Use this forum to ask for new features or suggest changes to the game.
Planets and Resources etc
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EventHorizon Posts: 23
12/7/2017
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Suggested changes:
1. Gas Planets only have fuel and energy as resources (add fuels as a basic resource to the game)
2. Terrestrial Planets are the source of most chemicals with only trace amounts found on other solid planets (not gas)
3. Only solid planets with an atmosphere and a water source can support cities. Everywhere else are mining camps or outposts etc.
4. Most star systems should contain at least one terrestrial planet (latest NASA research supports this) to act as an economic hub.
5. Solid planets without atmosphere are the main source of metals but all solid planets have some. Pollution could be one reason not to mine on planets with large populations.
1. GAS GIANTS have virtually no value as a source of chemicals for industry. What they do have is Hydrogen and Helium, which are mostly useful as fuels (don't forget that any planet with an atmosphere will have more than enough of these for any chemistry related needs), often a lot of radiation and a lot of energy. That should be what you can mine from them, fuel and energy. While jump gates may get you from one system to the next, travel within a solar system would likely depend on a combination of short range propulsion to get up to escape velocity and then something like solar sails or ion drives as very slowly accelerating but efficient sources of fuel for long distance travel. The problem in this game is that fuel is not a part of the economy, nor is it a consideration for military operations, which seems like kind of a gaping hole because energy and fuel are the backbone or pretty much any economy. You can't have transportation or power for factories and homes without them.
***One interesting thing to consider is that solar radiation is a lot less useful for energy near gas giants because they are so far from the star they orbit. You could have technologies, manufactured on terran planets (where the chemicals actually exist) that use hydrogen/helium or even the magnetosphere of gas giants to heat and power mining operations outside the core planets. Those operations would provide clean, non-carbon based fuels for navigation around gravity wells (planets, moons, suns etc) both on the ground and in orbit within star systems and for military operations.***
2. TERRESTRIAL PLANETS, smaller planets with lots of carbon and silicon and an atmosphere (generally closer to the star they orbit), would be the main source of chemicals, given that they would hold virtually all of the carbon that is accessible. Keep in mind that most of what we know of as chemistry requires resources found on an earth like planet to be possible. 80% of all chemistry and its products is organic and almost all of that comes from coal, oil and natural gas. While it's obviously not possible to perfectly recreate a real world scenario in a game I think making the terrestrial planets the primary source of chemicals in the game makes a lot of sense.
3. Water is another key consideration because it is essential to life. It seems highly implausible that cities will ever exist on a planetary body that doesn't have a natural source of it. Similarly, a breathable atmosphere is essential to human life. For these reasons it makes little sense to have "cities" on planets that don't have both available. Terraforming could be introduced but that would necessarily change certain properties of the planet it was done on.
4. Most star systems will be largely self-contained economies unless resources or products are made rare enough that only some systems can produce them and even then interstellar trade would only be for those products. Bottom line is that any economy needs a population of consumers to support it. For that reason most star systems should contain at least one terrestrial planet that can support a major population. Some rare ones could have more than one, making for possible conflict between the two, and some could have none but have rare resources or highly concentrated sources of resources to make them attractive as mining outposts, for pirate factions etc. This happens to be fairly close to what NASA's latest findings are as well.
5. Metals and minerals should be available mainly from solid planets, BUT mining should produce large amounts of waste/pollution that would make it more costly on terrestrial planets with large populations so solid planets/moons without atmospheres and asteroids would be the main source, their high density and low impact of waste/pollution more than offsetting the additional cost of transporting it to market and worth defending an outpost.
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