Earth. NOT terraformable.

Finally, planet B10: 1.49 G HMC, 0.72 atmospheres nitrogen atmosphere, a "large Mars" or perhaps a "warm Titan"; terraformable.

Why is B9 not terraformable, where B8 and B10 are? It's not a pressure problem, because B8 is higher than B9. Is it gravity? Is the co-orbiting eccentricity causing tidal heating? Anyone have any ideas?

Gravity.

 

[Sapyx]

It can't be gravity alone, since you can get terraformables up to 1.99 G. I'm assuming it's a combination of gravity and "temperature", or rather, the orbital position within the Goldilocks Zone, then?

Does the Stellar Forge assign "points" for various terraformability factors (gravity, position within the zone, other factors?), and if a planet doesn't get enough points it doesn't win the T-form badge? We know there seems to be some kind of planetary "niceness" scale, if the occasional below-par payout for terraformables is a guide (as if UC is saying "Yeah, it's terraformable, but only just, so you don't get much of a bonus for this one"). I'll flag this system for attention when I sell the data and try to obtain individual planet values for each of these planets.

I'm also wondering if the current composition/pressure of the atmosphere plays a factor in pushing some of these edge-case worlds out of bounds. Logically it should; a planet with conditions wildly different from Earth should be more expensive and difficult to terraform than a planet that's almost but not quite right, and thus be of less value to a faction looking for quick and cheap worlds to terraform. If such an effect is there, it's difficult to separate it from gravity, as high-G worlds tend to have thicker atmospheres.

 

[Chocolatier]

Not all planets are terraformable.
Not all water planets are terraformable.
Not all terraformable planets have water.
Perhaps the system is new. Perhaps the planets are new. Perhaps life has yet to develop on that planet. Perhaps ..... The point being, the Stellar Forge spits out some crazy stuff, much like our own universe.

 

[marx]

It's exactly examples like these that might help better figure out how something works - in this case, terraforming candidacy.

I think it might be the ammonia atmosphere. It sounds odd, sure - but Elite is oddly allergic to atmospheric ammonia. If a planet that would be an ELW gets even a tiny bit of it, bam, water world. I wouldn't be surprised if the game classified "ammonia atmosphere" as non-terraformable - would have to look through the data to check this though.

 

[iain666]

Out of 4,500 terraforming candidates I have in EDD there are 95 WW and HMC with Ammonia or Ammonia Rich atmosphere with a peak ammonia content of 82.9%, so I don't think it's that.

 

[varonica]

Out of 4,500 terraforming candidates I have in EDD there are 95 WW and HMC with Ammonia or Ammonia Rich atmosphere with a peak ammonia content of 82.9%, so I don't think it's that.

How about axial tilt, I notice the non-terraformable has a higher axial tilt than the other two, can we check the potential candidates that failed and see if there is an axial tilt component that affects it? maybe if the axial tilt is to great then you can have proper seasons and it won't support terrestrial life.

 

[Alkibiades]

I have found earths and tf planets with tilts above 80°. Its not the tilt.

My old and wrong understanding of tf was that there must be water. Then I found landables without an atm that were tf. So its not the existence of an atm or water.

Then I thought its oxygen. No tf without at least a tiny bit CO2 in the atm. Then there are tf and non tf ww with like 95% ammonia and 4.5% nitrogen and 0.5% argon. So its also not the oxygen.

My current guess is that its the temperature. Even if you terraform that ww, the temperature would not drop to an adequate level. And the stellar forge plays that scenario through.

 

[Sapyx]

Meanwhile, here's another example to ponder, also a recent discovery in the Boeft Sector.

Example 2: Boeft IF-Z d1182, four terraformable HMC worlds (2, 7a, 7b, 7c), one Waterworld (7d) that's not so terraformable. Pic photoshopped to show data for all five worlds:

EDD estimates that the Goldilocks Zone for this star is 1004-2003 Ls, and as a single-star system the Zone calculations should be fairly accurate. Planet 2 is a normal co-orbital planet at 1751 Ls distance, so no abnormality there. Planet 7 is about 4300 Ls away, more than twice as far as the estimated outer limit of the GZ. Its three innermost moons are all rendered as HMCs, which is unusual in itself, but they're all terraformable. But moon 7d is an icy waterworld, not terraformable.

The two gas giants, 7 and 8, co-orbit each other with quite high eccentricity (0.1482); planet 7 is much more massive than 8, but even so, I'd have thought a real-world scenario like this would have scattered those moons to the eight corners of space long ago:

So... is the non-terraformability of moon 7d purely a result of receiving insufficient magic heat from the Hot Moon Bug, or is there some other effect at work? And has the Hot Moon Bug been previously recorded as heating moons that were over double the max distance to qualify for the Goldilocks Zone?

 

[Orvidius]

It makes me think that some of the factors that we think are automatic disqualifications (or not, since there are exceptions), might be "soft" disqualifications. That is, if there are enough "good" qualities, it may ignore other things that are close enough. There's probably a hidden list of point scores with some fuzzy logic allowing for some things to be mildly out of spec. If that's true, it's notoriously hard to reverse engineer from the outside.

 

[Leper Messiah]

in the 1st lot of examples the planet not "terraformable" is classed as a terrestrial water world. i.e. doesn't need terraforming? At least that's how I've always thought it works.

 

[Orvidius]

In astronomical terms, terrestrial in this context really just means "not a gas giant or moon". The word usually refers to the "inner" plants with solid surfaces (or solid with liquid over it, such as water worlds). Hopefully ED isn't mangling this too badly.

 

[Leper Messiah]

In astronomical terms, terrestrial in this context really just means "not a gas giant or moon". The word usually refers to the "inner" plants with solid surfaces (or solid with liquid over it, such as water worlds). Hopefully ED isn't mangling this too badly.

but then why are there Waterworlds that are terraformable, yet "terrestrial" Waterworlds are not? It's the same as an Earth like is never terraformable isn't it? No point Terraforming something that is already inhabitable by human life?

 

[marx]

but then why are there Waterworlds that are terraformable, yet "terrestrial" Waterworlds are not? It's the same as an Earth like is never terraformable isn't it? No point Terraforming something that is already inhabitable by human life?

Elite's doing a bit of mangling of astronomical terms, but to be fair, often those terms aren't super precise. Plus they were designed for bodies that we know far less of than we do in Elite. So an Earth-like world refers to any non-gas giant planet that's within the habitable zone, while in Elite, it has much stricter criteria. Basically, a planet within a set gravity range that has a human-breathable atmosphere.


There are also some guesses that terraforming candidacy still uses the outdated requirements for Earth-like worlds. Before the first update of the Stellar Forge (way back when, not long after launch), planets were allowed to "become" ELWs over higher temperature ranges, pressure ranges and such than they are now. There are terraformed ELWs which would not be classified by Elite as ELWs if they occurred naturally... so the whole issue of the candidacy is an iffy thing.

Based on Matt G's research into exploration data payouts, it appears that there is a non-binary modifier for terraformable bodies, or to be more precise, their payouts: it's likely that the game does calculate a "terraforming value", and if it's larger than a certain number, it gets marked as a terraforming candidate.

 

[Sapyx]

but then why are there Waterworlds that are terraformable, yet "terrestrial" Waterworlds are not? It's the same as an Earth like is never terraformable isn't it? No point Terraforming something that is already inhabitable by human life?

No. All Water Worlds have the exact same description: they are all called "Terrestrial Water Worlds", whether they are terraformable or not. "Terrestrial" in this case simply means "having a solid land surface" - in the same way that the station announcers on surface ports talk about their station as "this terrestrial facility"; at those ports, there's no air at all - but they are built on a planet with a solid surface.

 

[Leper Messiah]

I could have sworn I've seen Terraformable Water worlds.....memory not what it once was, that and I havn't played for a while!!

 

[Sapyx]

I could have sworn I've seen Terraformable Water worlds.....memory not what it once was, that and I havn't played for a while!!

Yes, of course there are terraformable water worlds. Here's a system with one of each, planet C2 is terraformable, planet C5 isn't. :

As you can see, both terraformable Water Worlds and non-terraformable Water Worlds are labelled "Terrestrial". The only difference in labelling is with the presence or absence of the "candidate for terraforming" line, after the planet description.

 

[Sapyx]

I've found 601 Water Worlds in my systematic survey of 5600 star systems across four sectors. 255 of them were terraformable, 356 of them were not. Broken down by star class, most main-sequence star types varied between one-half and two-thirds of WWS to be non-terraformable; the best ratio so far is in K-class stars (45:48), almost 1:1.

 

[Alkibiades]

Gonna leave these planets here...



The ww in the 2nd picture is also tf. Both systems have a neutron star.

I recon this as a hint to my theory that its temperature.

 

[Soldaris]

This one I find quite unrealistic, temperature 1110 K and 1.88 Gravity...