sounds nice, you could transform deserts to terran planets (but it should be expensive to terraform).

(excessive bombings on the surface could make a planet quali bad and turn it into a vulcanic world?)

nice idieas guys like the concept of bombing hurts a planet like that alot
defnatly make you think before just bombing a planet to pulp but i guss youd need a new ship then to facillitate gound invasion as the other option but those must be REALLY expensive i.e troop ships that cant fire and are fragile and you need x amount to take a planet with x health

devs what do you think it has allot of promise this idiea

ps also looking for counters to this

Bl4ckSh33p
took part of your idea reformulated it and posted it on the suggestions page hope you don’t mind i suppose i should have asked permission first

terraforming doesnt make too much sense right now in sins, since planet usually arent inherently better than others. sure, asteroids are not as good, but you can't really argue being able to transform an asteroid into a terran. and since every planet has its own advantages, some of which are routed in the amount of res. roids they give, I can't see how it can be applied very well.

what you could do is include uncolonisable planet that can be terraformed to suit your needs, but the idea is somewhat in the game already with having to research some planet types and with having to improve them for max. benefit. but yeah, toxic planets, ocean worlds, etc, etc. could be a candidate for "use a terraformer ship first to transform it". we should, however, also consider whether this actually adds fun and not just work. you could make the choice what it becomes a player dependent one, so that these "bad" ones are actually pretty worthy in their own right by giving the player what he is missing. sort of like a joker card with a price.

I could also play with the thought of a "scorched earth" tactic, wherein you rather terraform your own planet to waste, than leave it to your enemy, but that also sounds a bit unfun.

ps: while it doesnt apply here, I also made a post on the marine frigate idea. if you want to discuss you might want to dig it out, its about a day old and definately a better place to discuss this. you will find my post certainly most interesting.

Regarding Ground Combat, not wanting to burst any bubbles, but from The FAQ:



That doesn't mean that some kind of abstract system couldn't be worked out, but it is important to remember where the devs have drawn the line scope-wise.

Changing a planet's type (from Desert to Terran, or Terran to Asteroids) would be a nice possibility, but I'm not sure if the engine would support it without significant recoding.

I'd love to be able to hit a planet with, say, 4 novalith shots and turn it into an asteroid belt

Of course, the guy who wrote How To Destroy the Earth would tell you that it would take a LOT more than that.

After a planet has been bombarded from orbit, I doubt the surface and atmosphere of the planet would be hospitable. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for “Terraforming” or something similar to be a necessary first step to colonisation.

We should also be able to terraform less hospitable planets. This could provide gains in population, culture income etc.

I too would also like more dramatic orbital bombardment. A greater variety of surface explosions would be nice and please modify the shockwaves so half of them don’t disappear / get cut in half by the planet. It’s just one of a few small but annoying glitches. Also, would it be possible for the surface texture to subtly change as the bombardment continues and the population of the planet dwindles? Some environmental effects would be great too.

That’s it, I’m out!

Terra forming is already abstracted into the game -- its the population upgrade you need for all planets before you get income from them.

Planets/asteroids should not be colonizable for a # of minutes after they have been destroyed. That # should be 1 minute X the infrastructure level of the planet at the time it was destroyed. Thus, if it was an asteroid with a single level of upgrade for the infra, it would be 2 minutes until it could be colonized. For a large terran planet that has been fully upgraded infra (4 levels + the starting level), you'd have to wait 5 minutes before it could be colonized.

Conversely, if you use assault troops (perhaps added later), you would just the planet over and lose perhaps a random # of infrastructure levels and other planet upgrades.

One liners with zero thought or purpose behind them take seconds from one person to make, yet take seconds from thousands of people to read and dismiss.

If you have terraforming, then there should be terreforming ships that are like giant mirrors, or something to that effect.

well this idea could work really wel in a star trek mod.

call it the "genesis device" and make it a super weapon