The Future of Terraforming

[Katejina]

No doubt many of us have found some interesting terraforming-candidate worlds.

And I like to believe that over time, those worlds that we find will eventually become populated, by humans or otherwise. Terraforming candidates may become earthlikes or otherwise, perhaps sprouting new stations or something different depending on how FD want to handle them. And I do hope they have plans. I'd hate for exploration to just be warp>scan>profits.

So let's speculate. Obviously candidates with an already existing atmosphere with oxygen will be priority targets, but what about something like this?

Spoiler

0 Atmosphere. Zero. Rocky and metal.

How this is a tarraforming candidate is beyond me. Someone out there obviously enjoys a challenge, especially at ~5kly from Sol.

 

[Varrag]

"Go home Stellar forge, you're drunk"

 

[Reido]

There's more than likely other data not shown that the game uses to make the determination of whether a planet is a suitable candidate for terraforming, as some systems simply don't add up given the information available to us.


Andrew

 

[nicomak]

It's close enough to the star, that's why i think, mostly.

Checking where those are with stars of differents types, the area where you find those depends on how hot the star is, the hoter, the further. kind of 'in the 'inhabitable zone'.
The rest doesnt seem to be considered at all, well except maybe mass, as you dont have many terraformable moons, you do find a few sometimes though.
It may also depends on it's surface temperature.

I know a water world terraformable moon orbiting a non terraformable high metal content planet with 99.9% water atmosphere... 11k atm (!!) 1600°K of surface temperature.
4 Earth Mass. 9480km in radius
there are planets terraformable beyond and before it. It's 3.7 AU from an A9 star.

 

[Spazduck]

And -44 degrees Fahrenheit is a bit chilly!

 

[nicomak]

And -44 degrees Fahrenheit is a bit chilly!

Yes but you may make that better with some greehouse effect.
If we forget the atmosphere and some cooler temperature the size and mass are somewhat similar to earth. It should be doable to make a whole atmoshpere there, costly maybe though.

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

A terraforming candidate has roughly the right size and sits in the goldilocks zone of its star. Composition seems to be insignificant.

 

[Stoo]

FD's future vision is for humanity to extend out in to the void, and terraformable planets will be the way they'll do so. New stations will be built etc. So over the next X years, the game will expand further.

 

[Tyber]

Too bad the magnetic field strength and surface gravity isn't listed.

It may have had an atmo at one time, but it was lost due to a solar flare or supernova in its neighborhood.

It could also have polar caps like mars rich with frozen CO2 and H2O.

The chemical composition of the rock could also lend itself well to terraforming.