How does habitability effect game play

[Viper]

Does colonizing a world that has say 40% habitability for you current technology. Say a desert world for a mammilian race mean you can only occupy 40% of the development slots. If so why would you want to do that. That world will never develop to be anything substantial.

[blightroach]

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure habitability affects your maximum happiness. For example your mammilian race would only have 40% happiness maximum, regardless of what happens. However later on if you either gain other species that prefer that desert world, or you could even genetically modify the people on that world, to prefer desert to anything else, then they could live there happily at 80%. But really unless you have the gene technology, or that other species, or that planet is good enough (say 20 slots or so) and could potentiall be taken by other empires, there is not much point.

[Viper]

Well that does not seem as bad.. Still however low happiness can have bad effects. I was just trying to understand the mechanics of colonizing other worlds than my preferred type before doing it.

[Steven]

I thought it effect happeiness but also how much is produced on planet like from factorys along with build times ?

[Azunai]

it just affects the maximum happiness. 60% habitability (one step away from your preference) is usually still good enough. baseline happiness is 50% (ie. no bonus or malus), so people on 60% planets will work all right. you'll probably also pick up some habitability bonuses along the way so by the time you unlock colonization tech for the 40% planets (2 steps away from preferred), they can actually be 50% or better, so your pops will work without penalties.

[Apeironic_Entelechy]

Originally posted by Steven:

I thought it effect happeiness but also how much is produced on planet like from factorys along with build times ?

Yes and No. Habitability itself does not effect production efficiency but happiness does and habitability sets the pop's max happiness.

[ElanaAhova]

and low happiness also0 increases diversity, and increaes possibility of factions forming.