Desert Planet Type Tweaks

[duece]

The main supposed value for a desert is its spice production, but spice doesn't do anything so it's pretty useless. So here are some proposed changes:

-Change the function of spice mining to be a spice market, make it automatically add commodities market level 3 to the discoveries list (allowing up to level 8 ).
-Reduce pollution, it's the only low population planet type that also pollutes badly, so reduce pollution levels to match greenhouses.
-Increase ore production by 50%, just because this has to be done to make it viable. Low ore production is crippling in general (this should probably be applied to all the lesser used types).

I think there was recently a patch that boosted deserts and greenhouses, but after having built a few I don't think it went far enough. On a generic level it doesn't match up with other planet types (in terms of cash production, pollution, solar strength), and on top of that it provides no niche benefit because spice is so irrelevant. With a high level commodities market a desert can produce a reasonable amount of cash, and along with the boost to solar strength and reduction of pollution would make it a valuable component next to other planets.

[Mel'Kaven]

They need this. They are so worthless.

[Toonces]

how about a spice requirement per hour for solar cannon shots

[Saber-Fury]

agree with duece's idea, but have to disagree with toonces:

how about a spice requirement per hour for solar cannon shots

Depending on the cost per shot, it wouldn't be practical to barge spice to planets on a regular basis just for that purpose. Even if it was only like 1-5 spice per shot, it would still be tedious, annoying, and unnecessary - people would just set each planet to make its own spice, thereby defeating the purpose the desert would have as a vital 'supplier 'of spice to the colonies in the area. It would just result in all colonies becoming weaker across the board.

If you're going to make a spice-related change with the desert, Don't make all the other planets weaker. Just give the desert a buff.

Duece's idea of automatic commodities market sounds great to me, that way they can be used as powerful money cols from selling the spice, giving them a much needed purpose.

[duece]

how about a spice requirement per hour for solar cannon shots

I don't like it because it nerfs everything else and it doesn't even make deserts have good solars, they'd still be limited by ore.

[Toonces]

how about a spice requirement per hour for solar cannon shots

they'd still be limited by ore.

Yes, but all the other planet types would be far MORE limited by lack of Spice. So Solar shots would be far harder to come by accross the board. Rockies would become bad for lack of spice production. Their ore production would be meaningless without x units of spice per hour per solar shot to go along with the 135 ore per hour per shot, or whatever the per shot cost is right now.

I do see that it probably changes the current state of the game too much for players to be comfortable with the idea. But this is a way to solve the underlying problem of Spice not being important enough, that in turn may improve Deserts without requiring any change to them, since their specialty is and always has been Spice production.

[Saber-Fury]

how about a spice requirement per hour for solar cannon shots

they'd still be limited by ore.

Yes, but all the other planet types would be far MORE limited by lack of Spice. So Solar shots would be far harder to come by accross the board. Rockies would become bad for lack of spice production. Their ore production would be meaningless without x units of spice per hour per solar shot to go along with the 135 ore per hour per shot, or whatever the per shot cost is right now.

I do see that it probably changes the current state of the game too much for players to be comfortable with the idea. But this is a way to solve the underlying problem of Spice not being important enough, that in turn may improve Deserts without requiring any change to them, since they're specialty is and always has been Spice production.

some would quit, some would stay, none would come, most would complain, so why do it?

yeah, it's a way to quickly solve the 'spice problem' but the ones that duece suggested are so much better. Spice itself wouldn't be directly affected, but with spice being the most valuable resource, if deserts had automatic commodities market it would give it a buff

[duece]

If you're looking for ways to make spice more valuable, it can be done without throwing everything else out of whack. For example, let spice act as an all-in-one substitute for other consumable resources, but less effectively (eg. Instead of 100 organics an hour, let it take 150 spice as a replacement). Most planet types would see very little help for that except for colonies with spice mining or deserts/igps.

Another possible idea, would allow a new function(new building/research/whatever) on colonies for resource transportation ('hyperspace delivery' or whatever) that runs on spice. So at the cost of 1 spice you can instantly transport 3 organics (or whatever) from one planet to another in the same system. If you made it so you could automatically schedule shipments every hour, this would go even further and elevate deserts/igps to the very best planet type and the central hub of a good system, while not helping most other planet types at all.

Maybe I'm just biased as a player, but I really don't want that solar idea to happen