Change Log for v7.10 Discussion

[doulos05 (OP)]

Populated Asteroids
This will also make the bioengineering of low gravity species much more useful.

OMG, belters!!!

[sloanjh]

Steve forgot to lock his change log, so I did so and split this reply out into the discussion thread.

John

PS - Steve keeps his change log threads locked so that the "release note" information in the thread isn't diluted by discussion posts

[doulos05 (OP)]

Steve forgot to lock his change log, so I did so and split this reply out into the discussion thread.

John

PS - Steve keeps his change log threads locked so that the "release note" information in the thread isn't diluted by discussion posts

No problem, and I stand by my original statement. OMG, belters!

[MagusXIX]

I'm so happy that I'll finally be able to choose names for things out of a list! No longer will I have to hit the new button several times until I find a good name for a class, cluttering everything up!  Thank you so much, Steve!

[Zed 6]

Love all the changes Keep up the great work!  Will there ever be a return of some sort of Hyperdrive to reach the outer reaches of a binary, trinary etc... system?

[Thundercraft]

Moon Descriptions
...[snip]

Nice. Like others, I welcome the display of all moon sub-groups. 

Populated Asteroids
...
...Therefore in v7.10, asteroids with a gravity of at least 0.02G are treated like any other body when assessing colony cost. So now you will be able to establish normal populations on larger asteroids. They still won't have atmospheres but those could be added via terraforming.

This will also make the bioengineering of low gravity species much more useful.

[Emphasis added is mine.]

It's fine to make bioengineering of low gravity species a bit more useful and appealing.

However, I really dislike the idea of making it possible to terraform asteroids and give them a breathable atmosphere. 

Even with a slight gravity, asteroids can not hold a significant atmosphere. The biggest body in the Solar System's asteroid belt is Ceres and the second biggest is 4 Vesta. But minor bodies like those are dwarf planets, not asteroids.

Even such dwarfs have very little gravity. Ceres has 0.029 g or about 2.8% of Earth's, with 4 Vesta right behind with 0.025 g. That's much less than even Titan, for instance.

Looking at bodies in the Sol system that Aurora classifies as quote, "asteroids", I only find a few with at least 0.02 g. There's Vesta with 0.03 g, Pallas with 0.02 g, and perhaps a couple others.

The asteroid belt receives far more solar energy than Saturn's moons. And with enough solar energy and solar wind, an atmosphere will evaporate away if there's not enough gravity to hold it - especially without a magnetosphere to protect it. Simplified to the basics, the ability for a planet to hold an atmosphere (or lack thereof) should be a function of both proximity to the parent star (and the star's solar energy) and gravity.

Indeed, NASA found evidence that Mar's atmosphere may have been blown away by solar wind!
Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere - NASA Science

Besides, even if 0.02 g was enough for an atmosphere, most asteroids are highly irregular in shape. Any atmosphere they could accumulate would settle to low spots and high gravity areas, leaving the "mountains" and rest of the surface with little atmosphere.

Keeping this new ability to establish normal populations on larger asteroids is one thing. But couldn't you add code to prevent them from being terraformed?

[Rich.h]

The fact such a mechanic will be in game does mean you have to use it, the same way many things in Aurora could be argued against for the sake of realism. Having options to do things like terraform asteroids is not going to detract from the enjoyment factor of anyone, while it will add to it for some. It sounds like this is a simple matter of changing how the game will view asteroids from one body type to another, no masses of extra code and such. So I'm confused why anyone would not jump on the "more is better" wagon for this.

[MarcAFK]

He has a point, you couldn't make a tiny chunk of rock into an ideal world without infrastructure, which is already available for using for that exact reason.

[Zincat]

To be honest I don't really see what the problem is. Let's not forget that this is a GAME. We already have a ton of non plausible stuff here. For example.... you know... the entire trans-newtonian tech tree.

Aurora is a game at the end of the day, and I don't really see what is the problem is in allowing terraforming of bodies with a decent gravity. After all, the very fact of creating a gas atmosphere out of nowhere, not to mention the impossible gases (Anti greenshouse gas anyone? What's that?) is already science fiction. So technically you should not be able to terraform anything at all this way, according to current physics.


If you really want to nitpick about the problems of worlds and realistic data in Aurora there's far bigger problems. Like, the fact there's no population limits for planets. Or the fact that terraforming is a process that takes the same time no matter what the size of the planet, while realistically a super earth with 30000 km+ diameter should take tens of times the years it takes to terraform a modest moon....

The game does not model all this, and that's not really a problem in my book. Let's put it all under the "it's a game after all" rug and move on to the fun parts... Hey, you're not even forced to do it if you don't like it!


Regarding the entire thing about Mars who lost its atmosphere, it took MILLIONS of years. Aurora generally spans less than a century. You don't like the fact that a small body can be terraformed? Roleplay it! Put a terraforming station on the planet and leave it there, and in your head that terraforming station is "replacing constantly the gas that's been lost in space due to the gravity being too low". Problem solved...


Regarding the changes: Thank you very much Steve, all this sounds really nice. Now I can't wait for 7.1, I don't trust 7.0 enough to start a major campaign

[GreatTuna]

So we should be able to terraform planets with 0.05G now 0.025G to suit our needs, but when it comes to asteroids with similar gravity, we shouldn't because... realism?
Sorry, but no. I'd rather have more colonies.

[IanD]

Aurora is a game at the end of the day, and I don't really see what is the problem is in allowing terraforming of bodies with a decent gravity. After all, the very fact of creating a gas atmosphere out of nowhere, not to mention the impossible gases (Anti greenshouse gas anyone? What's that?) is already science fiction. So technically you should not be able to terraform anything at all this way, according to current physics.

Helium may be useful as one if you could get enough of it. Otherwise sulphate aerosols would would work, pity about the acid rain, but it would also reduce precipitation (as well as the ozone layer) and give a white sky! An inert particulate aerosol may be a better choice.

Merry Christmas!!
Ian

[Ziusudra]

Clouds. Clouds are a great "anti-greenhouse gas". The clouds on Titan reflect enough sunlight to completely offset the greenhouse effect of all that methane.

[Steve Walmsley]

However, I really dislike the idea of making it possible to terraform asteroids and give them a breathable atmosphere. 

Asteroids can already be terraformed. The difference now is that you can put normal infrastructure on larger asteroids and create a populated colony.

As you mentioned, for Sol this would only affect a few asteroids. Vesta 0.026G, Pallas 0.022G and Euphrosyne 0.24G in the Mars - Jupiter belt and a dozen KBOs, the largest of which (2007 OR10) has a gravity of 0.051G. Bear in mind this is still a lot lower than normal human tolerance so you would have to invest 150,000+ RP on genetic engineering to establish a colony on Vesta.

Also, only 18 of 101 moons in Sol have gravity greater than 0.02G so we are talking about asteroids that are similar to larger moons rather than tiny irregular rocks.

This will be more useful for other systems that have particularly large asteroids. My current game has twenty-one asteroids (out of 29,000) that fall within normal human tolerance (0.1G), including four with higher gravity than Earth's moon.Two levels of genetic engineering on gravity will add forty-six more but you would still need to deal with temperature and creating an atmosphere.

[Steve Walmsley]

Regarding the changes: Thank you very much Steve, all this sounds really nice. Now I can't wait for 7.1, I don't trust 7.0 enough to start a major campaign

That's sensible. I intend to release v7.1 at some point this week. Just need to run it for a few hours to test the changes and fix anything else that pops up.

[MarcAFK]

Ugh, I'm getting the forum error so excuse me if the following makes no sense.
Steve your asteroid g numbers are off.
While Wikipedia isn't entirely reliable.
Pallas should be 0.022 g and, Euphrosyne 0.07