Terraforming Earth

[Keeplivin (OP)]

I was scrolling Reddit when I saw a post about Terraforming, specifically related to Hydro Extent.  One of the points brought up was that if you remove water vapor from the atmosphere then the Hydrographic extent goes down and you can have more land to colonize.  I checked Steve's post on the terraforming update, and it seems to check out.  So, is it then possible to terraform Earth and increase the max population from 12 billion to even higher? Earth has a 70% HE when it only needs 20%.  Could you, quite literally, triple the max population of Earth? Anyone have any idea on what this might look like or cost, in terms of terraforming modules and time?

[DeMatt]

Doesn't work for the default Earth (hydrographic extent of 69.72).

Using Spacemaster Mode, I increased hydrographic extent;  I didn't see any reduction in maximum capacity until after 75H, after which it was a linear reduction from 75H=100% to 99.8H=1%.  Earth's below 75H, so it's already in the "sweet spot", and won't get any benefit from reducing hydrographic extent.

[gpt3]

Hydrographic extent only starts affecting population capacity above 75%.

Source: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg100078#msg100078

While 70% of the Earth's surface is water, that plentiful water also improves living conditions (the majority of the world's population is less than 100 km from the nearest coastline). However, there does come a point when too much water will reduce the available living space. Therefore, once water covers more than 75% of the planet, capacity will drop at a linear rate, falling to 1% of normal capacity at 100% water. The 1% assumes a few, small, scattered islands or some form of colony floating on the surface.

[Platys51]

You can terraform it to be at 0.1 habitability.
It will then transform all its infrastructure into actual building.
Well, at least it did at some point. Only did this once a while ago.
Usually infrastructure is not an issue.