Today I will talk a bit more about planets themselves- I touched upon it when discussing improvements yesterday, but planets are involved in a great many features and arguably have the greatest impact on how a match will pan out.
Planets fall into 4 different categories:-
- Hot planets have increased industry production, at the cost of reduced science production.
- Cold planets have increased science production, at the cost of reduced industry production.
- Temperate planets (also referred to as Terran) have a balanced resource output, but tend to output more total resources (Science + Industry + Money, or SIM) than other types.
- Gas Giants favour money production at the cost of reduced science and industry, with the exception of Chthonic planets.
Table showing the S/I/M output of each planet type (detail on types below)
Categories are further subdivided into 4 rarities- Substandard, Normal, Unusual, and Exotic- which indicate the total SIM output of the planet in question. Below is a table displaying the rarities of different planet types, along with their distribution:
All planets can have their SIM output increased through investment. Unlike system improvements, planetary improvements do not have system-wide effects, and improvements affect only the SIM output (as opposed to the more complex mechanics of system improvements). The improvement level of an individual planet is indicated by it's prefix. Planets in different categories have different prefixes to reflect their main resource output (i.e. Cold planets have prefixes that reflect their elevated Science production). Prefixes are listed below:
An explanation for the table is probably needed...
If I were to colonise a Molten planet (Hot), it would have the basic level of improvement since I have not yet invested in it. This means it would take the prefix "Industrious" and its SIM output would be 50% that of its base SIM output.
A Molten planet should output 22 SIM total (4 Science/12 Industry/6 Money), but it currently outputs 11 SIM (2 Science/6 Industry/3 Money). If I then decide to invest in the planet and raise its improvement level by one, its prefix would change to "Emerging Workforce", and it would have 100% of its base SIM output (i.e 22 SIM). Two further levels of investment would give it it's maximum improvement level- "Industrial Superpower"- and it would have 300% base SIM output (66 SIM).
An exception to this naming system is for Gas Giants- they do not take the "Emerging/Prosperous/Superpower" titles. Instead they take the single-word titles shown in the table.
If feedback indicates that this naming system is too complicated, I will change it to a more generic naming system, but the mechanics of system improvements will remain the same.
Finally I want to speak more about the system improvement slots on planets. I mentioned this yesterday but must extrapolate on it. Since rarer planets have a higher SIM output, and so are often more powerful than less rare planets, I felt that a balance needed to be struck so that players did not feel that rarer planets were outright more valuable than others. To remedy this I have made it so that higher rarity planets have fewer improvement slots than common planets. This provides an incentive for players to colonise less rare planets, and allows me to limit the number of improvements that could be built on a system.
- Exotic planets have only 1 slot for a system improvement to be built.
- Unusual planets have 2 slots.
- Normal planets have 3...
- and Substandard planets have 4 slots.
My in-game explanation for this was that rarer planets are more likely to have high populations on them than less rare planets, and so there would be less room for large-scale constructions on these rarer planets. Substandard planets such as dead planets would be unable to produce enough food, or have the right conditions, to support a large population, and so the large areas of undeveloped space (void of vegetation) can be used to build research stations, mining facilities and the like.
N.B. Figures are placeholder values- balancing and play-testing has not yet begun.
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