Let’s delve into a bit more detail with planets and how to manage them. If you’ve played Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion with its DLCs, this won’t seem too different on the surface, but the devil’s in the details.
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Note that the values indicated may/will change during development. |
Gravity Well Types
In the first Technical Preview build you may see the following gravity well types (note that we’ll switch between planet and gravity well but are referring to the same thing):
Terran
Desert
Ice
Volcanic
Ferrous
Oceanic
Gas Giant
Asteroid
Moon
Pirate Base
Star
Terran
Players begin on a terran Terran planet as their homeworld. These are lush worlds full of planet plant and animal life and feature large populations. Terran planets also feature both metal and crystal resource types, which makes them very versatile.
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Desert worlds are arid and fairly inhospitable due to the lack of water resources. Due to the scarcity of water, populations tend to center around an oasis with additional water pulled out of the atmosphere via moisture collectors or from ice asteroids. Desert planets can contain both metal and crystal resources, plus allow for more orbital facilities, but they are best known for lucrative excavations.
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What desert planets lack in liquid water, ice worlds make up for in solid form. Ice planets feature rich crystal resources, making them extremely valuable for empires to obtain. Colonization of these planets requires specialized research and the initial investment required for them to break even is quite high.
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These hot, hostile worlds are rich in metal ores, but little else. Special research is required to allow settlers to control volcanic planets since their surfaces are several thousand degrees with molten lava coursing over them.
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Ferrous planets are thought to have come about either when a volcanic world finally solidifies, or when a gas giant’s atmosphere is ripped away by some event. Whatever their origin, they are extremely rich in metal, but lack any kind of surface life. What’s more is that they rarely have any kind of atmosphere, so special research is needed to facilitate colonization.
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Moons are small bodies that orbit other gravity wells (which is to say that a moon may orbit a planet or a pirate base, etc.). These create interesting phase lane choke points since outside lanes will typically connect to the moon before its parent world.
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