Terraforming

What is Terraforming?

Terraforming is the process of converting a barren, uninhabitable planet into a world that life can arise on. Most planets, other than earth, are hostile to life on their surface (though subsurface remains a possibility) either because it is too hot, too cold, too much radiation, too little atmosphere, too dense of an atmosphere no water (or other solvent) and in some cases simply because of hurricane winds. A habitable world such as our own is a perfect balance of all of the above, enough of atmosphere to keep our planet warm but not too much to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, warm enough to have liquid water but not so warm to cause it to evaporate and so on. Teraforming takes into consideration all these different planetary properties and modifies them so the world can become more hospitable.

Why does this matter?

Throughout the space phase of Spore, players will encounter a vast number of planets to colonize. Unfortunately, many of these are hostile to life - they can still be colonized, but your people will have to live in snow globes. By terraforming the planet’s surface the cost to maintain a colony decreases and its citizens are more productive. Creating a hospitable surface will also allow players to populate a world to their own liking (via abduction) and even perform various experiments (ecological and food webs).

Give me an example!

Lets take a terrestrial (made of rock) planet without an atmosphere, no water and far away from the sun as an example. This planet would be too cold to support life and even if it was warmer, there wouldn’t be any oxygen to breathe because it lacks an atmosphere (or any other gases for that matter). So what would one do? Well, Spore’s UFO has numerous tools at its disposal to modify the planet’s condition. In this case, we could simply create volcanoes to pump trapped underground gas to create a small atmosphere, we could then increase the atmosphere further by pumping in our own CO2. The appearance of atmosphere would cause a mild greenhouse effect, trapping heat on the planet. It would also protect the surface from radiation. While an atmosphere is great, life needs water! The planet is far away from the sun, so it may have water in the form of ice (closer planets would not, as the heat would have evaporated the water), but if it doesn’t; we have a solution! Your UFO can slam icy comets onto the planet’s surface. Comets spend most of their lifetime far away from the sun and contains huge amounts of frozen water. If the planet is warm enough, that ice will melt and you will have liquid water. The planet is now ready to support life! But your terraforming is not quite complete yet, as you can mold the surface of the planet as well. This step is very similar to the SimCity landscape editor that is just before you begin to build your new city. With onboard UFO tools players can increase and decrease the height of the surface (or below water level surface) to create mountains, ridges and even lakes and oceans. This set of tools gives players a great deal of control over the appearance of their planets.

Unless you are using the Genesis device, the process of creating an atmosphere does take a relatively long time. The genesis tool is a rather expensive piece of machinery, so it may take sometime before it becomes available to you.

Can I turn any space rock into a leafy planet?

Not all planets can be terraformed, some are just too far from the Sun and will forever remain giants balls of ice. Each planet is assigned a T score (0 to 10), the higher the score the better suited the planet is for terraforming and colonization. The T score caps the quality of the biosphere, if biosphere is of moderate quality it will sustain plant life, but maybe not animal life. A low T score also means that a colony is expensive to maintain.

Will Wright on the T, B and P score

There’s a terraforming … as you terraform, this is kind of the rough idea is that every planet has a “T Score” from zero to ten, “B Score”, which is a biosphere score, and a “P Score”, which is the population score of your colony. Depending where the planets are relative to the sun they can have maximum T Scores. So planets that are really far away or really close to the center can have very low T Scores and you can never terraform them, they’re very high. Other ones will be moderately useful, like T6. That’s going cap the B Score so if I actually get an atmosphere up to a T6, which is this range. At this point, plants will live, animals won’t, and colonies will be fairly expensive still. And so, this is kind of the terraform/colonization game. (Gamingsteve, 2005)

Known Terraforming Tools

• Volcano Tool: Creates volcanoes, pumps out trapped underground gases and slowly increases the density of the planet’s atmosphere.
• CO2 Pump: Increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, thereby increasing the density of the atmosphere and eventually creating a greenhouse effect. If the atmosphere becomes too dense, it will cause a wet/runaway greenhouse effect, where all water present on the planet would evaporate.
• Comet Redirection: Slam an icy comet into a plane and add water to the planet’s surface. This only works if the planet has an atmosphere to retain water. Otherwise it will evaporate (small atmosphere always causes evaporation).
• Genesis Device: It allows you to quickly create a hospitable planet.

Terraforming in Greater Detail

The Habitable Zone

This is a region in a solar system where liquid water can occur and it delineated by areas too cold or too warm for water to remain liquid. The closer the planet is to the sun, the less greenhouse gases it must have to keep the temperature comfortable, on the other hand if a planet is very far away from the sun - then it must have a thicker atmosphere to retain a greater amount of heat (it’s receiving less solar energy).

What does an atmosphere do?

The most important planetary attribute under the direct control of players is the presence or absence of an atmosphere. When people are asked about our atmosphere, most relate it to oxygen - a necessity for our own survival. But it has far broader reaching purposes than simply providing the creature’s of a planet with something to breathe. For the purpose of Spore, the atmosphere influences two important planetary properties: temperature and the retention of water. The first is fairly easy to understand as it is in the news almost every day: an atmosphere, with the proper gases, will cause a greenhouse effect on the planet - that is, the retention of heat. The more greenhouse gases present, the thicker the atmosphere and the warmer the planet is. But beware, if you have too thick of an atmosphere you run the risk of causing a runaway greenhouse effect and transforming the planet into a giant barbeque!

Now lets look at why an atmosphere is important for water. The first reason is rather simple: if a planet is not warm enough, even if it has water it will always stay in the form of ice! The planet needs to be warm enough to melt the ice, but not so warm as to evaporate it! But heat is not the only cause of water evaporation, this leads me to my second very important point: if a planet has no atmosphere, even if the planet is warm enough to have liquid water (ie. close to the sun), the water will always evaporate!

In the end, life on planets is quite simple: if the atmosphere is thick enough to have a comfortable temperature and retain water then it will be able to support life!

Gas giants have atmospheres, so what gives?

Spore is littered with massive gas planets and they possess huge atmospheres, so why can’t they support life? While an atmophere allows life to prosper on other planets, here the atmosphere prevents it. Because the atmosphere of gas giants is so thick, you might as well think of it as water - not air. The deeper you are within such an atmosphere, the greater the pressure of the gases above are on your body - eventually your body would be crushed because of the pressure, just as submarines are crushed when they reach a critical depth.

Why would volcanoes produce an atmosphere?

During the creation of planets, a lot of gases become trapped beneath the planet’s rocky crust. When volcanoes erupt, these trapped gases are pumped out to the planet’s surface and can produce an atmosphere over time. It’s not a fast process - but it works!

What to do if a planet is covered with water?

Some planets have an abundance of water, so much so that there isn’t enough rocky surface to support land life. But luckily our trusted UFO has a few tools to take care of this. Just as adding CO2 allows for the presence of water, if you add enough of the gas the temperature will rise just enough to evaporate some of the water from the planet’s surface. Don’t add too much or the planet will quickly become a big, barren desert!

Planets far from a star

Some planets are just too distant from the sun to be worthy of terraforming, because by the time their atmosphere atmosphere is thick enough to retain enough heat to allow for liquid water, the atmosphere’s pressure will have become so thick as to crush everything on the planet’s surface (look under Gas giants for more information).

Planets close to a star

If a planet is too close to the sun, there isn’t a terraforming principle out there that can render it hospitable to life. The reality is our UFO tools can only make planets warmer by giving them an atmosphere or cool them off by slowing removing one. If a planet is warm to start off with and doesn’t have an atmosphere, the UFO does not have any tools capable of cooling it off further and will forever remain inhospitable to life.