Moon Descriptions
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Nice. Like others, I welcome the display of all moon sub-groups.
Populated Asteroids
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...Therefore in v7.10, asteroids with a gravity of at least 0.02G are treated like any other body when assessing colony cost. So now you will be able to establish normal populations on larger asteroids. They still won't have atmospheres but those could be added via terraforming.
This will also make the bioengineering of low gravity species much more useful.
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Emphasis added is mine.]
It's fine to make bioengineering of low gravity species a bit more useful and appealing.
However, I really
dislike the idea of making it possible to
terraform asteroids and give them a breathable atmosphere.
Even with a slight gravity, asteroids can not hold a significant atmosphere. The biggest body in the Solar System's asteroid belt is Ceres and the second biggest is 4 Vesta. But minor bodies like those are dwarf planets, not asteroids.
Even such dwarfs have very little gravity. Ceres has 0.029 g or about 2.8% of Earth's, with 4 Vesta right behind with 0.025 g. That's much less than even Titan, for instance.
Looking at bodies in the Sol system that Aurora classifies as quote, "asteroids", I only find a few with at least 0.02 g. There's Vesta with 0.03 g, Pallas with 0.02 g, and perhaps a couple others.
The asteroid belt receives far more solar energy than Saturn's moons. And with enough solar energy and solar wind, an atmosphere will evaporate away if there's not enough gravity to hold it - especially without a magnetosphere to protect it. Simplified to the basics, the ability for a planet to hold an atmosphere (or lack thereof) should be a function of both proximity to the parent star (and the star's solar energy) and gravity.
Indeed, NASA found evidence that Mar's atmosphere may have been blown away by solar wind!
Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere - NASA ScienceBesides, even if 0.02 g was enough for an atmosphere, most asteroids are
highly irregular in shape. Any atmosphere they could accumulate would settle to low spots and high gravity areas, leaving the "mountains" and rest of the surface with little atmosphere.
Keeping this new ability to establish normal populations on larger asteroids is one thing. But couldn't you add code to prevent them from being terraformed?