Author Topic: What's the deal with water vapour?  (Read 4827 times)

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Offline Gimmick Account (OP)

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What's the deal with water vapour?
« on: September 06, 2016, 12:51:57 PM »
As the thread title says, I've always been a bit confused by the game treating the 'water vapour' atmospheric component the way it does: Completely separated from the 'Hydrosphere' percentage of a planet, which in turn is completely unmodifiable by any acts of terraforming, other than being able to change its aggregate state.  Is this the last holdover from an old, long-gone game mechanic that I don't know about? Because it seems to me that adding and subtracting water vapour to/from an atmosphere should directly change ocean cover percentage instead.
 

Offline NuclearStudent

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #1 on: September 06, 2016, 06:01:23 PM »
It was added in, but never did anything.

I think that if Steve had time, he would add in a more detailed terraforming system. Simply adding gasses never really made much sense.

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.
 

Offline mikew

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #2 on: September 12, 2016, 02:48:51 PM »
As the thread title says, I've always been a bit confused by the game treating the 'water vapour' atmospheric component the way it does: Completely separated from the 'Hydrosphere' percentage of a planet, which in turn is completely unmodifiable by any acts of terraforming, other than being able to change its aggregate state.  Is this the last holdover from an old, long-gone game mechanic that I don't know about? Because it seems to me that adding and subtracting water vapour to/from an atmosphere should directly change ocean cover percentage instead.

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.  Wikipedia lists the total amount of water vapor in the air as enough to result in approximately one inch of rainfall globally if it were to all precipitate.  This would raise the ocean levels by less than 2", and would not be enough to increase the percentage of the surface covered by water by an appreciable amount.  Since water is continually cycled (approximately every 6 days) from liquid to vapor and back again, and since the amount of water able to be held in the atmosphere is highly dependent upon temperature, water added to the atmosphere above the "natural" amount would typically precipitate out rather quickly, returning to the previous norm.

Mike
 

Offline Thundercraft

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2016, 01:03:41 AM »
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.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2016, 01:06:21 AM by Thundercraft »
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
 

Offline Tree

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2016, 07:02:13 AM »
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.
It only takes 5 seconds for a ship to go from 0 to its max speed, though.
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2016, 07:13:41 AM »
And any mass drivers on the colony should be able to catch the incoming meteor/comet.
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 

Offline Tree

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #6 on: September 19, 2016, 07:49:10 AM »
And any mass drivers on the colony should be able to catch the incoming meteor/comet.
Whole comets are much, much bigger than anything mass drivers usually catch though.
 

Offline Thundercraft

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #7 on: September 19, 2016, 08:35:46 AM »
It only takes 5 seconds for a ship to go from 0 to its max speed, though.

Unless the game had a special rule for towing comets or asteroids. It should take much, much more than 5 seconds for a ship to pull or push a comet or asteroid to any appreciable speed.
"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." - Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
 

Offline 83athom

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #8 on: September 19, 2016, 09:27:38 AM »
Whole comets are much, much bigger than anything mass drivers usually catch though.
Not really, a single mass driver in game can catch the combined output from thousands of mass drivers at the same time (hundreds of thousands to millions of tons).
Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 

Offline Garfunkel

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #9 on: October 06, 2016, 04:16:48 PM »
Yes but that's mostly for ease-of-use. It's better to use the sending limit of an individual mass driver.

I totally agree that a more comprehensive terraforming model would be grand.
 

Offline iceball3

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Re: What's the deal with water vapour?
« Reply #10 on: December 30, 2016, 10:50:27 PM »
I think that most point defense and missile defense available to homeworlds would be capable of intercepting comets and asteroids and the like easily, either to deflect it, or to render it into enough small chunks that atmospheric re-entry is just a whole lot of burning-up events simultaneously.
I do kind of like the idea of maintaining an orbital interceptor group for the express purpose of making comet-bound resources easier to harness by drag-dropping them onto my mining worlds.