When I play a race starting with an earth type planet, I can only colonize planets of this type and those of one quality level below earth (oceanic, arctic, desert). So far, so good. But when I select barren as home planet type, I can colonize all types of planets - which has proven to be a huge advantage to a species and a free one too, as home planet type doesn't cost any skill points. I know there has been the suggestion to use skill points for home planet type and this has been turned down. I know have an alternate approach which I find promising to spice the game up:
Limit colonizable planets to home planet type plus home planet type quality minus one. With quality type minus one I mean those planet types that can be directly terraformed to the home planet type. Look at the official Horizon Wiki for Terraforming qualities:
In my above example with a
barren homeworld, the outcome would be:
- Colonizable: Barren (perfect), Toxic (as this is a barren one, too), Volcanic (habitable), Metallic (Habitable)
- Not Colonizable: Earth, Ocean, Desert, Arctic
So you'd have four planet types on each side (colonizable / not colonizable) no matter if your home planet type is earth or barren. It should be the same balance for any species regardless of what their home planet type is. The interesting thing about this would be that you could create a galaxy with lots of "habitable" planets (which are Earth, Ocean, Desert and Arctic) and in this galaxy the Tantik with their volcanic homeworld would have a harder standing.
And as the terraforming path is already implemented in the game (terraforming always targets home planet quality), I assume this not too much work to implement
