I think that if Steve had time, he would add in a more detailed terraforming system. Simply adding gasses never really made much sense.
Agreed.
However, there's basically almost always something more important and/or interesting to work on. Expanding terraforming doesn't improve the core of the game, so to speak.
Like with so many other opinions and aspects of Aurora, I think this is a matter of priorities and perspective. There have been various other topics which discuss terraforming or bring up suggestions on improving it (some of them quite heated), so there is definitely some interest among players (myself included) in seeing this aspect of the game improved or expanded on.
To be honest, the amount of water in the atmosphere should be affected by the Hydrosphere percentage (and temperature) rather than the other way around.
True. And good point.
As for increasing the amount of hydrosphere on a planet, I was just thinking about a method. Namely, by having a planetary body bombarded by one or more water-bearing comets.
Actually, I was reading about the
solar disaster optional rule. While I can see how some players would like that for the challenge or roleplaying flavor, I wondered why Aurora did not have other types of natural disasters.
I thought that it would be
neat for Aurora to have an optional or random disaster where a planet could get bombarded by large comets or meteors. A comet bombardment would increase the hydrosphere by a tiny amount. And a meteor shower might have a chance of depositing or uncovering a new vein of minerals.
I'm also imagining the player receiving a warning (Event Log?) that their astronomers or scientists discovered this impending impact, giving them a chance to prepare.
Of course, such an impact would affect the planet as if it had been bombarded from space, killing off some portion of the population and raising clouds of dust that could impact habitability.
I've also imagined the possibility of towing tiny comets or asteroids such that they would intentionally impact a planet, either to help terraform, add minerals, or to attack an enemy population.
And before someone points out that this would be exploitable: I'd suggest that there be a form of defense against this, like attacking the incoming comet/asteroid to divert its path or break it up. Or just attack the towing ship before it gains much speed.