Terraforming spreadsheet

[Corik (OP)]

I've recently made a spreadsheet to help me with terraforming. It's far from being perfect, but I would like to share it with you. Basically it allows you to specify what temperature and gas proportion you want in a planet, and after filling in the planet's base temperature and albedo (which has to be changed if its ice sheet melts for updated and accurate results) it will tell you how many atm of what gases the planet needs in order to achieve your desired results.

For RP reasons I like to maintain Earth proportions in my terraformed planets. However, you can set Nitrogen and Argon to 0, leaving Oxygen to its minimum value of .1 atm and change your desired temperature to the minimum (or maximum) in Kelvin, which I think it is 273 and 317. The spreadsheet will automatically tell you if a safe gas is needed to reduce Oxygen bellow 30%. There's also a limit in how much you can cool or heat a planet. When it's impossible to achieve your desired temperature the spreadsheet will stop adding (anti)greenhouse gas when reaching that limit.

I'm not used to work with spreadsheets and I admit this one is pretty limited, but if someone find it usefull It would be great. As I don't know if the attachment will work for xls files, I will add a fileserve option.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24883108/Terraforming.xls

If you find errors I will try to fix them

Edit: Changed host!

[Marthnn]

I made a spreadsheet myself for temperature calculation, but not as big as yours.

Basically, I enter the base temperature, albedo, neutral gases pressure, O2 pressure, greenhouse gas pressure and safe anti-greenhouse gas pressure. It gives me surface temperature in K and °C, total pressure and O2 %.

On my colonies, I aim for 0.2 atm of oxygen, a total of 1 atm (if possible) and a surface temperature of 22°C. The table is simple and easy to use, I don't feel it's worth automating it more.

[Thiosk]

Can't queue terraforming, can you?

[Marthnn]

Can't queue terraforming, can you?

No can do. Ask Steve, then do it the good old way. It's not so tedious...

[Corik (OP)]

That would be great. I always waste some months until I realize my terraforming fleet is not doing anything at all. With the ships in orbit and the crew drinking and having fun at the spaceport cantina.

[Garfunkel]

Nice spreadsheet, thanks! I'll be testing it in my current game as I find more planets to terraform, I'll let you know how it works.

[nadia911]

Please Khalador re-upload you terraforming spreadsheet, the link expired

Excuse mi english

[Corik (OP)]

Sorry, I never saw your reply!

Here's a new link to the spreadsheet: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24883108/Terraforming.xls (Hope it works!)

[nadia911]

Thanks Khalador 

[andrea69]

Thanks,
if it can calculate the max (or min) temperature achievable with terraforming, it'll be useful. I was just wondering what kind of genetic modification I need on my colony on Titan 

[Corik (OP)]

Well, I guess it can. Default objective temperature is 22ºC - 295K, but the spreadsheet is designed so if the objective temp can't be achieved it stops adding gas and shows you the highest (or lowest) achiveable temp... so if you want to check for minimum temp just use 0K as the desired surface temperature and check what temperature can be achieved at the right table. To check for maximum temp just put a high enough temp like 500000K or something like that in the desired surface temp and check again.

Edit: Actually I think minimum temp can't be calculated with this. I haven't played for a long time so I can't check the needed calculations right now. If you ask to terraform a 100000K planet to 0K it will say it's possible, but the maths will be wrong. It will work for "normal" temperatures though.

Edit2: Found the problem I was talking about. When cooling a planet there's a point where the greenhouse factor becomes negative, and every calculation is totally messed up. This only happens when the planet is too hot... There's no problem in cooling a planet from 800K to 295K (Earths temp), so probably it's not a big deal. Will have to check if it's even possible to cool a hotter planet.

[Garfunkel]

Hi Corik - even the updated link is now dead. Any chance you could reupload the file? Or do I have your permission to upload my copy?