First, know that the mission to get a Sentient planet takes place after Titancore Betrayal. Take a moment to look up how much energy it takes to do that mofo.

Now quite frankly, we have terraforming missions, we have a lot of them. And for the most part, if not allowing for extremely good planets bordering broken (Super colossal oceanic?) and a lot of other ridiculous things, we can get something pretty nifty out of it.

Not barren planets.
Barren planets are bottom of the bucket for resources and size - the largest EVER found was Very Large and Rich. They also have no really way to upgrade. The Sentiox is one such way, and how do you rescue the absolute pitiful slop of mud and dirt that is a Barren planet? Very massive extremely rich.

Incredible, right?

Except for the amount of time and energy you just put in for that, and having to have a perfect planet to get one that I would maybe-probably think about getting in a scan sweep.

Keep the existing bonuses, and add +10% resources.

It's a sentient planet, it should be able to allocate production very efficiently, and it needs a boost to its currently pitiful and not-worthwhile statistics bonus. This would be a good start.

Peace. <3

agree with you there

+1 i have all 5 sentiox arti's and they are just gathering dust ! this would make me want to use them more

One word: Terraformers

Boost your crappy barren to 15x then use the Sentiox. This goes for any planet transformer (except mission dyson and exotic).

So your argument is that one of the mission chains that requires the most energy in the entire game, in order to have a COMPETITIVE terraforming artifact, you should also have to use more terraformers than any other change-able planet? I think the best you can get for Toxics is the only thing that can tie it (Though I think youcan find find very rich) and their artifact gives +2 mining! And is much more common.

It's like hacking. Yeah, it's cool. Nifty. But nowhere near equal to the alternatives for what you put into it.

I didn't say it was a GREAT plan. There's some other semidecent stuff in that chain. Keep in mind that your best Icy's and Deserts aren't all that great either. Pretty much any planet you're going to use a transformer on is going to need buffed with terraformers to get the most out of it.

I'm still upgrading my barrens with Hydroshifters.

I would like to see sentient planets be more interesting, but with any planet changer, boosting resources before changing helps a lot. Being Mylari I enrich barrens to hydroshift to 16x rich, massive mining planets.

Bit more on topic, possibly barren planets could come with an analysis upgrade to do something like these:

Benevolent: Planet is agreeable with inhabitants and boosts production 5% in all areas

Primitive: Planet has a minimal consciousness, making colonization difficult. The planet also repels invaders.
Planet build costs +10%, 1K passive attack and defense.

Isolated: The planet dislikes visitors, but will permit your colony. The planet adapts to negate scanning frequencies, +10% cloak

Just ideas off the top of my head to help make the mission more worth while.

None of the Barren upgrades are comparable to a plasma upgrade, which is a better use of terraformers or data optimizers. And for mining, toxics are the obvious choice. I will never look at barrens again.

plasma upgrade is only for research. it leaves your artifact and mining at levels where they where.

But yes I do agree with you they are the best bang for your effort considering you don't need to use 2 QSE just to make them colossal. Although I'm sure this is the reason why Dan implemented them to be just + 2 to research rather than + 2 to all resources.