the reason i stopped at average was because i was looking at the worst case scenario of an icy, terra or exotic. finding an AVG size of any of these would still be worth considering as a project planet, with the increased purchases of QSE's compensating for any loss in abandonment GPs. the week-long timer was to make a 'total' planet improvement last about as long as any of the other richness-improvement timelines.

the other wrinkle might be making the energy cost rank-dependent, and having the mission / race available starting at rank 60. if it were a mission, you could limit the number of times that it could be done, so players would have to decide whether to focus on a single planet or spread the ability among a bunch of their starting planets.

even if it was a repeatable mission / ability, that would be 52 chances per year, with at least a 50% chance of failure, so not overpowered. expanding up to VL would make the ability more desirable, but there are probably other things that could be done to make it worth the effort.

In all likelyhood, by the time you unlock the race, which probably takes 500k-1m energy, you would be able to have more than enough VL planets for projects, so frankly, I don't think that would be much of a concern.
At the moment, I have 164 VL or above non-gas planets on my scan, so I really don't think making it able to go to VL is over powered. the cd and % rate is still a compartive value thing with the other uplift races with the rarity comparison of QSE and terraformer based on T.O. carrier, it doesn't have to be that low.

My Idea for this suggestion.

How to Unlock this Ability:
Use every 'Urbanize' Ability (Taltherian, Kronyn, and Mylarai), 15x Each Race.
This Profession does not stack up with Every Unlockable Races.

Profession Ability:
120 Hours Cooldown, 500 Energy to use.
10% Chance of lowering the Planet's Size by 1.


Very Tiny to Tiny : 75% Success Rate

Tiny to Very Small : 60% Success Rate

Very Small to Small : 47% Success Rate

Small to Average: 35% Success Rate

Average to Large: 22% Succes Rate

Large to Very Large: 10% Success Rate

Very Large to Massive: 5% Success Rate

Massive to Very Massive: 2% Success Rate


Daddy's Little Project.
35 Medal Points, Title: The Patient One
Make a Very Massive Planet starting from a Very Tiny Planet by only using the Planetary Size Ability.

It takes, on average, 311.7267 ability "cast" to complete the medal... which is over 4 years...
that's not patinet, that's *beep*ed....
I can make a VM from VT faster by farming TO carriers for QSEs probably....

Ignore the medal then, it was just an added bonus, let's stick to the main topic

ooh, i like that chance to decrease the size - that's a great balancer ! and the thought of it as a profession ability makes me think that the biologist might work for this ?

i'm not so keen on the unlocking though. as Uy23e indicated, high-rankers have enough options for project planets. what i was interested in was something for lower-ranked players and the overall improvement of the galaxy of crappiest planets. that's why i suggested rank 60, but if it was a profession, it could be started right from rank 1. so, rather than a sequel to the planet richness upgrading chains, it would be a sort of prequel ... that's also why i stopped at AVG size, but the percentages SirKills suggested would be ok with me too.

The concept of a failure/success is just a no. just no.....Can you imagine players failing to increase their planet sizes? or having their planets randomly blown up? it's like that 90% invasion chance thing, people are infuriated because they fail and have to wait a day before another invasion.
Now this. 1000 energy? 168 Hours cooldown? High chances or failure and your planet blowing up. i can't even~

I Say increasing a Very TIny ---> Tiny should have a 40 Hour cooldown

As your planet increases in size, the cooldown increases by 6 hours per size the planet goes up by

Tiny - 40 hours
Very Small - 50 Hours
Small - 60 Hours
Average - 70 Hours
Large - 80 Hours
Very Large 90 Hours
Massive 100 Hours
Very Massive 110 Hours

Upgrading a planet from Very TIny to Very Massive takes 600 hours which is 25 Days...
Race Mission Chain can be unlocked at a very high level and not a special abillity with Talth, Kronyn or Mylarai, maybe Rank 500-80 where NPCing is done frequently.

No... just... no.
M to VM upgrade, if possible at all, needs to be at least 2 weeks cd by a constant one-time cd or average success calculation...
So if a scaled cd sysem is used, it should be 4 to 5 times the proposed cd at least

Ofc, if the thing is made so that it can ONLY be used on VT or planets that have ONLY been upgraded with this ability, then it wouldn't be so bad, 2 times the proposed cd will do.

My point is, a Success/Failure system makes this race/proffesion worthless.
Considering that taltherian chain requires 400,000 Energy to complete, it's likely this one would take even more energy.
If we look closely at Sirkillsalot suggestion, it takes 120 hours cooldown and has 75% chance success upgrading a Very Tiny --- Tiny.

How many of you out there have Very Tiny planets on your planets, this mission chain is for rank 400s+ the only Very Tiny i have is the football which i toss around frequently.

Some of us may have a number of "Small" planets such as terra, upgrading this planet based on Sirkillsalot system, it has a 35% success, based on probabillity, you will likely fail once or twice before you actually succeed. If you fail twice in-a-row, you would've wasted 10 days on this planet.

While a Taltherian can Urbanize a planet 3x within the 120 hour cooldown ( with no failure)

Now you said it should take 2 weeks to upgrade a V --> VM , in 2 weeks time a Taltherian/Kronyn/Mylarai can increase a 1x Megarich --- > 9x Megarich , is this balanced, is this race worth even looking at ?

Ask yourself, which one is better? 3x Makeshift Terraformers or one dodgy qausi-spacial expander that might blow up your planet...

If you are going to make a 2 week cool down to make a Massive a Very Massive then I had better see a change to the quasi spacial expander that makes it have a cool down of at least a few days before you can make a Massive to a Very Massive after you make the Very Large a Massive planet. A cool down itself makes the race worse then the quasi so it wouldn't be overpowered. I would say a 20 hour cool down to make a VT to a T and 40 to make a A to a L and then an 80 hour cool down to make a M to a VM.

What you are saying is that if the production races were to change cool down times you would want to make them be a week so that they wouldn't be overpowered...

This race has pretty much been agreed on to be a higher level race 500+, and have a huge energy amount, any long cool down would nerf this race so much that no one would even play it.

seriously ? ranks 500+ don't need this ability to get project planets ... they have more than enough with scan power etc. anyone at higher levels that can afford to use QSE's won't need this anyway.

the issue is all the crappy planets that are insta-candidates for purging as soon as they are scanned. only low-ranked players would keep these around (or colonize them) and only they would be interested in upgrading them versus upgrading scan modules to do another scan run.

so i'll update my suggestion, assuming that is a PROFESSION and not a RACE:

VT -> tiny : rank 25+, energy 50, cool down 24 hours (1 day)
tiny -> VS: rank 50+, energy 100, cool down 48 hours (2 day)
VS -> small: rank 75+, energy 150, cool down 72 hours (3 day)
small -> average: rank 100+, energy 200, cool down 120 hours (5 day)
average -> large: rank 200+, energy 500, cool down 168 hours (7 day)
large -> VL: rank 300+, energy 750, cool down 240 hours (10 day)
VL -> M: rank 500+, energy 1000, cool down 336 hours (14 day)
M -> VM: rank 750+, energy 1750, cool down 480 hours (20 day)
VM -> C: rank 1500+, energy 3000, cool down 720 hours (30 day)

every use of the ability has a 50% chance of failure. this drops down to 0% for the next use if a QSE has been used on the planet during the cool down period.

so, this gives incentives to rank, adjusts cool down based on the potential benefit, but still gives lower-ranked players a reason to choose it.

in ur plan, the QSE isn't dodgy, ain't blowing up ur planets...
if it still carry the risk of planet explosion, then I would be fine with a shorter cd. I didn't even bother commenting on the destrution alternatives because it's absurd.

For whatever reason Dan saw fit, he made QSE much rarer than terraformers, 19x more so from T.O. carriers. This might be partly due to the project chains, but nevertheless, QSE is of higher value, 3-5 times at least, than terraformers. Granted, 3 single type uplifts is probably worth more than 1 terraformers, I would say each size expansion is worth about 10 single type uplift, which is more than 2 weeks, that's where I got my numbers, I have my basis.

Now, there is also nobody forcing you to make VMs from M only(and u probably can't), you could very well make a bunch of VL or Ms, which have a shorter cd, so using the worst case senario as the comparison is hardly balanced in itself.

no making anything bigger than what you can with a qse. also dont think you should be able to be boosting planets as a talth/kronym/mylari and doing this at the same time.

I think racial and profession are shared under the current system, thou there are no overlaps thus far so you would have to switch races to actually notice the shared effect.
But in any case, even if this is a profession and not a race, unless the timer system is changed, it just means you dont have to switch races around and you still can't boost them at same time.

well, that's what the failure / QSE combo is supposed to do ... you can either keep trying to do the VM -> C at 50% each time once a month, or buy a QSE to go from M -> VM and then you guarantee a C - dan gets his GP and players get a C. maxing it out at VM would be ok too, but players would be giving up the other profession benefits, so ...

and yeah, the profession would not be available under the talth/kronyn/mylarai races. i was thinking any race that didn't have a racial ability timer already.

Just make it a race, and yes it should cap out at Very Massive or even Massive.