We're tweaking the number of upgradable tiles planets will receive.  Terraforming will be much more important/powerful in the next few betas.

I've played several games now where the highest PQ I've seen is 26 or 28. One I colonized at the start and one I flipped. The alien had hardly filled in any of the squares, so I had lots of places to build all those wonders and trade goods.

I have played larger maps, while the majority of planets ranged from 5-9, home planets were 10, 2 to 3 were 11-14, 1 was 17 and another was 26.

Wow. It does exist. Only prob is finding it and colonizing before the others. A size 26? Thats way better than 5 PQ 5 planets.

I think the algorithm for population morale factors needs to be adjusted

Agreed.

There are planets as high as class 26 in the game. They are just rare.

No, Star Pilot, They said that that's the way it is now with GC2. The goal is that you'd fill up your initial tiles with the basic infrastructure stuff when you first colonize that planet. The governor would auto-terraform while you're off researching, then, when you come back, you'd have new usable tiles that you could plop your wonders down on without having to tear down any existing infrastructure.

Basically, they're trying to change away from what you're thinking they're changing to.

i'm glad terraforming will be made more potent. any thoughts on a PotentialPQ for a planet rather than a PQ? eg you settle a planet that is rated say 16, but only 10 tiles are usable, with the remaining 6 already colour coded for the specific terraforming tech - that way you know the potential of your planet at the start, rather than unlocking it as you go? just a thought.

No, Star Pilot, They said that that's the way it is now with GC2. The goal is that you'd fill up your initial tiles with the basic infrastructure stuff when you first colonize that planet. The governor would auto-terraform while you're off researching, then, when you come back, you'd have new usable tiles that you could plop your wonders down on without having to tear down any existing infrastructure. Basically, they're trying to change away from what you're thinking they're changing to.

Let's just get real for a moment. When I see that Earth or Eden or any other of my planets have finish terraforming a tile, I jump to it and give it a "Build" order for that tile. But I rarely, if ever, stick a wonder on it. Why? They aren't useful. Not when I only get 11 or 13 tiles. Earth is always aching for more tileage, what with having its Manu center and other reasonable bonuses put on it.

Now, Mars, I might toss away a bank or lab on it to let it build a wonder. But Earth and the other big worlds just cannot afford the waste of tileage on something that is basically superfulous under the current game design/balance.

We're failing to communicate somewhere. If you want to argue the value of wonders (I find they're useful, but I don't build them on my home world or my best planets, I've got lots of PQ11-14 planets for that, usually), but I was responding specifically to

So... the plan is that you will most of the time need to demolish something so that you can put in a wonder?

That's the statement I was trying to correct. The plan is that you won't have to demolish an improvement to make room for a wonder, the various terraforming techs will make room for you. Whether Earth or a high PQ planet is where you'd want to stick a wonder is a different debate, one I suspect we'd agree on at least to some degree. The only reason I don't consider Earth (or whatever starting planet my custom race has started on, it won't name the planet "Big Giant Rock" like I specified in the custom race setup) as a place to put a wonder is because it does have more manufacturing capacity than it's size would suggest. In most games I play, PQ 11-12 are almost a dime a dozen, it's my PQ 16, 17 and 18s, or the rare 26 that are my industrial or research giants (only one research giant, other than the planet that gets the Omega Lab and Tech Capitol, there's no reason to bunch up research).

I suspect that part of the modifications to terraforming will be to make them have some effect on planets with a PQ lower than 11, the current cutoff, which means that even Earth won't benefit. Most of the time when you think of terraforming, you think of improving the quality of barely habitable planets, not planets already better off than Earth In fact, I'd argue that terraforming should have a GREATER affect on lower PQ planets. Say each level of terraforming adds max(int((10-curr PQ)/2.25),1) to the PQ. Naturally, the 10 and 2.25 are SWAGs and subject to play balancing, but this would ensure that all planets get at least one point of PQ per level of terraforming, and a PQ1 planet could become a PQ 8 planet eventually, though with the undustrial capacity of a PQ1 planet, it's going to take a long time to make that first step. As it should be.

Once again, I say, be glad I'm not writing this game

Unless I am mistaken, but people are angry because they are too numeroius, not because the population can't increase. It is just what farming do: allowing you to control the siez of planet population.

it would be nice to terraform unusable tiles into usable. even if it has to be done in long stages.

Well, I've yet to see a world over 17 in my games. But I'm playing on the lean side of things, so that is probably why.

And my point is that as soon as you get that new tile, you put the most useful item into it. There is only 6 or so actually useful tile fillers that are not factory/lab/bank/embassy (industry/research/money/culture). Most wonders are now useless. Remove all but those ~6 useful items from the game, and I bet 99% of all GC2 beta testers wouldn't miss them! Indeed, their games would go faster/more efficently, because that's one less thing to mess with.