¶ Terraforming
Terraforming converts a captured or settled planet's type to match your homeworld type. A Lava player turns Desert worlds, Oceanic worlds, Gas Giants — whatever they grab — into Lava worlds; a Temperate player turns everything into Temperate. It's the slow, expensive way to make a foreign planet pull its weight in your empire.
Terraforming is run from the Resources view (Terraform layer).
¶ What it changes
| Changes? | |
|---|---|
| Planet type | ✅ Becomes your homeworld type. |
| Planet size | ❌ Stays the same. |
| Population | ❌ Stays the same — no penalty, no boost. |
| Buildings | ❌ Intact, including the Terraforming Command Center that ran the job. |
| Primary / secondary ore | ❌ The planet keeps the ores it had before terraforming. |
| Habitability & match bonuses | ✅ Once the type matches your homeworld, you start getting the +50% production and +50% science planet match bonus on every yield. |
This means terraforming doesn't replace a foreign world's ore — a Lava world full of Bezantium that you Temperate-ify will still produce Bezantium afterwards. The point is to put the match bonuses on top of that yield.
¶ Requirements
To terraform a planet you need three things:
- The Terraforming technology researched. See Research. Unlocks the Terraforming Command Center building.
- A Terraforming Command Center built on the planet itself.
- Terraforming "enabled" on the planet (toggled on from the Resources → Terraform view, or auto-enabled by your default setting — see below).
Without all three, the project doesn't start ticking.
¶ Cost and time
Terraforming is paid in your homeworld's Level 2 ore, drawn weekly from your empire stockpile:
| Homeworld type | Level 2 ore consumed |
|---|---|
| Lava |  Karmasas |
| Desert |  Nadzerbat |
| Temperate |  Galagores |
| Oceanic |  Miout |
| Gas Giant |  Ldwarts |
| Ice Giant |  Mankazor |
Each planet under active terraforming consumes 1 unit of that ore per week. A full terraform takes 25 weeks, so the total cost per planet is 25 ore.
That ore comes out of your empire-wide stockpile, so running ten terraforms in parallel costs ten units per week — you need a serious refining base if you want to terraform an empire's worth of new colonies at once.
If a planet's terraforming is enabled but you don't have any of the right ore in stock, nothing happens that week — no progress, no consumption. The job pauses cleanly until you have ore again.
¶ What you can — and can't — terraform
| Planet | Terraformable? |
|---|---|
| Lava, Desert, Temperate, Oceanic, Gas Giant, Ice Giant | ✅ Anything that isn't already your homeworld type. |
| Your homeworld type already | ❌ Nothing to convert — they already match. |
| Ringworld | ❌ Ringworlds are a separate end-game path, not a "planet" in the terraforming sense. |
| Ferion / destroyed planets | ❌ Special types, not terraformable. |
There's no step-by-step requirement — a Lava player can terraform an Ice Giant directly to Lava in one project. No need to go through intermediate types.
¶ Running and pausing
- Toggle from the Resources view. Each planet with a Command Center has an "enabled" switch. Off = paused; on = consuming ore weekly.
- Auto-enable on new colonies. There's a player setting (Default terraforming) that automatically turns terraforming on for any newly settled or newly captured planet that already has a Terraforming Command Center. Handy for empire-wide policy.
- Paused progress is kept. If you turn terraforming off, the work-in-progress doesn't reset — turn it back on and it picks up where it left off.
¶ Losing progress
You can lose progress in two cases — and the ore you've already spent is gone:
- The planet is captured by another empire. Its terraform progress resets to zero.
- You abandon the planet. Same — reset to zero.
Both are good arguments for terraforming only planets you have a serious chance of holding for the next half-year of game time.
¶ Tips
- Refine the right Level 2 ore first. Whatever your homeworld type is, that L2 ore is your terraforming fuel. Set up refineries for it before you start grabbing foreign-type worlds.
- Don't terraform doomed colonies. A 25-week project on a frontier world that's being attacked is a great way to feed your refining chain to an invader. Pick safe rear-area planets first.
- Stack with match bonuses. Terraforming on its own gives the planet-type match (+50% to both production and science). The planet-size match is a separate +50% — settling matching-size planets, then terraforming them, gives you the full stacked bonus on both axes.
- The original ore stays. A foreign-type world with a rare ore yield is still worth terraforming — you keep its ore and gain the match bonus.
- Use auto-terraform if you do a lot of expansion. Setting Default terraforming on means every new colony with a Terraforming Command Center starts grinding the moment it's built — no per-planet clicking.
¶ Related
- Buildings — the Terraforming Command Center.
- Research — the Terraforming tech that unlocks it.
- Resources — Level 2 ores and the Terraform layer.
- Production — the +50% planet match bonuses you're chasing.