I'm confused about the hydro/atmo water balance. Is the 0.14% above a rate, or is it an equilibrium level? (I would vote for equilibrium level.) If it's an equilibrium level, then how does that square with what I think I read in the rules change, which is that 20% hydro requires 1 atmo of water (which seems way to high, given that Earth has 75% hydro without having 3.75 atmospheres of water vapor ).
The way I understand the change is not that you need 1 atmosphere worth of water vapour floating around to get 20% of hydrosphere, you merely need to generate the gases and then they will condense. If you generate 0.5 atm. worth of water vapour it will condense into 10% hydrosphere for example, although the condensation rate is fixed, so it may not happen at once and there will always be at least some vapour in the atmosphere left.
- Maybe hydro system shouldn't be controlled by terraforming at all (since it takes so much material). Either you take what you get (without being able to change), or one is able to drop asteroids/comets (whole new game mechanic that probably isn't worth it), or hydro percent change costs 10s of thousands (or even millions) times as much as gases when done through terrarforming.
To be honest when I consider terraforming and the need to add not only water but gases as well I always imagined chucking rocks at a given body the best way to get what you need. It can be quite cheap in terms of energy (a nuke or two to nudge an object into a new orbit especially if it's in a Lagrange point of a gas giant) and easy, just time and money consuming. Having it incorporated into the game would be nice as it would be more realistic than just conjuring everything out of thin air. Of course if we had a realistic terraforming there would be the problem of removing gases as in some cases it just appears like they end up in some black hole.
Having said that I'm essentially fine with the changes as they are. They are simple to understand, simple to implement and give you wide range of choices which means you can role-play to remove implementations you're not fine with. And since it's not overly complicated it also means it doesn't force you to play by its rules (which is why I'm against ideas that give bonuses or penalties to bodies which are well terraformed/not terraformed. If I want to play a race well adapted to domed cities I don't want to be penalised in game for that. For that matter in such cases I can just add penalties myself. But I digress).
Am I the only person who thinks that with the changes Steve has already made we have more than enough terraforming detail? I'd much rather Steve moved onto other areas now.
I don't think you're the only person, but you must also understand that the terraforming mechanics are of great importance to me, and apparently, many other people. What attracted me to Aurora was not the combat system, but the incredible detail of the star systems, allowing me to take an asteroid and turn it into an important naval base and industrial node (in theory as up until now the costs of orbital habitats and underground infrastructure was far too high). Seeing my colonies grow in various, sometimes contrived circumstances, is what kept me glued to the game, despite its many issues, for... I don't know. Six years now? Maybe even longer I think. Anyway, because of that everything that has to do with ability to colonise and change bodies to my will, allowing me to create new nations in the most unlikely of places, is of utmost importance to me. And apparently many other people judging by the response.