Ape Apps

Planet Type: Shadow

Orbits around: black hole

day/night cycle: eternal night, but darker, solar energy non-existent.

Atmosphere: 2.5 million

Solid terrain features: a dark, almost featureless surface, very disorienting to look at.

Liquid terrain: Black water - a mixture of water and dark matter. Non-trade-able. Can be used as a crude heat source, but not for drinking. It tends to heat up quickly when in motion as dark matter tends to create pure energy when it's particles collide.

surface resources: gold, uranium, aluminum, glowing purple crystalline, ice

surface plant-life: luminous trees that provide small amount of light and lumber

Planet specific resource: Dark matter - a very powerful energy source once it is separated from black water. It's every civ's final energy source and can be used to power a large fraction of a region, but is very costly and would be very difficult to keep in stock. Dark matter is also healing to insectoids. They soak it up like a sponge and can gain powerful abilities from it, such as higher intelligence and more control over antaura.

Other features: This planet is darker than regular night, with barely any ambient light coming from the black hole's accretion disk. The player must rely on lights to be able to see their colony in order to manage it.

Races to inhabit this planet: Insectoids only.

Progression:

- a portable altar is built from crystalline. It provides only one job.
- water from ice patches is sacrificed on the altar(s) to produce a small amount of antuara.
- A black bug collects black water from black water bodies.
- An enlightenment chamber uses antaura to purify the water to render it drinkable, but the dark matter is absorbed by the insectoids, raising their IQ's, so it vanishes.
- crystalline is used to dig for ore.
- ore is used to make black water furnaces. A black water furnace mixes black water to create heat. That heat is in turn used to melt crystalline into sugar.
- subterranean sugar farms are built that automate sugar using water, requiring more enlightenment chambers and portable altars.
- After the player starts to build mining projects, then they are back on the regular insectoid's tech path, although they won't have another source of drinking water until they start to mass produce antaura, as black water is in the ground as well, so no wet mounds or cones. For mid game, another building called the dark altar can be used to separate black water into pure water and dark matter, although not all of the dark matter is preserved. The amount of water that is produced is much more than the enlightenment chamber.
- The player now has a small supply of dark matter. They can either chose to sell it, or they can use it in a couple of different ways. It can be used in new medical buildings as it is healing to insectoids, it could also be used for new research buildings that would study the strange material, or maybe it could have some entertainment and tourism uses.
- In later game, a shadow temple would be used to mass produce dark matter and water while consuming tons of antaura.
- Finally, a building called a spire of darkness would be the insectoid's best source of power. Except on this planet, they have an unlimited amount of dark matter. For other colonies, getting this level of power will come at a cost.

Other info:

I was thinking that since this planet would be darker than night, insectoids needs some new lighting. The insectoid glow lights are cool, but perhaps they could do with some better ones. Perhaps crystalline or ether could be used to make good lights. I'm suggesting a new crystalline steet lamp that could come in three different colors: blue(to fit in with ice world) red(for lava world), and purple(for shadow world)

Oo this is interesting.
The atmosphere though I would probably set to zero since its by a black hole?
Could allow for interesting resource management for keeping the atmosphere thats constantly being drained off.
Could also be a good reason to add more Terra forming buildings.

That's a good idea. The planet will always be dark, but could be a challenge to produce more atmosphere than is lost. Insectoids don't have many terraforming buildings, but like you said, this could encourage some to be introduced.

I've been thinking, since this is a dark world, I'm getting kind of a "pitch black" vibe. If you haven't seen the movie, it's about people who crashland on a planet that has a very long eclipse, except that eclipse comes from a gas giant. When the lights go out, the creepy crawlies come out too, and they are hungry. So it's best to stay in the light if you value your life.

Using this, I'm not suggesting having colonists die to the darkness. But I am suggesting that lights be another vital utility on this map. I'm suggesting that each residential build should have another property, sanity. when Sanity goes down, happiness goes down with it, but the two aren't evenly proportional, as you can have happy but insane people just as you can have angry sane people. But sanity will not only affect happiness, an insane person would be unable to work, and would loose health and happiness for every day that they are insane. Only certain things would affect sanity, light being one of those things, entertainment being another major factor, and Sanitariums being the last major element. Things like power outages and food/water shortages, or disease could also be minor factors.

So here is the meat of my idea for this planet: Light is vital for sanity, all buildings have to be within the radius of a light to contribute to the gain/maintaining of sanity. For every day that passes, buildings that aren't within the radius of a lamp loose sanity, and the average sanity of your colony goes down. The less the sanity, the less people can work, and the less healthy and happy your colony becomes. So in a way, the darkness would indirectly end up being the death of your colony.