Alien planets? We don't want earths anywhere!

One thing that I've noticed is that main planets, except from lava and metal planets, carry only earth-like biomes: forests, plains, ice biomes and so on.
What I'd like to see is something like the planetary editor in spore: galactic adventures



I know that the Spore editor is a bit too much detailed, but just by adding a planetary viewing mode in the system editor and sliders that control temperature, water level, metal percentage and atmosphere density and height we could reach some interesting results.

water level: wonder what that controls...
temperature: controls the frequency of geysers explosions if enabled, and when reaching max levels all the water turns to lava
atmosphere: decides if vegetation can be present, increases or decreases the spread of craters and the hit, if enabled of meteor strikes
metal percentage: controls the spread of metal spots and if it reaches critical levels the planet turns to a metal planet

There could be also some colour palettes included. To dye the biomes, water and atmosphere... The example biome above has red atmosphere, blue water, green terrain and yellow sand.
To add some automation to this we could balance the sliders according to these values:
1 = distance from the sun controls temperature
2 = dimension of the planet controls atmosphere height and thickness (fog maybe?)
3 = water level also partially controlled by distance from the sun, but also partially random
4 = metal and colours random?



With this technique we could obtain an earth-like planet every 50 or so planets? We like them anyways, but every single one? No, please, no...


This is how it is basically divided between the factors, I hope that my effort is going to be appreciated and my idea is going to be comprehensible...

~evolve

I want to vote yes but at the same time I don't want the devs to do so much in so little time. I'm sure the spore system is just codeing with different variables. But that takes a Bit of art assets And rendering that needs to be optimized. It would be cool to see this as a mod that is added later but not as a requirement.

I will agree seeing clouds and alien trees would be great developments.

Looks awesome man, nice pics! I'd like to see this too if its not too much work (I don't know what it takes to do this stuff.)

I want to see more of the cliffs and mountains that were on the kickstarter video too

This could be as simple as having recolored variations on the current Terran textures, and making a few alternate tree models. No need for any huge effort.

On the same topic, it would be nice to have some visual variation on the other world types. For instance, we could have Io-volcanic in addition to the current lava planets, have some variation in the Moon colors, have Callisto-style ice-planets, etc.

By Terran, do you mean Tropical/Earth/Desert? Ice worlds are fine, but I'd like to see color and plant type variations in those planets. Weird alien trees for splashes of distinguishable color - like red fungus-ferns, or standard palm trees, or whatever, as assorted options for Tropical.

like this?
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-color-adjustments-mod-ca-mod.48619/
and this?
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-christmas-trees.50033/
and this?
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/rel-alien-planet-mod-v-1-0.49247/

I remember playing on acid and crystal planets in TA, good times. In reality, I think this should be DLC, it won't make release.

Certainly is a neat idea.

However new biomes is more work for Uber. I'd rather they stick to the planet types they had in the Kickstarter and add stuff like that after launch. Either that or we can use mods to alter the look of the planet – which as tatsujb brought up, there are some mods like that.

in the system editor now this is what these slider control.

1. SEED, the starting patteren for the random brush/biome and height deformation of the shprere
2. Raduis, A planets size (350 and below can be moved by halleys, 1200+ radius is epically huge/enormous)
3. Height Range, the roughness of the sphere deformation.
4. Biome scale, is meant to adjust biome scaling (how big each section of biome will be, but its broken at moment)
5. Water Height, The height at which the water layer is added to the sphere.
6. Temprature, This changes what biome appear.
7. metal density/cluster, will change the metal spot layout and clustering.

how it works,

Biomes are affected by a few things on the earth and tropical planets.
1, sand is always next to and under water layer, unless temp is below 20 then its mostly ice around water
2, if there is no water a planet dry's out and is has cracks and frozen mountains.
3, grass and forest biomes appear the most when temp is around 40+ and water is between 29 - 60
4, Height Range, this at 0 and a planet will be smooth, at 100 the planet is very bumpy. (high numbers here plus water at 40-60 on a radius 500+ planet and temp +70 makes awesome islands)


If the dev's get time we might get a slider for atmosphere color
And maybe one for color shifting the textures too.
If not i will release them as a MOD.
Here's my thread in this topic.
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/alien-and-utopian-colored-biomes.52147/

This! We can wait for it after release.

Yeah. Call it the Legionis Contingency or something.

Voted yes, I'm really supprised this isn't talked about more actually, there is definitely a WHOLE lot you can do with planet creations, and dont think we'll get these types of alien planets anytime soon, as their still working on all the planets they have currently in the game right now anyway. What might be possible though, is to add our own customized planet types like more along the lines of alien worlds via the modding community, there is already a planet generator which combines several different biomes together on one planet, and something simular could be possible for alien worlds. Who knows, eventually Uber might have a few more options available to us with the system editor so we can making all sorts of worlds, changing colours of the oceans or changing colours of the desert biomes and trees to give it that alien look. I think height range should control more on how tall trees are and how tall the canyons ect.. are and shouldn't be tied to any other sliders like the water height to give us more control of how the planet looks.

if only planetary annihilation enabled everything you can do in that video, that would be absolutely awesome haha... thats just amazing how much you can change those planets on that game, i had forgotten how much customization was on them but yes, customizing the colours like that would be sweet

Even having them cliffs and mountains and nice ridges would be awesome in PA, like from the kickstarter vid, it would add so much to strategy and planning! I love them clouds too, do want!! Alien worlds and weird environments weird and wonderful would be nice.

And something that hasn't been talked about at all (that I know of) is the background stars and system, when looking out from a planet, everything is static yno like all them little stars n stuff, it looks horribly gradey and standard, like a cardboard cutout. Im hoping that gets a decent makeover, something that at least moves.

And then maybe the atmosphere line could be blended in instead of having a defined step.

What about planetary icons when zooming out of the map? something like this...
This would come in handy when you play galactic warfare or some similar gamemode...

1: Is showing that both blue and red are owning 50% of the structures
2: Is showing that yellow has 50% of the structures, while green has 20% and red 30%
3: Is showing that on the planet blue is going to win...