I've just run into a campaign-breaking bug - grrr!
In a real systems game, the program is supposed to keep track of which real systems are generated, so that each system is only generated once and to check if two races find the same real system. Unfortunately I wasn't saving that value. I realised when I created my second Bernard's Star
Although the DB had a zero value, some detective work using star types, binary distances and 3D positions allowed me to work out most of the real systems for each generated system. Unfortunately they included duplicate Alpha Centauri and one other duplicate, plus Bernard's Star. It would be messy to fix with the NPRs already active in those systems, so I am going to restart. I was really looking forward to the ruins on Mercury too!
Anyway, I will use the same general setup values and keep the background, although I might not end up with the same ship designs. I will revamp the screenshots as needed once I redo the setup. Here is a couple of paragraphs from the relatively uneventful five pages of AAR I had written, which provide an indication of how different colony opportunities will seems after some of the C' changes.
Valiant, under the command of Captain Zachariel Trajan, emerges in 61 Cygni, a binary system of two K-class stars orbiting thirteen billion kilometres apart. The primary has three terrestrial planets, one of which has a single moon. The innermost is a Venusian world with a thick, toxic atmosphere. The second planet, which like the first is tide-locked to the star, has acceptable gravity, a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere of 0.375 atm and a surface temperature of 78C. The world is almost completely covered in water, with small archipelagos taking up only 0.2% of the surface. The oxygen content is minimal, at only 0.004 atm, but this could be terraformed into a habitable world once the technology is available. Even though the temperature is high, the fact the planet is tide-locked means that settlers can exist in the zone between the light and dark sides of the planet, making the colony cost for temperature just 0.33. However, the combination of minimal land area and the restriction to the twilight zone, means the maximum population of the planet is currently only twelve million. Terraforming could improve this by extracting water vapour from the atmosphere, allowing further evaporation of the oceans. The third planet has a similar atmosphere of 0.33 atm, with 0.007 atm of oxygen. The temperature is -83C, which combined with hydrographic extent above 80%, makes ice fields the dominant terrain.
The B component has eight planets, two of which are gas giants, and thirty-eight moons. The two innermost planets are terrestrial and tide-locked so, despite their respective surface temperatures of 196C and -43C, are both colony cost 2.00. Even so, given they have minimal atmosphere and no water, they are not attractive prospects for terraforming. Valiant reports her findings and is instructed to survey the planets of the primary. The other two geosurvey vessels, Venture and Voyager, are currently in the Kuiper Belt and outer Mars-Jupiter belt respectively. Very few inner system bodies have yet to be surveyed. With that in mind, Rear Admiral Martellus orders Voyager to complete her current planned survey tasks and then investigate jump point one.
