Populating asteroids?

[Arak Koba]

This can't be done in SE4, can it?

[Puke]

not really. asteroids do come with a size and pop/facility limit, so you could make them colonizeable by doing something like this:

change asteroids to type rock or ice or gas, and they will be colonizeable but will not be convertable into planets. they will be destroyable by techtonic bombs, then convertable into planets, which is very strange.

an interesting idea for a mod might be this: get rid of planet creators. change gas giant class planets to be asteroid type instead, that way they are remote-mineable but not colonizeable (someone wanted this anyway). change asteroids to gas-giant type, and they are now colonizeable. rename gas giant colonization tech to be asteroid colonization tech, and there you go. takes some editing of tech areas, components, and planet types, but should be easy enough.

[Baron Munchausen]

Those changes would sink gas giant dwellers, though. It would be nice if we had an option to enable asteroid colonization like we can currently enable 'can only colonize own atmosphere' or 'can only colonize own planet type'. If 'Asteroid' were made a colonization type we could have those 'space living races' discussed on and off in other threads. 'Gas clouds' (or 'happy fun balls' as the sarcastic Trekkers call them) that cannot land on a planet.

[Mark Walton]

I am doing another option in my mod -

I'm editing the systemtype file so that in many cases, a tiny, airless rock world will be created at the same location as asteroids. So, tell players that a rock/airless race are natural asteroid dwellers and just say that these tiny worlds are really larger asteroids. This improves the remote mining value of many asteroids, too.

[CW]

Who would want to live on an icy cold asteroid?

[Egregius]

I think everyone here has wondered if they could colonize asteroids at some point when they clicked on one and saw they had a type and an atmosphere: none.