The basic gist of this challenge is to find a habitable world (or as many as you want) in a procedural galaxy without use of the map or search tools. However, it gets somewhat more complicated than that.
Still, the only overall rules are 'no search tools and no already-visited planets'. These rules won't really be mentioned in the difficulty
Difficulties:
Standard
This difficulty is just the standard difficulty. You fly around like you would normally do in SE, but you can't use search tools.
Normal: Find one habitable world in a procedural galaxy.
Intermediate: Find two habitable worlds in a procedural galaxy.
Hard: Find four habitable worlds in a procedural galaxy.
n-Planet: Find 'n' amount of habitable worlds in a procedural galaxy. (In your post, replace 'n' with the number of habitable worlds you seek to find.)
To Boldly Go (or 'Spaceship Mode', or 'Wanderers Still')
In this difficulty, you must use a spaceship to find the habitable planets. You must start in orbit around the galaxy's central black hole. There is no story given, but you can make one up if you want. Preferably, name your ship.
Normal: Find one habitable world with any FTL (faster than light)-capable starship. Should have a maximum boost exponent of 12 or lower.
Intermediate: Find one habitable world with an STL (slower than light) ship - indicated by the class of 'Planetship' in the menu.
Hard: Find two habitable worlds with an STL ship.
n-World, FTL: n-World mode, but with an FTL ship.
n-World, STL: n-World mode, but with an STL ship.
Screw You, Enrico Fermi! (or 'Fermi Resolution')
This difficulty is a harder (but not the same) version of Standard in which you have to find alien life somewhere in the galaxy. It doesn't have to be habitable by humans, but it has to have alien life. Doesn't matter if it's organic or exotic.
Fermi Resolution 1: Find unicellular alien life.
Fermi Resolution 2: Find multicellular alien life.
(n-World isn't included, since it might be too hard. Use '???' instead and elaborate on it as such.)
???
This is a catch-all difficulty for whatever derivative you want to do of the challenge. Though if you choose this 'difficulty', you have to say whatever is added to the Standard challenge to make it funner/harder. This also won't be named because it's not supposed to be.
(Whatever the heck you want to do)
Directions:
Starting
- (If you haven't already) Turn on procedural [everything], and turn off catalog [everything].
- Find a procedural galaxy that you sufficiently like or you think might have a chance of having at least one habitable world (that you have not already found a habitable world in.) Name it.
- Start searching
- Name it something! (I don't care if it's the name of a ship from the Culture or a famous Swedish singer from the 70's, just name it something. Snarky names are allowed.)
- Take a lot of pictures. (At the very least, take a picture of the planet facing the day side, the terminator (area between the night and day sides), and the night side in its current state.
- Take pictures of anything else notable near it, and give those things names too (rings, oddly-shaped moons, etc.).
- Repeat if you're searching for more than one habitable world.
- State the difficulty at the beginning/description of the video/album or in the post itself, so I can organise it into somewhere.
- Please make your challenge post in the form of an unedited (that is, showing your whole trial/error process, but you can edit the quality and give an intro/outro) video - you can put the times where you actually discover habitable worlds in the description. If you can't, a series of Imgur (or similar) albums also showing trial/error in some way will work. It'll be less awesome if you just showed the images of the habitable world.
- If you give your challenge post a story (for example, in the 'To Boldly Go' difficulty), please try to keep it rooted in SpaceEngine; IE take stars/planets from SE rather than making them up.
- Give the star/planet names in the image descriptions if you made an image album.
Habitable World Guidelines
- Does not have to be breathable in its current state, but you shouldn't need an HEV suit just to take a morning walk. For example, it shouldn't have more than 160-220 kPa (kilopascals), but no less than 20-60 kPa. Examples for potential equipment to enhance survivability include oxygen masks and air filters.
- Has to be between -10 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly -23.33 and 43.33 Centigrade).
- If the ocean's not a shade of blue, assume it's not liquid water - it'll probably be something like methane or something if it's a weird color. Very light blue probably has a large amount of Saline, so it's probably drinkable after a filter has been applied; very dark blue probably is because of lighting.
That should be everything you have to know. Good luck and godspeed.
EDIT 1: Various stuff and added 'Habitable World Guidelines'.
EDIT 2: Added the 'Fermi Resolution' and gave alternative names to some of the difficulties, also adding jokes in the text color.