Non-desertic is just a filter for search, means lacustrine OR marine OR oceanic OR superoceanic.

SpaceEngineer wrote:

Non-desertic is just a filter for search, means lacustrine OR marine OR oceanic OR superoceanic.

Oooohhhhh........

What do chthonias look like?

Cloudless gas giants right now.  I don't think they are complete in the current closed beta.  They would probably just look like a regular lava planet for the most part.

So it has been quite a long time since the new classification system was discussed and last I remember it was still not finalized. With the release of 99 on steam being teased and hopefully coming out soon, I wanted to bring it back up to ask what system was fully implemented and what decisions were made about it. I re-read the “New Planet Classification 2” blog post, but there were a few lines in there that hinted the system could still be changed. Is that the system that was decided on?

I like the system, but I’m wondering how this will affect creating our own worlds. Right now when you create a planet in an sc file, you only need one parameter for class, such as Terra or GasGiant, but will this change with the new classification system? I know that the temperature and mass index can be calculated in the same way that SE 98 calculates temperature now, but volatiles seems much more important. In the new version, will we need to update all of our modded planets to use both bulk composition and volatiles to generate the class?

So for example, if we have Earth-like planets right now that we want to upgrade for 99, will we need to classify them as “Marine Terra”, or is terra enough for the system to generate everything else? Or for oceanias, will we need to use “Oceanic Aquaria”, or is oceanic enough? I think it would be a much more precise system, but I feel like it may have a learning curve for average users, so one variable would be easier to work with.

I apologize if these questions have already been answered before, but I couldn’t find them through any posts or blogs. Maybe I missed it. Either way, I’m sure some others would like to know as well, so we can start re-writing our mods for the next release.

SFGameZ64 wrote:

So it has been quite a long time since the new classification system was discussed and last I remember it was still not finalized. With the release of 99 on steam being teased and hopefully coming out soon, I wanted to bring it back up to ask what system was fully implemented and what decisions were made about it. I re-read the “New Planet Classification 2” blog post, but there were a few lines in there that hinted the system could still be changed. Is that the system that was decided on?

I like the system, but I’m wondering how this will affect creating our own worlds. Right now when you create a planet in an sc file, you only need one parameter for class, such as Terra or GasGiant, but will this change with the new classification system? I know that the temperature and mass index can be calculated in the same way that SE 98 calculates temperature now, but volatiles seems much more important. In the new version, will we need to update all of our modded planets to use both bulk composition and volatiles to generate the class?

So for example, if we have Earth-like planets right now that we want to upgrade for 99, will we need to classify them as “Marine Terra”, or is terra enough for the system to generate everything else? Or for oceanias, will we need to use “Oceanic Aquaria”, or is oceanic enough? I think it would be a much more precise system, but I feel like it may have a learning curve for average users, so one variable would be easier to work with.

I apologize if these questions have already been answered before, but I couldn’t find them through any posts or blogs. Maybe I missed it. Either way, I’m sure some others would like to know as well, so we can start re-writing our mods for the next release.

Pardon my ignorance but what is "99"?

Messier wrote:

Pardon my ignorance but what is "99"?

SE version 0.990.  It is the one currently in development.

SFGameZ64, yes, the classification described in the second blog post is that is accepted currently, maybe with minor changes (some numerical values and words for subclass names).

To update old mods, you have to change Class to one of the basic classes, and describe atmosphere and hydrosphere. SE will classify volatiles automatically (airless, arid, marine, oceanic etc.) It have hard-coded boundaries between lacustrine, marine, oceanic and superoceanic, based on hydrosphere depth (calculating surface area is not possible, so depth is used for now).

Selena -> Terra without atmosphere
Desert -> Terra with atmosphere, but without hydrosphere
Terra -> Terra with atmosphere and hydrosphere
IceWorld -> Aquaria with or without atmosphere, and without hydrosphere (well, "methanosphere"?)
Titan -> Aquaria with atmosphere and hydrosphere
Carbonia, Ferria - the same as Terra, but with different bulk composition (defining it is not mandatory though)
Neptune and Jupiter are not changed (IceGiant and GasGiant are also accepted).

Old class names Desert, Selena, IceWorld and Titan are also accepted, and converted to corresponding new classes. This is for backward compatibility. However, it doesn't work well in all cases.

Mass prefix (mini-, sub-, super-) is added automatically based on planet mass.

Thank you for the clarification. I'm excited about the variety of planets. Also good to hear about backward compatibility, but it is much more interesting to use the new system. Can't wait to see it in action!

I'm surprised that 0.990 classifies Titan as a marine aquaria rather than lacustrine. What's the cutoff between them? Most of the worlds I've seen that are classified as lacustrine don't seem to have any bodies of liquid visible from space.

I don't like this new classification system. In german language it sounds a bis ridiculous... 

Julian wrote:

Source of the post .990 classifies Titan as a marine aquaria rather than lacustrine.

A Lacustrine planet has little to no water on it's surface and mantle. Planets like Titan however, often have significant amounts of water and other volatiles locked away in their crust and mantle, and thus are classified as Aquarias. As a brief refresher here, an Aquaria planet is any planet whose surface/crust and/or mantle is comprised of volatiles like frozen or ultra-compacted water. So in this context, the classification makes sense.

I know how aquarias are defined, but because liquid on Titan is limited to lakes in the polar regions, I would have expected it to be a lacustrine aquaria instead of a marine aquaria. There doesn't seem to be much point to the  lacustrine classification when most of them look indistinguishable from arid worlds.

Julian wrote:

Source of the post but because liquid on Titan is limited to lakes in the polar regions

It is not. If you reread my previous post, you'll find that I clearly state that planets like Titan have a significant presence of liquids or frozen volatiles under their surface. In some ways, they are not too dissimilar to icy-shell moons like Europa, except that their surfaces are not airless glaciers. Titan-like planets are therefore classified as Aquarias because a major component of their composition is liquid or frozen volatiles, as this NASA article clearly states.

Julian:
Source of the post There doesn't seem to be much point to the  lacustrine classification when most of them look indistinguishable from arid worlds.

Planet classification is based on the constituent fundamental chemical make-up of a planet, not just what it looks like visually. The latter method is unscientific and was purposefully abandoned in 0990.

Julian wrote:

There doesn't seem to be much point to the  lacustrine classification when most of them look indistinguishable from arid worlds.

Lacustrine planets are also currently bugged but trust me they are supposed to have shallow seas which can get quite wide at times.