Anti-Greenhouse gas

[Marthnn]

I just cracked myself up thinking about this thread.

Yes. We're all over the place, and it is all beautiful.

[Erik L]

I am, however, enjoying the different turns this thread has taken.   Learning more here than on Wikipedia.

You'd be surprised how many physicists of various types are members here Along with rocket scientists...

[xeryon]

I just wanted to have those % points of gases do something other then look pretty on the atmospheric composition page.  I didn't even want to open the climate change can of worms.

I dunno, one person trips when hanging a clock over the loo and has an epiphany and we all start in on it.  Now that you opened your maw and mentioned jump gates I am sure people will start mulling that over and there will be a 14 page discussion ensuing shortly.

[ussugu]

Now that you opened your maw and mentioned jump gates I am sure people will start mulling that over and there will be a 14 page discussion ensuing shortly.

LOL!!! Sorry.

[dgibso29]

You'd be surprised how many physicists of various types are members here Along with rocket scientists...

And the occasional historian!

[Steven Kodaly]

I dunno, one person trips when hanging a clock over the loo and has an epiphany and we all start in on it.

I was about to remark on how Steve hasn't implemented time travel technology, but then I remembered the Space-Time Bubble he put into the game.

[xeryon]

A flux capacitor would really liven things up around here.

[ussugu]

In keeping with my "love to terraform" theme throughout all my posts on this topic, I just looked at my terraforming fleet.   It has 35 terraforming ships in it and the fleet commander is. . . . .  wait for it. . . .  random name generator says, "Captain Dirk Goodpasture".   I fell out laughing.

Anyhoo. . . .

[Girlinhat]

Actually, I will say this about jump gates, which Steve has confirmed, and we should have no argument.  There is no gate.  The act of constructing a jump gate is actually just the act of stabilizing the wormhole.  There is no structure left at the wormhole, it's slightly altering the fabric of space to make it stable.  That's why the enemy can use your gates as well!

As for terraforming, I'd love to see more complexity, taking into account vegetation, climate, gas interaction, and all sorts of stuff.  But with that should be some streamlining.  A terraformer should be able to be programmed: "Reduce temperature to X by removing Y and Z gasses."

[jseah]

To complexify terraforming:

Atmosphere is only the minimum needed to survive.  Water content and biosphere are needed as well. 

Water/Ice coverage is a simple % and perhaps could make it adjustible by adding H2O to the atmosphere. 

Biosphere might have their own stricter tolerances and more terraforming up to the sweet spot would be required beyond minimal habitation. 
So, even if a planet has colony cost 0.00, that planet could require more people in the agriculture sector, up until the planet is right in the middle of racial tolerances.  Say, up to an additional 5% of total people. 

[Lav]

I'd suggest that realistic biosphere terraforming isn't likely to be very effective in the time scales we play games in. Algae has limits. Trees only grow so fast. Grasslands don't spread to cover continents in 30 years. There's no simulation of a hydrosphere or temperature zones, no rain, etc.

Either keep it super simple, or leave living organisms out of terraforming. Example: "You seed the planet with photosynthetic algae, causing a rise in oxygen!" Even then, we'd get into issues of how much it would rise, oxygen toxicity killing all the other forms of life that were used to the non-oxygenated atmosphere, and a whole bunch of other problems. For instance, there's no carbon cycle. Where's the carbon coming from? Should we require CO2 levels to be high enough for photosynthesis? What about other forms of life with wonky chemistry?

I initially thought the terraforming system was silly, but I've grown to like the simplicity. Terraforming is wildly complex and not something we have experience with or data on for accurate models. Not sure we need to incorporate SimEarth into Aurora.

[Cocyte]

Then there are moons of Gas Giants within habitable zones, which can have orbits of 2 mln kilometres, ie, within a several weeks they move 4 mln kilometres closer to the star, than back, not including ecliptical orbit of the giant itself.   

Well.  2Mkm is peanuts at this scale you know...
Earth have a 5Mkm difference between its aphelion & perihelion.

And a Jovian sized object in place of the earth would have a hill sphere radius of 3Mkm.  Even an object 5 time more massive will still only have a 6Mkm radius.  Good ol' sun is quite massive.

Too bad Aurora generated system does not seems to take this constraint into account, leading to some quite funny results

More into the subject : I'm in favor of keeping it moderately simple, but adding a need for water to the mix would be welcome.
Also, the sudden "Cost 2 to 0 thanks for the 0. 0999 atm of oxygen becoming 0. 1 atm is quite annoying.

[edited : I'm still a noob as it seems...]
"An astronomical body's Hill sphere is the region in which it dominates the attraction of satellites. To be retained by a planet, a moon must have an orbit that lies within the planet's Hill sphere." Thanks Wikipedia

[Haji (OP)]

Well.  2Mkm is peanuts at this scale you know...
Earth have a 5Mkm difference between its aphelion & perihelion.

And a Jovian sized object in place of the earth would have a hill sphere radius of 3Mkm.  Even an object 5 time more massive will still only have a 6Mkm radius.  Good ol' sun is quite massive.

Except that if you take "real stars" option a good chunk if not most of the stars will be red dwarfs. Which means your gas giants will be located 10-50 million kilometres from the star. In that case 2-4 million kilometres change is quite big. Plus, while it's true that Earth perihelion and aphelion are further apart, in the case of the gas giants the change is more quicker. The Eart have enitre year of journey between close and far point, the sattelites would have changes occuring on a monthly basis (or 2-3 months, depends on orbit). I assume such a more sudden change would have consequences, perhaps serious, for the weather patterns. Of course I might be wrong too.

[Cocyte]

Except that if you take "real stars" option a good chunk if not most of the stars will be red dwarfs. Which means your gas giants will be located 10-50 million kilometres from the star. In that case 2-4 million kilometres change is quite big. Plus, while it's true that Earth perihelion and aphelion are further apart, in the case of the gas giants the change is more quicker. The Eart have enitre year of journey between close and far point, the sattelites would have changes occuring on a monthly basis (or 2-3 months, depends on orbit). I assume such a more sudden change would have consequences, perhaps serious, for the weather patterns. Of course I might be wrong too.

Ah, red dwarfs, those "runts" are indeed a weird case...
Just made the computation for Barnard's star and a jovian sized compagnon lurking at 15Mkm... Its hill sphere have a radius of less than 1mKm... A satellite at this distance would have quite a variable weather during it's 6 days orbit around the planet

However, life (as we know it) would be quite difficult around Barnard's star because it is, like a lot of those red dwarfs, a flare star, releasing sometime some massive radiation bursts...