Custom Water Requirements.
Could be interesting to go for aquatic species, so more water there is the more people you can put on the planet.
That was my idea. Aquatic species, desert species (little to no water) but mostly Robots. I can currently create Robotic species that are in no need of oxy and are not affected by any temperature but....they still need water.
We Robots need no water!
Thoughts on this: For now, just RP robots as needing Coolant (like cars). One should be careful when implementing Aquatic and Desert species, since an aquatic race can be completely nonviable if they can only have 2m pop on a planet, and a desert species can be very OP if they can use 100% of the surface just like that. It might require another thread to discuss balance, unless Steve makes an executive decision.
The carrying capacity problem is easily solved for aquatic and desert species - flip it on its head
So for an aquatic species - anything below 75% water
reduces their carrying capacity.
For a desert species - anything above their water requirement (let's say 10% for this example) will
reduce the effective carrying capacity.
The best part is that you don't even need to have the custom water requirements implemented and use the current ruleset for water (keep it between 10-20% for desert and above 75% for aquatic).
The existence and function of the population density modifier already shows us that aurora in its current form already tracks carrying capacity on a species-wise basis so this isn't too much of an ask (i think).