Asking for some advice on terraforming.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

I've been trying to wrap my head around terraforming but the terraforming planner offered in the utilities forum is partly indecipherable to me and doing the calculations myself is hurting my brain. I've been very unlucky finding any worlds with less than 2.0 CC in my game, so have been thinking of terraforming. I just found a bug where a world was displayed as 0.77 CC but when I colonised it I realised the atmosphere was frozen and it had changed to 2.0 as unbreathable.

Quick question, trying to terraform this world which has a temp of -103c, pressure of 0.7 and diameter of 19,600 is a pretty extreme undertaking right?

Second question. I found a world early on that was only slightly hot and had 0.23 atm of oxygen. I thought it would be pretty easy to just take out some oxygen and live there, then I realised the pressure is 1.95 and the diameter is 18,400. This is another pretty daunting endeavour right?

I've actually started terraforming the planet next to the high oxygen one because even though it has no atmosphere is has water, a reasonable temperature and a diameter of 4,000 so I thought it might not be too difficult to just add 0.1 atm of oxygen and a bit of frigisium. It is taking a long time, but I assume it is supposed to. With 5 terraforming modules in orbit on a space station and my current tech I think I'll have it breathable in about 5 years, which seems pretty good, though it is tidally locked so max pop is only 236.

If I am correct on the above assumptions, can anyone give me some tips to quickly spot good terraforming candidates I might be overlooking?

[Garfunkel]

Well the obvious rules of thumb is that the lower the CC and the smaller the body, the faster things go. Double that if a hydrosphere already exists.

Having said that, you have to think big when it comes to terraforming. I usually use both facilities as well as modules on a station.  The former are used on CC2 (or lower planets) and the stations are used on CC2+ planets so I generally tend to have two projects going on at the same time. I build 50 TR facilities and stop there, but I don't really stop building TR stations ever (unless I'm out of minerals). Each station has at least 10 modules and once my tugs get powerful enough, I'll double the number of modules to 20 and later to 30.

And of course you need to improve your TR tech every now and then too.

[Barkhorn]

That 1.9atm world should be pretty easy to terraform.  Oxygen is already there, pressure is within habitable range.  All you need is a hydrosphere and a little frigisium.  To make the hydrosphere the required 20%, you need to add 0.5 atm of water vapor.  I always go a little extra since some will stay vapor.

In general, I only terraform planets and moons with minerals, because I only colonize planets and moons with minerals.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

The hydropsphere on that one is is actually 98.5, so I could massively improve the Max pop of 1,500 if I remove water, if I understand this correctly.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

I just remembered about the all systems view, that basically does most of what I am asking here for me. That being said, does anyone ever colonise a world that doesn't have minerals, or moons with minerals? When would you go to the effort?

I think I might start continually constructing terraforming facilities and see where that takes me.

[Droll]

The hydropsphere on that one is is actually 98.5, so I could massively improve the Max pop of 1,500 if I remove water, if I understand this correctly.

You are correct. The improvement will stop once you reach below 75%.

[Garfunkel]

You can colonize all the worlds you want to and it does stimulate both civilian trade which increases your wealth and it generally increases your population growth as the growth percentage goes down as the population size goes up. Plus, it's good for roleplaying.

[James Patten]

Not all colony cost 2 worlds require equal amounts of work to make habitable.  I found one that needed only a few percentage of ATM of additional oxygen to make it fully habitable.  Other worlds have CC 2 from dangerous gases, CC 2 unbreathable and CC 2 from temperature - but it's still only CC 2, and requires a great deal more work to make habitable.

Also world size makes a big difference in level of effort to terraform.  I have one world that recently became habitable, but the terraform ratio vs Earth was .85, and I had 2-3 dozen terraforming stations in orbit, each with 5 terraforming modules, for decades (I just kept building them).

[StarshipCactus]

You might also terraform a world with research bonuses.

[Barkhorn]

Also if that world is in a strategically important system.  Even if it has no minerals whatsoever, it may be worth using as a waystation.

[Droll]

Not all colony cost 2 worlds require equal amounts of work to make habitable.  I found one that needed only a few percentage of ATM of additional oxygen to make it fully habitable.  Other worlds have CC 2 from dangerous gases, CC 2 unbreathable and CC 2 from temperature - but it's still only CC 2, and requires a great deal more work to make habitable.

Also world size makes a big difference in level of effort to terraform.  I have one world that recently became habitable, but the terraform ratio vs Earth was .85, and I had 2-3 dozen terraforming stations in orbit, each with 5 terraforming modules, for decades (I just kept building them).

Also consider that if for some reason you've decided that you want to inhabit a planet with small maximum population cap it might actually be more time efficient to simply churn out infrastructure that can house the entire planetary population and not bother with terraforming at all.

[Llamageddon (OP)]

Right now I am colonising so many 2.0 worlds that infrastructure is actually taking up an awkwardly large % of my total construction to keep up with demand. Once I get them all to around 10m pop I'm going to start shifting to terraforming much more I think.