Now terraforming. How does this work precisely? I have began to warm up Mars and cool down Venus. With Mars I have 6 terraforming installations on Venus I have 5 terraforming ships and an administrator with a terraforming bonus.
I assume that I add safe greenhouse gas to a planet to encourage global warming if the tempreture is below optimal earth like conditions.
How does this mechanic work with Greenhouse pressure? I assume this figure means all the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere that is affecting global tempreture? and the anti-GH pressure are gases which counteract it. So on Venus which has a Greenhouse pressure of 50 I need to drastically increase the anti-GH gas pressure over substantial amount of time to bring the tempreture under control?
Mars currently is in this state (ps. What does atm mean>)
Nitrogen 32.74% 0.007 atm
Carbon Dioxisde 14.03%
Oxygen 11.83% 0.0025 atm
Safe Greenhouse Gas 41.39% 0.088atm
Total Atmospheric pressure 0.0213
Base Temp in Centigrade -48
Surface Temp in centigrade -44.87
It has been slowly warming up over time. But I think I may have pumped too much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere? If thats the case what other gases do I need to add in order to balance things out? How do I go about increasing pressure? Do I just simply pump in gas continously?
What about for planets with no atmosphere what is the best strategy/method for beginning to terraform such worlds?
atm is atmospheric pressure compared to Earth. Earth has an atm of 1, which is composed of approximately 20% oxygen, 79% Nitrogen and 1% Argon. The apparently dreaded carbon dioxide is a measly 0.038%. For some reason, that figure doesn't get mentioned much during global warming debates. So that means for Earth the atmospheric pressure of oxygen is 0.2 (20% of 1), Nitrogen is 0.79 atm and Argon is 0.01 atm. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 1% of that on Earth while on Venus it is about 100x greater than on Earth. Terraformers can add or remove a small amount of atm over time. A single terraforming module or single terraforming installation with basic tech can add 0.001 atm per year. In other words, it could generate Earth's atmophere in about 1000 years. That can be improved by researching the racial terraforming rate and by building more terraformers. Mars and Venus are both hard to terraform because their atmospheric pressure is so different to Earth's. Mars essentially has no atmosphere and you have to start almost from scratch. The first thing you need to do to make an atmosphere breathable is to ensure the atm of oxygen in the atmosphere falls within your species' tolerance for Oxygen. You can check the tolerances on the F9 System Display in the top right (if this is slow to load, switch to the options tab and select Hide Asteroids). Mars has no oxygen so you will have to raise it to the minimum Oxygen atm for your species. This varies from game to game or you can set the amount for humans. Lets assume the range is 0.1 to 0.3 atm of oxygen. So on Mars, you will need to create enough oxygen to get the atm to 0.1, which for one terraformer at the basic tech level of 0.001 per annum will take 100 years. If you had twenty terraformers though, it would only take five years. increasing the Terraforming rate to 0.002 would halve the time. Terraforming requires a considerable investment of time and resources.
So you get the 0.1 atm of oxygen into the Martian atmosphere. Is it breathable? Unfortunately not because pure oxygen atmospheres are a bad idea. Apart from the unfortunate consequences of striking a match, breathing pure oxygen over long periods causes lung damage. So an atmosphere in Aurora is not breathable unless the oxygen content is 30% or less. So if we need at least 0.1 atm of oxygen and that can't be more than 30% of the total atmospheric pressure, what does that atmospheric pressure need to be? 0.1 * 100/30 = 0.333, so we need a total atm of 0.334 or another 0.234 atm, which will take another 234 years for the lonely terraformer. This can be any non-Toxic gas. Nitrogen is a reasonable choice or if you also need to change the temperature too, either up or down, you can use a greehouse gas or an anti-greenhouse gas. For Mars, Carbon Dioxide would be ideal, although you could also use the abstract Safe Greenhourse Gas.
As you add or subtract any type gas to/from the atmospere, the atmosphere will be updated and that will also affect the temperature. Every system body has a base temperature and a surface temperature. The base temperature is based on the solar infall from the star (or stars in binary systems) while the surface temperature includes adjustments for atmosphere and planetary albedo. The formulas used are shown on the Environment tab of the Economics window
Surface Temperature in Kelvin = Base Temperature in Kelvin x Greenhouse Factor x Albedo
Greenhouse Factor = 1 + (Atmospheric Pressure /10) + Greenhouse Pressure (Maximum = 3.0)
So every gas adds a little to the greenhouse factor but greenhouse gases add 10x as much. You get other benefits from warming as well. If the hydrosphere for a planet is Ice Sheet rather than Liquid Water (check the F9 view again), then at a certain point the ice will melt and form oceans. This will change the albedo because the ice that was reflecting heat back into space just melted and you will see a jump in temperature. The amount of albedo change is based on the extent of the ice sheet (F9 again) plus a random factor.
As the pressure increases, you will see the percentages of different gases changing. If there is enough oxygen in terms of atm then once the oxygen percentage drops below 30%, the atmosphere will be breathable
Venus is almost impossible to terraform in Aurora. Each species has a maximum atmospheric pressure (Check F9 again to see yours). Before anything else, you would need to reduce Venus below that point. Assuming your species tolerance is about 4 atm then reducing the Venusian atmosphere, which has a pressure for 100, to that level would take our solo terraformer 96,000 years
You best bet for terraforming is to find a planet where the conditions are much closer to those on Earth. For example, you might find one with the right temperature and sufficient atmospheric pressure but the oxygen atm is 0.08 instead of the required 0.1 (or whatever your min oxygen atm tolerance is). Making this atmosphere breathable would involve adding just 0.02 atm of oxygen, which would take the solo terraformer 20 years, or 1 year for 20 terraformers. Equally, a planet with an already breathable atmosphere that is a a little too hot or too cold can be made ideal by adding/subtracting greehouse gases or adding anti-greenhouse gas.
Another consideration is Dangerous gases. An atmosphere will never be breathable if it contains gases such as Bromine, Chlorine, Sulphur Dioxide, Methane, Ammonia, Flourine, Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Sulphide, etc. All these will have to be extracted from the atmosphere by your terraformers.
Terraformers can even be used as weapons. If you found a planet where you wanted to loot the industry but you didn't want to bombard or invade, you could slowly extract the oxygen from the atmosphere.
I've developed my first military frigates for the defence of Sol system. I want to develop a sensor net around the jump points of the solar system and around my neighbouring star systems. I've read in your AAR's that you can develop beuoy's that can be deployed from missiles and that you can build listening post installations with a small military presence.
So my question is what kind of technology do I need to research to go off constructing listening posts on asteroids or planets/moons and I guess a bigger question is really more of an explaination of how missile design works but I think thats best left for the tutorial or i'll take the plunge n try n see what I can do.
The listening posts are just deep space tracking stations. Load some on to freighters and drop them off on a suitable planet or asteroid and you have an instant sensor outpost. They will detect any passive signature (thermal/EM) near the planet. I'll add a tutorial on missile design in the next few days that will cover buoys as well.
Steve
