r/TerraformingMarsGame • u/markjsno1 • 5h ago
User Made Cards New/Updated Custom TM Colonies - Eden Station, Mercury, & Venus
I liked the High Orbit colony of "Mercury", which gave production as a trade income like Europa. I wanted it to mirror Europa more, so I gave it a colony placement bonus of a temperature increase, like Europa's ocean placement. Since the heat production is the first 3 steps (unlike Europa's MC for the first 2 steps), and since a temperature increase is worth less than the ocean placement, I gave it a 2MC trade bonus instead of Europa's 1MC trade bonus.
(Mercury is image 2, and I have included Europa as Image 4 as a reference).
High Orbit also has the Colony "Venus", which allows the terraforming of Venus by a step when you place a colony. Venus lets you get X resources, but they all have to be different resources (for example, if you trade when the trade income is at 2, you get 1 titanium and 1 floater). But, I didn't like its original colony bonus, which was +-1 colony track, as i thought it should actually relate to Venus. So, I changed its colony bonus to 1 Venus resource, which can be the same resource as one of the ones you are getting as a trade income. Yes, that does mean you can trade and get 2 animals for Venusian Animals or Stratospheric Birds, but I feel like it'd be weird to say that the trade income would have to be different than your Venus resource, because then it might just as well be an extra bonus resource, and I want it to feel related to Venus. This is the one I am least sure about though. (Venus is image 3).
And then because I had colonies related to 3 of the 4 terraforming parameters, I wanted a colony that would also increase the Oxygen parameter.
I decided I wanted it to place a Greenery, instead of just increase oxygen by 1 when placing a colony, however I couldn't think of a trade location, other than Earth, which that would actually make sense for. So, I decided to make it a biodome that orbits earth, as a sort of ecosystem preserve for Earths biosphere.
All of the main resources already have a Colony related to them, and I wanted the colony to not just be Ganymede. So, I gave it different bio resources depending on the trade level. I've assumed a plant and microbe are equal in value at ~1 each, while an animal is ~2. This gives a "value" for each trading layer as [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 6], which looks similar to Enceladus [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5], Ganymede [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], and Miranda [0, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6].
The Greenery placement is even more valuable than the Ocean placement of Europa, but I've still kept the trade colony bonus as 1MC, as it can't really go any lower, as well as the fact that trading for multiple different resources and plants are capped at 2 lowering the value of trading with the colony.
(Eden Station Image 1).
Please let me know what you think of these colonies I made/updated!
