At the moment, any planet that is uncolonizable is just dead space weight. They provide nothing to your empire, and nothing to the overall picture of the game. However, any true spacefaring civilization would have a lot of industry centered on these planets in order to harvest the resources, as well as the possibility of terraforming these planets into habitable areas. This is one area that I feel GC3 is very deficient on, and could be improved greatly.
To make a quick comparison, Distant Worlds has excellent game mechanics when it comes to developing uninhabitable worlds, and is in fact a central game mechanic. Now to be clear Im not asking for a private economy, resource mining stations etc (ala DW), but still I think something should be done with uninhabitable planets, because as it stands there is no reason to ever look/click/interact with these planets at all throughtout the game, and they make up a great % of the overall map.
One idea would be to add a Racial Trait, call it something like "Industry Development". Each colony contributes a certain number of Industry points per turn (based on population and racial Industry Development). Players then select an uncolonizable planet (or Asteroid Belt) in the same system as a colonized world. Once enough Industry points have been acrued, you can then choose a facility to construct at said Planet/AB. These facilities can give bonuses to system Production, Research, Economy, Happiness etc, and can continue to be upgraded throughout the game as the player gets more Industry points. You could give these planets/asteroid belts certain bonuses in order to encourage development of the different types of facilities, and constructors could be sent to them to provide defense or other bonuses. This would give the game (I believe) a much greater sense of an "alive" universe, with more things happening in developed systems, more opportunities for tactical strikes against your opponents (these facilities can be destroyed/raided by enemy ships), and open the door for more Ideological tennets.
This is unlikely to get into the main game but might be a good idea for a mod. I was arguing last year for a factory that can be built on upgradable tiles on planets like Mars. I got a lot of that will break the game responses and a few supportive responses. Basically I stopped arguing for it because there wasn't enough support for the idea but if I really want that option I can mod the game for it if no one else does it first.
I disagree that inhabitable planets don't contribute to the game. I think they indeed serve important functions in terms of making the game fun:
1. They make the solar systems more realistic.
2. They make the process of discovery more fun - the moment the fog is cleared by your scout to reveal a planet is like opening a lottery ticket. You rejoice if you find a good planet and you are disappointed if it is a dead world. But these are two sides of the same medal - you can't have one without the other. If all planets are useful, there is no disappointment in finding a dead planet but there is also no fun in finding a good one.
3. Beyond the moment of discovery, dead planets and low quality planets give high quality planets even more value - just by there mere presence they show that good planets are nothing that should be taken for granted.
Now would it be fun to have some kind of tech to make use of some of the dead worlds? Surely. But don't go over board with it - if everything in the galaxy is useable, it is just crowded and the player doesn't feel accomplished to have found and secured the valuable things.
Thare are plans to do this already. Gas giants and either dead or uninhabitable worlds will become usable in some way. But nit all three.
I like the Distant Worlds resource system, and I wish GCIII would add some of that flavor. When we become spacefarers there will be very few planets that won't provide resources to be mined and it would be great to include mining for specific planet and asteroid resources.
Distant Worlds does not have the personality of GCIII but little things like having to wait for a freighter carrying the silicon to complete that destroyer adds a lot of character to the game.
1. How is it more realistic that these planets contribute nothing to your empire?
I hear your point that you don't want the galaxy to be too crowded, and to be fair I really haven't played too much of the Beta so far, but atm rather than feeling crowded the galaxy feels a little lifeless to me, there just doesn't seem to be much going on besides your colonies, a few starports, and a resource base or two. Distant Worlds does this so well, but unfortunately the UI and the AI are just not good, so Im hoping for big things from GC3 for my 4x Space fix
My opinion on the matter is this. Not all planets out there are usable. The actual amount of usable planets in our universe is small by comparison to those that are uninhabitable. I think that given the adjustable settings change this ratio I can say what we consider realistic is possible. What I think would be an amazing alteration would be needing to survey planets to determine habitable or not habitable. Sending a ship to survey planets would add alot of ship management potentially, but I would like the idea of needing to in essence research each planet on arrival to gain statistic on it. This could help slow down the mad planet rush at the beginning of each game. If the AI logic of survey ships was expanded upon it could factor in Uncharted planets to survey. Again just my opinion but at that stage you could use surveyed planet information in trade and treaties.
My opinion on how to deal with uninhabitable planets is this.Have a scientific exploration landing party type ship in. Allow the ships to go from charted uninhabitable to charted uninhabitable spending X amount of turns on each to search for extreme worlds, potential mining opportunities, or find ancient ruins.
That is what I would like to see added to extend the growth process of finding and colonizing planets with the added potential of having random events occur on any planet that is not habitable.
I too like this suggestion, Maybe not right away in the game, however, mid to late game maybe allow your survey ship (one most if not all anomolies are gone) to get into orbit of a "dead world" whatever type and allow it to explore/survey the planet. It may find nothing of use, it may fine an artifact that gives you something similar to an anomaly, or maybe like you suggested in rare situations find something that will be an ancient base/ruins that will turn this planet into x quality (may be an extreme world then) but makes it habitable. You could then colonize it, if you get their first. This may happen in a ratio of 1:20 or more but, make it possible.
Make it a risk factor, after all it's originally dead for a reason. So if they uncover an ancient ruins maybe it's a weapon and releases the dead "Dread Lords" or "destroys the ship", or converts the solar system it's in to a "black hole"(thus destroying the ship and anything in the system). There are many things that you could do both ways to make it a win/loose situation.
Anyway that's my thoughts on "dead worlds" Maybe a DLC titled "Dead Worlds" or expansion though if doesn't make it to base game if at all.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
