Find User here you can look for a user

Some questions and suggestions about future terraforming dynamics

6y
#1
I'm just wondering if there will be any new and interesting terraforming dynamics to MC coming up.

I know that the main terraforming factor that we use now is atmosphere, and that affects what we can build and even how colonists feel, but once each planet's atmosphere gets over 5 mil, the planet stays in an earth-like state, no matter how much atmosphere it has, which is unrealistic. Will you eventually make it so that the planet changes for the worse if atmosphere grows too much, perhaps even turning into a lava world?

Also, I was wondering about the other factors of terraforming. Atmosphere is an important factor to terraforming, and I know that when you first built MC, your intent was focused on red planet since that was the first planet that you made, but you can make other world types with new and interesting challenges if you were to add thermal level and sea level planetary stats to the game and have each planet change according to those levels. For instance, a dessert world would have a very low sea level, and the challenge would be to reduce heat and increase sea level. Or on red planet even, you could add additional challenge by making it so that the player needs to add heat as well as atmo, since mars is cold and has almost no atmo. Or on an ocean planet, the player could start on a small piece of land surrounded by water and work towards reducing the sea level and revealing more land. As you can see, several more planet types would be apropriate to add if these features were added, and it would not only prove a challenge but would make the game more alluring to terraformation fanatics like myself. When you only have the pressure statistic, you are cutting out planets that could be added that don't have atmosphere as their main issue. For instance, a dessert planet wouldn't make sense to add and terraform because we have desserts on earth now that have the appropriate amount of atmosphere but lack moisture. And an ocean planet would have the right atmo level but too much moisture.

It would take a lot of work, but if you were to make it so that each planet could dynamically change when exposed to different levels of pressure, heat, and water, it would drastically increase the value of the game and it would pay off big time. It would take a lot of work to develop all of the ground textures for each planet, but once you do that for all of the planets that you have so far, you will have less work to do when you add each individual planet in the future.

A good example of what it takes to terraform a planet in real life is a mobile game that is based off of terraforming, called terragenesis. You choose a certain planet and start off small and work your way up through researching new techs, increasing your income, and terraforming the planet. Each planet has it's own issues that you have to overcome. Eventually, you get the planet to the point where it can support life, but to get there, it's a long and complicated road with many challenges.

When I first started playing the game, I was hooked becuase of the level of detail the developer put into the terraforming elements of the game, but I got bored eventually because while it excels in it's terraforming elements and dynamic planetary effects, it's not a city building game, and it's not a very interactive game. MC just so happens to be a city building game that is very interactive, and it also has great potential in the terraforming and planetary dynamics area, even though it's not quite there yet. I really would like to see a game the excels in both the terraforming and dynamics side of things and the city building and interactive side of things, and I'm hoping that MC will eventually be this game because I think that MC is an awesome game. I'm not saying to copy his ideas, that would be a very very bad idea, and wouldn't be ethical, but use it as a source of inspiration in your quest to make MC reach it's potential, if you can. I'm not mentioning the game for the sake of advertising it, it's just a suggestion.

But yeah, that's just my take on things. Hope my suggestions help, and hope to see MC reach it's true potential.
My Colony





Welcome
Ape Apps, LLC is an independent software development company founded in 2010 by Brandon Stecklein. Over the years, Ape Apps has published over 400 apps and games across various platforms. You can get in touch with Brandon on Twitter or by leaving a post on his wall @bastecklein
App of the Day