That would probably be part of the not yet well defined Subterranean Biome group.
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How would things like termite mounds be classified? They have a different environment in the inner chambers, so perhaps some sort of a subbiome?
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I am not sure. I would think for most organisms, Subterranean is more for species who spend generations under ground without seeing the sun, as opposed to burrowers who go back and forth daily. But while some termites would venture forth to find food, others might never leave their nest, so, good question.
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Perhaps it could be divided caste by caste of such an eusocial organism? So for instance caste a is terrestrial while caste b is entirely subterranean.
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That’s an interesting suggestion. I wonder if it can actually be programmed to work that way.
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Pretty sure The Sapling did something like that sometime ago in the latest update…
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So here is a question. Assuming that at some (likely distant) point in the future, planets with non-water oceans are implemented, would they have distinctly different Biomes or just a different list of latitudes and altitudes the non-water substance evaporates and perspires at? Would they still have similar Biome defining plants to an earth-like planet, or evolve completely different categories of Biome defining plants?
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Wouldn’t non-water oceans mean we’d need to have non-carbon-based life before that is viable? So basically it doesn’t need to be considered at all as the proponents of silicon-based life haven’t managed to get that accepted into the game.
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That could be left for post-full-release development… and likely a later portion of it.
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Why wouldn’t carbon based life be viable?
Well I didn’t expect it to be soon, but I would think the (Galactic/Mid-Late Space/Approved Theoretical Science Fiction) Stage would have life forms from non-earth-like planets.
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So like science fiction which doesn’t require new and unseen things like exotic matter and such?
I meant whatever is the dev’s consider plausible enough to include in the mid-late space/galactic stage. Things that seem theoretically probable despite not being definitively proven/accomplished yet by earthlings.
It’s was made clear that they wanted to concentrate on an earth-like planet for now, and this makes perfect sense, but it was my understanding that EVENTUALLY when earth-like was finished in the late-late but not quite finished yet game they would expand.
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Well as hhyyrylainen said, life on planets with no water is not really planned
I do wonder if you could encounter a planet where life arose in water and colonized the land but sometime after that the major water bodies evaporated…
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There wiki list sulfur planets and chlorine planets.
They should really update their wiki.
Edit: Also
What are you basing this on? You always ask other people to link scientific references for things they post. What is your reference for this?
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From the “planet” page on developer wiki it would seems like moons count as planets in this case of categorization.
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But does it say those can have life? A really important part to note is that the planet editor is a space stage concept so meaning that if we didn’t add that, then players would ask why you can modify a planet to have oxygen atmosphere but not ruin it with sulfur? So I think that’s why it is listed there.
I’m just saying we are doing the game primarily with an eye on LAWK. So any deviation from what happened on Earth must be backed up with scientific results saying why an alternative could have happened.
And I’ll clarify that I’m not really aware of any plans for us to have to make all kinds of science fiction variants of planets that could exist. I’m not saying it’s not possible for someone on the team or an open source contributor to add that, but it is like not in the primary plans. So it will be skipped unless someone who really wants to do it, does it. People already complain about adding just 2 science fiction things: FTL and ascension, which I’ve determined to be the minimum set we need to complete the vision of the game. So for anything else I’d say you need to go and fight the anti-scifi faction first before bothering me.
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How far should a player be able to go when editing a planet? Would they be able of making a world with no land?
If not, I can guess in space stage you should still be able to find water-planets (for instance) with auto-evo ecosystems on them even tho you couldn’t make your own planet alike to that one.
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Like I said, the planet editor is a space stage concept, not one you get to play with before starting a new game. So it doesn’t really matter. And whatever limits we put in are going to be gated by available technology or ascension after which anything (that’s technically feasible in the game systems) can be done to any planet.
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Alright, lets move to more “plausible” topics then.
So in Progress Update 10/12/2024, Small Planets, Super Earths, Gas Giants, and Tidally Locked planets are suggested. One problem with the Holdridge system, it’ s not only based on Earth temperatures, it’s based on Earth size, including longitudes. So:
Would bigger or smaller planets have the same biomes over larger or smaller areas, or would they have more or less biomes. In other words, would a planet 2/3rds the size of earth still have both tropical zones and polar zones, and if not, which side is more likely to be effected by the smaller size? Would a Super Earth have additional zones in between their northern and southern Tropical zones, or beyond their polar zones?
What about a Gas Giant? What sort of biomes what that have? Would they even have enough sunlight to support photosynthesis? Would they be better suited to the theoretical Floating Plants?
And what about Tidally Locked planets? How might their biomes be different?
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“Small Planets” probably wouldn’t be small enough to make major differences to “Regular-sized” Planets since even if a planet is 2/3 the size if Earth it would most likely get mars’d.
As for gas giants, there’s no way for a player to reach space stage from them so don’t expect those to be treated like Terran planets.
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