Mercury Colony Cost

[alex_brunius (OP)]

Should Mercury really receive a 3.21 colony cost due to being tidally locked?

Reading up on it on wikipedia I find the following information:
"Not every case of tidal locking involves synchronous rotation.[3] With Mercury, for example, this tidally locked planet completes three rotations for every two revolutions around the Sun, a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance."

"Having almost no atmosphere to retain heat, it has surface temperatures that vary diurnally more than on any other planet in the Solar System, ranging from 100 K (-173 °C; -280 °F) at night to 700 K (427 °C; 800 °F) during the day across the equatorial regions."


This does sound a bit contradictory to me considering the following was the motivation to reducing Colony Cost on Tide-locked worlds:
"Tide-locked worlds (one side always facing the star) have only 20% of normal capacity (after taking into account surface area and water). This is to simulate that the population will be living in a narrow band between the light and dark hemispheres of the planet. To compensate, these worlds also have an 80% reduction in the colony cost factor for temperature (as they are living in the temperate band)."

[Alsadius]

Sounds like it shouldn't be considered tidal-locked for game purposes, then.

[Steve Walmsley]

Sounds like it shouldn't be considered tidal-locked for game purposes, then.

I was aware of the 3/2 resonance but in this case I decided game play was more important than strict reality

[Alsadius]

Sounds like it shouldn't be considered tidal-locked for game purposes, then.

I was aware of the 3/2 resonance but in this case I decided game play was more important than strict reality

Next you're going to tell me that we won't be sending a few million people there to mine duranium by the year 2030

(Fair enough - probably fun to have one tide-locked option in Sol)