Here is another screenshot after making truce with AI, I instantly obtained 4 colonies with 10 hated sectors, that's 20 turns of terraforming. I use the operation every turn from turn 1 (and doctrines of course) and still have hated terrain in my own colonies also. I didn't have a chance to use dwarf operation to increase production because I have no operational points left. The good side is that I have operation defense/offence on par with extreme AI, operation techs are my highest techs and I keep researching them, quite unusual.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2383758259

Yeah, I experienced this myself too (and got lots of rioters despite rushing Recreactional Domes - in a way this was also a realistic penalty for annexing enemy colonies).

I think a slight cost reduction is fine. The terraforming costs add some complexity to the development of your own colonies, so I don't want to reduce it too much, though.

Thank you!

The disliked terrains do indeed sometimes feel pretty punishing, especially if you kinda need the recources (like an early Fungal Food sector which is hated by certain factions).
I would personally actually either see a decrease of the 'hate' on those terrains, or let liked terrain give a slight upside (like +2 modifier). I personally would rather see the first one, because happiness actually being a recource is something I personally prefer. In the base game happiness didn't matter after a certain point because it didn 't carry over, and happiness spam was only useful if you did get it at once to trigger happiness events instead of all at once and loosing a lot due to overflow.

Is it possible to add a research/tech that makes the terraforming cheaper? So that you can't expand as good early game, but once you get certain techs, have no longer problems going on a warpath and absorbing your enemy colonies?

Originally posted by Nordos/atord:

Is it possible to add a research/tech that makes the terraforming cheaper? So that you can't expand as good early game, but once you get certain techs, have no longer problems going on a warpath and absorbing your enemy colonies?

I have the opposite problems. Early game I am low on both energy and casting points and then I have both so making terraforming cheaper early game would be the best for me. I played a game where I started terraforming on turn 1, it was an awful idea, I missed doctrine because 8 turns was too much to wait (it is still 6 turns after the nerf from 16 to 12 operation points).
Though I do like the idea of making it easier to absorb enemy colonies.

So, you both agree that a minus 6 penalty would be better than minus 8 for hated terrain? Personally I think that the happiness buildings can deal with the -8 penalty good enough but i'm not totally commited to this values ;)

Happiness buildings don't help much when you capture a colony with -32 happiness penalty on top of penalty from population. The penalty removes any choice, I always build temple first, garden second, all population is in happiness slots. Normally you have choice to build defences, units, sectors. The mod made me see unhappy colonists (3 in one colony!) for the first time in my 1800 hours, that was interesting.

Yeah, as sandman said. It currently is too punishing. I recently steamrolled an AI and ... well, turns out Assembly hates where Amazons live.
Sometimes you don't really want to t erraform certain sectors either, leaving you kinda crippled and forced to research and build certain structures.

On a sidenote, I also dislike the mountainous sectors. They are already quite punishing in that you can't build housings there, leading often to suboptimal development. I can understand that only Dvars have the technology to terraform them, but they also giving penalties on top makes it really punishing starting in an area with a lot of mountains.

I think morale should be shared between colonys and every new colony should have a moral penality that way you would need to have a high morale to found new colonys. That way terraforming could be still expensive. However i would find it good to have a terraforming option for every race for all resource types. As example playing assembly i can only transform to ruins (power / research) It would be good to have something for food / production too.

For what is the military infrastructure in the capital city good? It seems the military is there on max from the start while one other colonys it does not seem too strong at all.