Documentation
Also read http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Habitable%20Main%20Planets
ReadMe & License.txt
Habitable Main Planets OXP by stranger
This OXP is released under the Creative Commons Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike 3.0 license.
You are free to use and distribute this OXP on non-commercial basis.
Rebundling of this OXP within another distribution is permitted as long as it is unchanged.
Any mods/derivatives of this OXP must be distributed under another names.
The license information (either as this file or merged into a larger one) must be included in the OXP.
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Can planet with radius 3000 km or so be advanced agriculture world with population of billions residents? Definitely no any way. Such planet is too small to maintain dense AND warm atmosphere. Located in habitable zone small planet would has extremely rarefied atmosphere with pressure about few millibars or less.
This OXP redefines vanilla planet database to more realistic values.
Range of main planets radii redefined from vanilla 2820...6911 km to 2505...7496 km. As a result average planet radius increased from vanilla 4870 to 5465 km.
Minimal radii of planets with biomarkers in description such as tree, forests, ocean etc are increased to 5425 km.
Minimal radii of agricultural planets with TL > 3 AND without biomarkers are increased to 4450 km.
Radii of all above listed planet are proportionally scaled using 6400 km radius as reference point.
Radii of some Famous Planets are readjusted individually using above mentioned rules of thumb.
Now PlanetEngine, integrated onto Planetary Systems, gives reliable data for main planets too.
Minimal air pressure on surface level for planets with biomarkers is approx. 0.5 bar, permitting flourishing natural ecosystems and outdoor activity without breathing equipment.
Minimal air pressure on surface level for agricultural planets without biomarkers is approx. 0.2 bars, permitting outdoor activity without pressurized suits, only with breathing equipment. It seems too harsh environment for advanced agricultural worlds, but aquaponic farms can be solution.
Small agricultural planets with TL < 4 has too low air pressure to permit any outdoor activity without pressurized suits. Due to new legend such planets are mining worlds, but it is a different story.
This OXP redefines surface and ocean colors of all 2048 main planets to more realistic looking appearance.
PlanetEngine was used to calculate physical properties and surface conditions of all 2048 main planets. So planet with 3000 km radius will look like Mars, not like little Earth twin. Cold worlds will have more developed polar ice caps. Advanced agricultural worlds will have more water and will be more green than industrial. And so on.
Conflicts and dependencies
This is stand-alone OXP without any dependencies.
It will conflict with any OXP redefining main planet appearance, such as Povray Planets.
Habitable Main Planets OXP can be used per se as pure ambience, bit it provides more realistic background for PlanetEngine. So Sun Gear and Planetary System OXPs are highly recommended.
Now Habitable Main Planets declared as obligatory in Sun Gear manifest.
Known Issues
Unfortunately this readjusting did not completely eliminates conflicts with vanilla descriptions such as "The planet Atrare is cursed by vicious mountain monkeys" (case for poor industrial planet with radius 3144 km). Procedural generation is so procedural :-)
Setting minimal radius to 4250 km or above will partially solve problem, but I prefer to allow more variation in main planet physical conditions. If you plan terraforming missions planet with almost zero atmosphere pressure will be a bit wrong target, isn't it?
There is some issue with Oolite engine. If you’ll look at Zaonce, for example, from Lave, you’ll see low-res image on F7 screen with prominent noise. But after jumping to Zaonce you’ll see crisp image of planet. I have no idea how to fix this issue. It is clearly noticeable for default planet textures too. Seems Galcop witchspace transmission relays has low bandwidth. :-)
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Version history:
08.12.2020 - Version 1.6.0 Arid planets with forest in descriptions reclassified as balanced and now has more suitable green continent color instead greenish-yellow.
25.10.2020 - Version 1.5.0 Redefines surface and ocean colors of all 2048 main planets to more realistic looking appearance.
02.07.2020 - Version 1.4.0 Redefined range of main planet radii.
Corrected criteria of minimal radius for planets with biomarkers and agricultural planets.
31.01.2019 - Version 1.3.3 OXZ reassembled
31.01.2019 - Version 1.3.2 Fixed issue with manifest.plist
31.01.2019 - Version 1.3.1 Converted onto OXZ.
14.09.2018 - Version 1.3 Minimal radius of advanced agricultural planets with biomarkers set to 4250 km instead 5200 km.
18.08.2018 - Version 1.2 Radii of agricultural planets with TL < 4 unchanged.
17.08.2018 - Version 1.1 Revised rules of planet radius readjusting.
Public release.
12.08.2018 - Version 1.0 Initial release.
Expansion Habitable Main Planets