Hydrocentric thoughts?

[jerrypocalypse]

I'm playing aquatic Lithoids at the moment and am trying to figure out if the Hydrocentric ascension perk is any good. Some searches seem to reveal that some love it and others hate it. The 5% extra production and reduced housing use from pops seems kinda "meh" by itself for a perk slot, but I'm mostly curious about how the ice thing works and the decision to increase your ocean planet size. I can't find much information about that specific action.

[mss73055]

Rocks tend to get to the bottom of this matter fast :)
Hydromancer adds upto +3 sectors to waterworlds. But you have to micro your starbases for the ice hunt and you have to search by hand all your systems for ice.

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by mss73055:

Rocks tend to get to the bottom of this matter fast :)
Hydromancer adds upto +3 sectors to waterworlds. But you have to micro your starbases for the ice hunt and you have to search by hand all your systems for ice.

Ah, so there's a limit to increasing the size by 3? I can't take a 20 size world and make it 25 or even 30?

Also, does it consume the ice or are they infinite like normal system resources? I checked last night when I was eyeballing the perk and I have a system with I think 4 ice asteroids already.

[Xaphnir]

It consumes the ice. If you want to keep expanding planetary seas, you have to get more ice.

I think you can do it once per asteroid and 3 times per frozen world.

And don't forget that in addition to buffing the aquatic trait, it also gives you access to the deluge machine colossus weapon and gives -25% terraforming cost.

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

It consumes the ice. If you want to keep expanding planetary seas, you have to get more ice.

I think you can do it once per asteroid and 3 times per frozen world.

And don't forget that in addition to buffing the aquatic trait, it also gives you access to the deluge machine colossus weapon and gives -25% terraforming cost.

Good point. I'm running a MegaCorp so I'm usually fairly high on the energy income so that cost seemed a little less important, and I'm not sure that I'm going to take the colossus weapon perk so I won't be able to take advantage of that aspect, so I kinda forgot about those.

Tha is for info on the ice usage. Is the above post correct that you can only increase a planet's size by a total of 3? Or if I have enough ice asteroids and frozen planets, can I make it even larger than that?

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by jerrypocalypse:

Tha is for info on the ice usage. Is the above post correct that you can only increase a planet's size by a total of 3? Or if I have enough ice asteroids and frozen planets, can I make it even larger than that?

Yes, it's limited to 3 per planet

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by jerrypocalypse:

Tha is for info on the ice usage. Is the above post correct that you can only increase a planet's size by a total of 3? Or if I have enough ice asteroids and frozen planets, can I make it even larger than that?

Yes, it's limited to 3 per planet

Shoot, it seems like it would still be far better to just focus on terraforming other planets to oceans instead. Though I suppose you could still do both.

[mss73055]

You can terraform to other planets, but without the cost reduction.
Aquatic is a 7-in-1 genetic trait, 10-in-1 if you do the Hydromancer ascendancy.
Add to this bio-engineering and you got one nice prime species.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

It consumes the ice.

It does not consume the ice.
You are limited to one ice project per ice mining station at a time.

If you have two nearby (there is some hidden range limit) then you can do two planets at the same time. When they finish you can do them again.

Ice Mining also increases mining station output in that system by 10%

The +3 from expanding oceans stacks with Mastery of Nature, the perk for completing Expansion(?) and Orbital habitats. Giving you a total of +10 districts to a planet.

Keep in mind Agrarian Idyll replaces Anti-Gravity Engineering with a Agrarian tech and will not allow Orbital Habit tech.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

It does not consume the ice.
You are limited to one ice project per ice mining station at a time.

When did they change it to that? Can't find anything in any patch notes mentioning changes to ice mining stations after release.

[mss73055]

In 3.4 I noticed the lack of consumption of asteroid belts as well.
Maybe this was the intention after all.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

It does not consume the ice.
You are limited to one ice project per ice mining station at a time.

When did they change it to that? Can't find anything in any patch notes mentioning changes to ice mining stations after release.

I dunno if there ever was a limit.

I just got the DLC last weekend. I had no issue using the decision on over a dozen planets. The only message I saw was "There was no free ice mining stations."

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

I dunno if there ever was a limit.

I just got the DLC last weekend. I had no issue using the decision on over a dozen planets. The only message I saw was "There was no free ice mining stations."

I did a game with Hydrocentric shortly after release. There were definitely limits on the number of times you could use the ice from a system when I played that game. And the in-game tooltip still says you can only use asteroids once and frozen planets three times. Might be a bug.

[JustSmile]

You're forgetting it unlocks deluge. Deluge is absurdly good, you instantly get a perfect tailor-made world without waiting years for terraforming or bothering with trash pops missing your trait.

[jerrypocalypse]

Originally posted by JustSmile:

You're forgetting it unlocks deluge. Deluge is absurdly good, you instantly get a perfect tailor-made world without waiting years for terraforming or bothering with trash pops missing your trait.

Don't really want to wipe out people, and it requires a second perk tailored to war.