colonizing Titan

[joeclark77 (OP)]

Has anybody got the formula for what it takes to get a zero-cost colony on Titan?  I've read somewhere that it can't be done with humans because you can't warm it up enough, but I haven't tried it out for myself to confirm.  Can it be done with a genetically-modified human, and if so, what modifications do you need?

On a related note, I tried to colonize Neptune's moon Triton in a recent game and found that you need a -30% gravity modification just to be able to put human-derived creatures on the ground (with infrastructure).  The game didn't last long enough for me to find out if it could be terraformed to a decent temperature.

[GreatTuna]

You can't terraform Titan into zero-cost.   Maximum temperature you can get is -43.  2 C, and your average human cannot live in environments colder than -10.  0 C.   It can be done with genetics: you need to decrease base temperature on 40 C. 

And you can't terraform Triton to a decent temperature.   Maximum temperature for it is -138 C.   You can't even modify human to live on that cold planet. 

About the formula: just add 2 atm of Safe Greenhouse Gas or Water or any another greenhouse has.

[joeclark77 (OP)]

You can't terraform Titan into zero-cost.   Maximum temperature you can get is -43.  2 C, and your average human cannot live in environments colder than -10.  0 C.   It can be done with genetics: you need to decrease base temperature on 40 C. 

And you can't terraform Triton to a decent temperature.   Maximum temperature for it is -138 C.   You can't even modify human to live on that cold planet. 

About the formula: just add 2 atm of Safe Greenhouse Gas or Water or any another greenhouse has.

Good, I'll do that, thanks!
I've discovered that it's a good long-run policy to terraform and build mines on planets with effectively-limitless quantities of one or two important minerals... although strip-mining comets with several minerals is fun in the short term, it gets more difficult and less profitable over time.  Titan is a permanent source of Duranium in my current game, and Saturn is my permanent fuel base, so I want a permanent colony there eventually.

[Cocyte]

Before 6.0, I managed to reach 1.9 colonization cost for Titan after a lot of terraformation. Now that the lower limit for human beings have been changed from 0 to -10, the colony cost will be even lower.

Sure, Titan will always require some infrastructure, but it is more of a boon than a pain : the civilian sector of your habitable planets will supply a lot of those, and the civilian transport will boom thanks to it. My current Titan is inhabited, not yet terraformed (Jupiter's gallilean sattelites were far better targets) and is taking all the infrastructure of the 7 others inhabited (and far more pleasant climate-wise) bodies of the solar system (Earth, Moon, Mercury, Mars, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Not Io. Stay away from Io they said.)

[joeclark77 (OP)]

In my current game I got really screwed for minerals, and not just in Sol.  Nothing on Luna, Mars, Mercury or any of the Galilean moons.  I colonized Luna and Mars in order to get my civilian shipping lines growing, and will colonize those two just for generating population and money.  Titan has Duranium but the only other planet worth mining is Quaoar.  I think I'll invest in asteroid mining ships for the first time ever, because there are lots of bountiful asteroids in Sol and neighboring systems.  I've also invested in some small, fast, cheap transports with 5000T cargo pods because I don't have any single system with abundance in all eleven minerals, so I'm going to have to expand widely and set up a lot of "trucking" lines.

I do like to set up a colony in orbit of whatever gas giant I'm using for fuel.  My fuel harvesters are self-propelled but not very fast, so it's better if they can dump their fuel locally, and I can either redistribute it later with tankers or long-term I could move my shipyards to a fully terraformed Titan.  Engineering -40 degree humans will be costly but certainly there'll be other places I can use them beyond Titan.  My previous game was the first one where I experimented with genetic engineering, and I did find it allowed me to colonize a couple of pleasant and valuable worlds.