New map of planet - another planet in AC system

[Mart]

Welcome everyone!
The idea is as follows:
Chiron is not the only habitable planet in Alpha Centauri system. there is Eurytion, that is compared to Mercury in solar system, but we are not interested in it at the moment. Chiron orbit is close in distance from its star to that of Earth. As mentioned in the manual, the habitable zone for Alpha Centauri A is somewhere just behind Mars orbit distance. So let us make that - there is a planet more distant from the star than Chiron. We will need to create it with much information. Here is the plan (it may be modified later):

- Basic info, something like about any planet in our system or Chiron info in the manual of SMAC.
- Additional info, there is many factors here:
-- atmospheric composition
-- meteorology and climatology
-- oceanography
-- soil composition
-- ecology
-- native life - xenofungus
-- native life - mindworms
-- native life - other life
-- moons
- What name shall we give to it?
- In game parameters (as general rule, since we modify the map, as we need):
-- ocean coverage
-- erosive forces
-- native life (intensity)
-- cloud coverage
- Other factors, that we think important, e.g.:
-- water available in aquifers, many rivers or not (connected maybe to temperatures)
-- active volcanoes, many or few
-- other ??
- Continents, pangaea, two, three or more, how many islands, etc.
- Resources, many or few. Maybe many of some type and few of other type, etc.

We start from making huge map (64x128) for SMAX, and maybe with Yitzi additional info enabled. Any comments, proposals for items in the list...

[Buster's Uncle]

Would this not call for a new terrain texture?  That can be arranged.

[Mart]

This would need replacing original texture files, and I'm not sure it is a good idea, or am I wrong, we do not need that and we can have multiple textures?
Unless we make the map using another texture file permanently, but can we do it? Any scenario creation could overwrite this. If a game is launched from main folder, we need to use default textures.
--------

Well, actually, I have an idea, how to do it, even if we are stuck on problem of default files. I'm working on iniswap next version, and I have another idea, that could be next.

[Buster's Uncle]

The game will normally use whatever's named texture.pcx in the root folder.

Here's an Earth texture I did last year for you to play with...

[Green1]

If they do come up with an official Alpha Centauri 2, I could see random planets - each with a different story. Think of the replay value.

Either that or true interplanetary/ planet-moon type stuff like out of a Hieinlen novel.

[Pickly]

Are you just looking for ideas that we make up, or more ideas of the sort of planet this could be from the background information?


If you are willing to tolerate some self promotion, I actually have been writing a bunch of planet ideas in a blog.  The linked ideas may give you some ideas if you are just making stuff up, although would not be usable directly.

http://picklyworldbuilder.blogspot.com/2012/07/cryolith.html

http://picklyworldbuilder.blogspot.com/2012/07/phobis-terra.html

*These are not written for Alpha Centauri, but a combination of ideas for a theoretical future game mod (Depending on what Civ games get released, and how much time I have), and just for the joy of making up environments (I've been reading a lot of planetary science books recently)  There are a few other ideas, but these two ar probably the closest fits to the sorts of environments that would make sense.

[Mart]

Are you just looking for ideas that we make up, or more ideas of the sort of planet this could be from the background information? ...

We would have our own ideas, and that would be good if we make new interesting stuff, but I imagine, that we need to keep some constant game features:
- there is native life on the planet, like fungus, mindworms and all other.
- there are monoliths, progenitor stuff like manifold nexus and other.

For sure, I would like to add interesting features, like mountain ranges of volcanoes, marshes, fungal barriers - something what Googlie proposed in his scenario creation article. Other kind of ruins, some natural landmarks - what our imagination can allow.

These planet ideas are very good for the base of our generation. 
I thought about new planet maybe of size between Earth and Chiron. Temperature... it should be cold, since as I wrote, the planet would be on the outside boundary of habitable zone of the star, but we can design some greenhouse effect for it.

[ete]

Personally I'd encourage all major starting landmasses to be linked, since for single player games AI is utterly incompetent at launching overseas invasions, while they have occasionally caught me off guard when there's plenty of land bridges and I've skimped on defense. Enough well linked up sea to make exploring that interesting would be nice though.

And maybe include some of the new landmarks found at the bottom of this page: http://alphacentauri.us/maps_here.html

Also, will you be making it Yitzi compatible?

[Green1]

Be aware if you start spending too much time on TCMs.

Not being a negative nate, but TCMs historically do not get the interest or following tweaks and modular play mods get.

However, I could see where an improvement over the random map generator could potentially take off. Particulary if it can be made easy to use and plays well with the widespread upatches out there.

[Mart]

Modification for Yitzi patch would not render the map unusable for vanila game exe. The thing is, there are unset flags in maps made by official exe files. So Yitzi patched exe has problem, while official exe should ignore these values.

What is TCM?

[sisko]

What is TCM?

Total Conversion Mod

[Mart]

This table may help with the first parameters. I started to fill it up. I thought about a planet more like Earth, so some parameters would be between Earth and Chiron.
=====
* Edit: added parameters from posts below.

Planetary constants	-- Units --	-- Earth --	-- Planet (Chiron) --	-- P/E Ratio --	-- New Planet --
Mass	(kg)	0.598E+025	1.10E+025	1.84	-
Equat. radius	(km)	6380	7540	1.18	7100
Dist. from star	(km)	1.50E+008	1.60E+008	1.07	2.30E+08
Axial tilt	(degrees)	23.45	2	0.09	7
Surface area	(km2)	5.10E+08	7.18E+08	1.41	6.33E+08
Standard gravity	(m/s2)	9.81	12.85	1.31	-
Escape velocity	(m/s)	11184	13947	1.25	-
Density	(kg/m3)	5519	6150	1.11	5731
Size of sun	(degrees)	0.27	0.27	1.02	-
Year	(Earth days)	365	389	1.06	8029
Year	(Planet days)	500	532	1.06	7137
Day	(hours)	24	17.53	0.73	27
Mountain height	(m)	10626	8112	0.76	-
Horizon distance	(m)	5051	5493	1.09	-
Ocean tide (sun)	(m)	0.12	0.12	0.94	-
Ocean tide (Nessus)	(m)	0.27	0.18	0.67	-
Ocean tide (Pholus)	(m)	0.11
Ocean tide (all)	(m)	0.39	0.41	1.05	-

Atmosphere

Planetary constants	-- Units --	-- Earth --	-- Planet (Chiron) --	-- P/E Ratio --	-- New Planet --
Total pressure	(Pa)	101325	176020	1.74	-
Nitrogen	(Pa)	79125	160000	2.02	-
Oxygen	(Pa)	21228	15000	0.71	-
Argon	(Pa)	942	1000	1.06	-
Carbon dioxide	(Pa)	30	20	0.67	-
Nitrogen	(%)	78.09	90.9	1.16	-
Oxygen	(%)	20.95	8.52	0.41	-
Argon	(%)	0.93	0.57	0.61	-
Carbon dioxide	(%)	0.03	0.01	0.4	-
Surface density	(kg/m3)	1.22	2.06	1.68	-
“Flammability”	(mmol K/J)	7.17	2.87	0.4	-
Effective temp.	(K)	253	261	1.03	-
Greenhouse effect	(K)	36	32	0.9	-
Surface temp.	(K)	288	293	1.01	288
Surface temp.	(°C)	15.4	19.7	1.28	15.1
Solar constant	(W/m2)	1383	1750	1.27	-

[gwillybj]

Surface area would be 6.33E+08.
Year would be 7137 newplanet days (8029 Earthdays) if orbital velocity same as Chiron.
Horizon distance can be known if you know the formula (I don't).

[Geo]

Surface area would be 6.33E+08.
Year would be 7137 newplanet days (8029 Earthdays) if orbital velocity same as Chiron.
Horizon distance can be known if you know the formula (I don't).

Orbital velocity decreases the further you go out from the main mass of a solar system (in this case, Alpha Centauri A).

[Green1]

Now what would be really cool is if with certain techs you could have colonies on multiple planets/ moons in the same game. Particularly if the planet set up was random each time.

Sadly, no game has ever delved into interplanetary stuff. Or.. even planet/moon/orbital warfare stuff for that matter.