Non-Oxygen Species

General Discussion
1

I am starting to setup Aurora to include alien species that don’t breathe oxygen.

For starters, I am going to implement species types that breathe methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide.

Each species has its own set of dangerous gases, so all of the above have oxygen as a dangerous gas, but none of them have hydrogen for example. The two sulphur gases are dangerous to the methane and ammonia breathers, but not to either of the sulphur-breathing species, etc.

However, I am running into an issue with water, because water would be dangerous to all of the above. So I can’t use ‘hydrosphere’ as part of their colony cost calculation. That results in a few different options.

I could just ignore water (beyond water vapour being a dangerous gas) for these species and assume they have some unspecified equivalent that isn’t tracked. However, that might make things too easy in terms of suitable environments.

I could start tracking different types of ‘hydrosphere’. with equivalents for each species, but that would be a lot of work with scope for bugs.

What I am leaning towards is restricting their habitable temperature range to where the gas they breathe can also be a liquid and use ‘hydrosphere’ (the presence of liquid water or water vapour) as a negative impact, without specifically tracking their ‘water equivalent’ . This simplifies the problem and restricts the potential habitable worlds.

For example, a methane breather species would be restricted to home worlds between -180C and -160C, while Ammonia would be -77C to -33C. In fact, I should probably restrict from lower to 70% of the way to max. I would still track the other stats like gravity, pressure, etc. and have minimum/maximum atm for the breathable gas, plus the 30% restriction.

That acceptable range changes based on pressure, so at 5atm, Methane is -180C to -140C and Ammonia is -77C to +50C. See below for potential ranges. Ignore the water lines, as I will still be using an oxygen/water combination for oxygen-based life.

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In practical terms, this would mean the following:

  1. During the check for life in generated systems, planets with the appropriate gases would be examined for the acceptable temperature/pressure combination, along with the other normal factors, plus a lack of liquid water or water vapour, to see if a non-oxygen species can be created.

  2. if a species is created, it would be generated with temperature range, pressure range, gravity range, etc. like any other species, but with a different breathable gas.

  3. When that species is checking colony cost and suitability of bodies, water would be a negative with the formula TBD. No water is fine.

  4. Their colony cost would instead use the presumed existence of a suitable ‘hydrosphere’ for the species based on the acceptable temp/pressure range, with 0 colony cost within that range and 2 outside it.

I’m posting this here to get feedback on anything that seems odd, or I might have forgotten.

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Colony Cost Working Values.

Water Ice

0 for Methane, Ammonia, Hydrogen Sulphide
0.05 per Hydrosphere % for Sulphur Dioxide. (so 40% = 2)

Liquid Water Present

0.05 per % for Methane,
0.1 per % for Ammonia and Hydrogen Sulphide
1 per % for Sulphur Dioxide

Water Vapour

2.0 for Methane, Ammonia
3.0 for Sulphur Dioxide, Hydrogen Sulphide

3

Could these situations have effects on slave exploitation? if you capture slaves from a species that lives in another atmosphere type, you cannot bring them to your planets (or have infrastructures only for them, maybe).

SJW: The same situation as now. Different species require different populations. Labour Camps can be deployed anywhere.

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4

Can this mechanics reduce the competition for the planets?
Different atmospheres appeal different breathing species. So, I could prefer to colonise planets different from yours, and be less open to spend resources to “terraform” your type of planets to make them abitable for me.

SJW: Yes, these species will be interested in different planets, although there will be some crossover where environmental conditions are less relevant. They would terraform oxygen out of the atmosphere as a ‘dangerous’ gas.

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5

Will Aestusium and Frigusium work the same for these species, as they do for Oxygen ones?

SJW: Yes.

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6

Would you also consider aquatic species who would instead demand a higher % of water?

As an example of how it might work, any liquid water hydrosphere % below 75 would incur a colony cost depending on how low the hydrosphere is.

Alternatively you could invert the carrying capacity formula for aquatic species and keep other parameters the same as the landlubbers.

Otherwise this seems great

SJW: Potentially. Hydrosphere requirement is now different depending on breathable gas, but I could also add a new ‘water required’ element to colony cost as a subset of oxygen breathers.

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7

Can the player play a non-Oxygen race?

SJW: Theoretically yes, although I haven’t added the required UI yet.

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8

One thing that sticks out to me is three of those four are strongly reducing atmospheres in which liquid water wouldn’t last long enough to pool into oceans. Methane and water would co-exist, but the other three react with water, reducing down to acids and a base strong enough to dissolve certain minerals out of the rock. You’d have acidic pools in salt plains and pyrites but no standing water. So either create a version of hydrosphere for each of the 5 breathe-gasses, or ignore the chemistry for the sake of gameplay and continue as you are.

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9

If the temperatures ranges of those chemicals didn’t overlap, then you could have “what are the oceans made of” be determined purely by temperature and pressure.

How is ruin generation impacted by this?

SJW: I will probably extend ruins to be possible on these worlds, but probably not constructs, as I will assume Ancients are oxygen-breathers.

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10

What impact would this have on infrastructure? Can infrastructure be deployed on oxygenated worlds to allow these races to exist there? Would you need to create a new type of infrastructure specifically for these races, or can humans and non-oxygen breathers both use the same infrastructure to exist on a planet inhabitable by neither race?

SJW: Infrastructure works exactly the same. It is based on the colony cost requirement for the species in question.

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11

Whatever the final decision, I know for sure that it will be cool.

I assume they will have a fairly high minimum atmospheric pressure requirement to have an acceptable "hydro"sphere?

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but is there a way in the game to remove water ice from very cold planets? If it is possible to heat the planet at 80°C (just for example), then for planets with very low temperatures (-100°C) it will be impossible to remove water at all (it is impossible to reach temperatures above 0°C), and for Sulfur Dioxide it will be impossible to create a colony CC 0 on the planet?

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It is the terraforming process.
You can heat the body’s atmosphere adding enough Aestusium, using terraformers (on the ground or in orbit, and they can work together). While, if you want to cool it, you add Frigusium. And for the greenhouse gases, you can remove or add them, if you need, taking care of not producing a toxic atmosphere.
It is done in the Environment tab of the Ecomonics window. At the top of the window, you select the gas to add or remove, and the final partial pressure of that gas. One gas at time.
The more terraformers, the faster the process.

13

So this means that I will need to heat the planet simply because of the presence of ice on it? What if I accidentally add some water to a moon with a temperature of -200°C (just an example, so let’s imagine that temperature is not a problem for the population)? It will take quite a long time to heat it.

Also, heating may require a more atmosphere pressure than the maximum acceptable for the race. So in order to lower the CC from 0.1 to 0, I will have to raise it to 2 first? For example, when the temperature on the planet is -70°C min, -50°C max at 3.9 atm with maximum acceptable 4 atm?

14

Which gases do you already have, at which pressure?
You can remove them, to lower the pressure, then add the heating one, balancing temp and pressure.
Outside your limits of temperature and pressure, the population can live only inside the Infrastructures.

15

I just want to say that removing ice water can be much more difficult than removing liquid water or any gases.

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16

I think it would be nice if in the game setting one had options as to whether to enable the different types of breathing species so one could still play an all Oxygen breather game if one wanted.
Adding them sounds like it will be cool and add another fun dynamic.
I have been wondering if species of different breather types should have a harder or easier time being friendly/ establishing communication. I would think communication might be harder but that competition for plants would be less making friendly diplomatic relations easier so perhaps it would balance out or perhaps there is a way to implement differences that meaningfully add to game play.

SJW: New species types will be optional

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17

Some suggestions for the new mechanics, Steve:

  1. How about renaming “Hydrosphere” to “Liquidosphere” (or “Hygrosphere” if you want to stick to the Greek theme)? It becomes a universal, abstract term for whatever liquid given species uses, paired with their breathable gas. This might save you from having to track different liquids per species. That specific Liquidosphere would simply be treated as toxic to species reliant on other liquids.

  2. If you stick with penalty for hydrosphere, it should be negated at very low temperatures where liquid water turns solid state. For example, if an Ammonia-breathing species conquers Earth, they could terraform it (or trigger a nuclear winter) to lower temperatures enough to turn all liquid water into ice.

  3. Maybe some other factors could impact life creation chances? For example gravity or the magnetic field could play a bigger role in life creation? Without a strong magnetic field, stellar winds would scour the surface and break apart the complex organic molecules needed to spark life. Also, since gases like Methane and Ammonia are quite light, maybe worlds with weak magnetic fields have a much harder time retaining them, forcing Methane breathers to evolve on worlds with heavy gravity or massive magnetospheres.

  4. Finally, I think generating ruins shouldn’t necessarily prevent NPR creation. Life-supporting planets are rare enough, and it would be incredible to discover a newly evolved NPR living among the ruins of a previous, ancient civilization. A planet with ruins could just have a chance to be empty, spawn Precursors, or spawn an NPR (if other life supporting conditions are met).

18

I’ve decided to go with water being required for oxygen-breathers and water (liquid/vapour) being a problem for a non-oxygen breathers. Water ice is ignored except for Sulphur Dioxide races. See the second post in this thread.

Rather than having a water-equivalent for non-oxygen races, I will restrict their generation to bodies within the temperature range where their gas can also be a liquid, such as on Titan. Because that will also set their temperature range for colonisation, their ideal worlds will have similar conditions without having to specifically worry about a water-equivalent.

It’s not perfect, but it creates the right flavour for these types of races and is relatively easy to implement and for players to understand.

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19

Can you tell us how common will the non-oxy races be comparatively? You do planet generation first, then test it for suitability for life right? Are the atmospheres entirely random?

It’ll be very interesting to have races with completely different ideas about what’s desirable for colonization that’s for sure.

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20

At the the moment, I estimate less common than oxygen races individually but maybe about the same collectively. However, there are a lot of factors involved so I will have a better idea once I run some tests.

Based on my initial checks I removed Hydrogen Sulphide as it wouldn’t have qualified once over my last two campaigns.

The code is broken all over the place at the moment because this affects a LOT of areas, so I won’t know until its running again. It’s not just the checks for potentially creating races, but getting the AI to choose new colony sites, terraform correctly and assess planetary/system value. Each new breathable gas type has a different set of dangerous gases and different hydrosphere considerations vs oxygen-breathers.

Even the code to explain why different atmospheric gases won’t be breathable due to a variety of conditions when using ‘Create Race’ on the System View was a decent amount of work :slight_smile:

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