Feature: Engine: Terraforming

You make good points. The whole thing will indeed have to be measured up against CPU use. They have said they will have the ability to move planets however, it will be interesting to see how they pull that off in terms of temperature increase.

I think that if it's inserted in some kind of minimal way it would be really cool.
A few dedicated buildings maybe that rip apart continental plates to cause a huge mountain formation or crack in the earth at the enemy base (you'd place one left, one right, and then hilarity ensues), and for the rest big explosions and asteroids. undergound nuke that leaves an inaccessible crater? yes please.

^ ^ What he said :!:

To sum up this thread:

Terraforming is very important, but it should be very, very expensive for balance purposes.

It should be somewhere between the terraforming allowed in Spore (destroying entire planets by turning them into searing balls of superheated heavy metals)...

...and the basic geometric terraforming which was added by a mod to SupCom, where you can just raise and lower pieces of land with engineers.

What about throwing mass into a larger planet to upset the gravitational balance of a galaxy? That is certainly terraforming on a global scale. Imagine the effect of our planetary alignment if Mar's or Venus' mass were increased 200 fold. Could we dump the asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter onto Mars? That might make things interesting here on planet earth.

Could we terraform the Death Star? It would look nice with topiary in the trenches.

I'm going to vote for an indirect yes. I have no problem with a planet being changed via a massive asteroid getting flung into it.

However, the scope and scale of this planned terraforming is, in a word, useless to the gameplay.

For the simple sake of gameplay, terraforming would need to be difficult. Otherwise terraforming becomes the norm and over-shadows the massive army v. army combat that PA is attempting to produce. Even then though, terraforming's utility is near zero. So you take a lava planet, and cool it down to make it easier to harvest resources from the surface. Then what is the point of the lava planet? I thought the point of the game was that a lava planet would present unique challenges to fighting across its surface, not a unique resource sink to be rendered a non-challenge in the game.

However, the question of terraforming also bring in a serious question of time and money in regards to the project. Look at what the stretch goals have been so far. Terraforming would need its very own stretch goal if they wanted to implement it in the way it has been talked about in this thread. I would also then point out that terraforming isn't exactly the most exciting thing in the world. I just don't see it being the sort of must-have, can't live without it feature that would have people throwing their money at Uber. I just don't see it being as exciting as a galactic war, or powering up a death-star.

This kind of terraforming works wonders for a turn based strategy. As much as I want to back the idea up its not that kind of game to me. Indirectly via asteroids and the such has to be so I mean I want a crater to be where their base was... Maybe watch it fill up with lava and burn anything that might have survived "might", more explosions bigger crater win win.

Now for a simplistic, I'm gonna go the route of the Matrix and say a building that emits dark gases to clog the atmosphere thus blocking the sun wouldn't be that complex unrealistic nor far off from working. Would terminate all player solar panels on the world so long as the building remains active? or perhaps a counter building was produced?

Building that tractor beamed nearby asteroids? can't control where they fall it just starts pulling them in, random chaos for the sake of chaos? I'll build a few > for the sake of making that ocean for your big battleship of course ;P

I realy hate the way people are intent on taking away combat aspects of this game and adding in features I'd more likely find in Simcity or Civilization.

At this stage of development this is all brainstorming at best. Most anything goes.
Let people talk and trust Uber to pick out the few diamonds of ideas and ignore the coal.
No point getting bent out of shape over it.

This

Agree. Please no terraforming.

I'd rather they spent the money on diverse factions or something.

I think the terraforming should be added but only in large scale. No fancy machines to do that but big good ol' rocks. Hitting water planet with an asteroid would turn it into lava planet. However, it would turn into a rock planet quite soon, cause all the water that was vaporised took away some of the energy that the asteroid created, hence cooling the planet. Mostly ground based planet would stay as a lava planet.

voted yes, realised you ment terraforming, and not terrain deformation, and changed my vote.

you are fighting with armies of self replicating robots, who cares if they are on venus or pluto? they wont have a problem with either!