I’m interested how terrain types will be handled for these new types of worlds - presumably a body capable of hosting native NPR life will have some kind of ecosystem, so what would be the equivalent of forest or steppe be on a viable methane or ammonia atmosphered world?
I’m already midway through adding new terrain types to cover the new conditions.
Here are some examples:
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Not sure what the “benefit” of the new terrain are going to be. If one can’t breathe atmo, then one is in a suit, and there is no difference to being in vacuum or being in ammonia, methane, etc on the combat capabilities.
The rest is really all just fluff: a Mountain is a mountain, a Forest is a forest, a Badlands are badlands, Rift Valleys are rift valleys. It doesn’t matter if one puts an additional qualifier in front of them if in a suit.
Vacuum, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, No G, Low G, High G are all valid environmental factors for suits (and depending on exact combo, may be deadly without). But for Fortification and Combat values, there really doesn’t need to be more micro then there already is the difference between a Martian Desert and a Terran Desert as far as actual terrain is basically what kind of sand are we talking about, the difficulties of traversing them are the same mechanically.
The benefit of the new terrain is that it’s really cool to see some truly alien planets. It is largely about immersion and world-building. It’s good for roleplay reasons and imagining the universe that the game simulates. Not everything needs to be a game changing mechanic. Sometimes the ‘fluff’ is what makes a campaign memorable.
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Guess my point is, terrain is terrain, and RP stuff “fluff” is better for the player to come up with/interpret than to have hard coded, IMO.
What is the functional difference between the terrain types, that is simply what they should be labeled. Then if the player wants to call them Mountains, Ice Mountains, Crystal Mountains, Nitrogen Salt Mountains or whatever they can, but the actual mechanical impact is the same.
If we are talking about having to have “terrain training” aka a mechanical impact for every conceivable mix of adjectives for terrain, well, that’s asinine in my opinion.
The extra terrain types extend the existing list rather than duplicating. Many of them are for frozen or very cold worlds that would previously have just been barren, plus a few for hot worlds. Most also require the presence of specific atmospheric or frozen gases, which was not previously a requirement.
For example, Nitrogen Ice Fields requires the presence of frozen nitrogen, which means temperatures below -210C. Ammonia Salt Flats requires ammonia to be present in the atmosphere and are from -78C to -33C. They are also classed as desert worlds for combat purposes.
Sulphur Ice Mountains cover a range from absolute zero to -72C and require Sulphur Dioxide to be frozen on the surface, while Lava Fields are only for worlds with extreme tectonics and have a 0.5 fortification modifier, making them difficult to defend.
The Methane, Ammonia and Sulphur races will often inhabit cold or waterless worlds. As hydrosphere is not a requirement for the new types (replaced by the atmosphere requirements), they provide the new species types with a variety of terrain types for worlds that would otherwise be generally barren.
There are 25 new types, taking the total number of terrain types to 67.
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I imagine this is very far down the list at the moment but will the new terrain types for non-oxygen species also come with new terrain specialization capabilities as well?
Do you mean for ground combat?
The races that have these environments as habitable worlds won’t need specialised capabilities beyond perhaps mountain and desert. I think one is also classed as ‘jungle’. The oxygen-breathing races will still be able to use their current capabilities such as extreme temperature, etc., while the new races will need those capabilities for worlds we think of as habitable.
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I agree with you.
From a role playing point of view, I like the idea of meeting aliens living in some of the different environments that science has discovered so far. It could generate a more “living universe” in the game, if we allow the game to do it.
Steve, will there be some options in the game set-up that fix the starting number of non-Oxygen NPRs, or the probability of being a non-Ox race when generating a NPR, or the relative percentage of Ox vs. non-Ox races, or the probability of generating one of them in a newly discovered system?
Currently (in v2.7.1) when you specify a number of NPRs at game start, for each one the program generates and discards systems until it identifies a suitable home world. The same will happen for v3.0, except that a wider range of potential home worlds is now available.
The systems that are randomly generated will determine what type of species is created, although I could add some sort of limit for each type at game start though. During the game, the usual chance of creating NPRs will be used, although more worlds will be available.
The Create Race button on the System View now checks all possible breathable gases and other conditions when you choose a world to generate a new race. It will inform you if any conditions prevent a particular potential breathable gas that is present on the body from being suitable for a new race. The breathable gases are mutually exclusive, so the user can choose the species type by selecting an appropriate body.
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What will the SM “Create Habitable” button do?
It looks for a habitable system with the same breathable gas as the species currently selected on the system view window.
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Because of how abstract Aurora is in representation, it’s often up to the player to imagine what kinds of things are going on on a given planet in terms of biome. In game, iirc there’s not much functional difference between most of the terrain types we’ve already got (everything is some flavor of mountain, rift, desert or jungle).
The ‘cosmetic’ terrain types help fuel the imagination.
I distinctly recall my first proper aurora campaign, fighting an NPR in their own home system and their homeworld was an earth-sized world orbited by another, similarly sized Venusian planet, the diameters of the planets being such that they would basically be sharing an atmosphere
Having exotic alien terrain types can help account for some of these extreme conditions, and provide a starting point for us to imagine what goes on on such a planet
Since not every species will need a hydrosphere does this also mean that the hydrosphere requirement can be configured for those that do as well?
Similar to how we can modify the gravity and temperature tolerance ranges.
As oxygen still has the hydro requirements and the other breathable gases don’t have any, nothing really changes from a species creation perspective, apart from adding the breathable gas option.
I may change allow hydrosphere modifiers as well, but I will tackle that once all this is working correctly.
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Hydrosphere modifiers would be great that’s what I was hinting towards.
It’s mentioned above with respect to colony cost - I think an alternative to the aquatic species idea would be to invert the carrying capacity vs hydrosphere capacity relationship for those species. (of course this is not mutually exclusive with allowing each species to have its own ideal water %)
The main issue I see with it would be how the carrying capacity is tallied when a world has a mix of aquatic and non-aquatic species living together.
Esp interesting because, unteathered from hydrosphere, the “biome” of these planets would be things we don’t have word for. “Gunge”, 'Mountainous Gunge".
I think you should create accompanying biospheres, even if far simpler: crystalline forests and sulphorous bog for the sulfur breathers, and ammonia snowscape and a few other ones for the ammonia an dmethane breathers
See this post:
oh cool, some of those look like lovely places for a ski lodge
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oh cool, some of those look like lovely places for a ski lodge
Catch me and the boys skiing down the Sulfur Ice Mountains