I've got some suggestions, not sure how feasible any of this is but:

-Make terraforming a bit more interesting. Atm there is a high barrier to entry wrt terraforming where other options are both cheaper and superior (i.e. don't have much drawbacks to them). Terraforming should not be quick or easy, but depending on what it is you're doing exactly the costs should be variable.

For example, the energy cost of 1500 seems a) too high b) arbitrary and c) why aren't the costs staggered over the lifetime of the project? The high upfront cost seems to imply that you need one big event to get the process rolling (I guess like getting an ice comet to hit a desert world to increase its hydrography percentage) but wouldn't you also need to monitor the effects and make adjustments over the lifetime? By arbitary I'm referring to how the cost is the same regardless of what planet you're terraforming, it's always 1500. Want to terraform a desert planet to arid? 1500. Arctic to ocean? 1500. Anything else>continental, 1500. It should be 'easier' to terraform to the next habitability rank, and harder as you go to the next step. Or maybe it should be the other way around, maybe it should be harder to make the first change, then easier as it goes to the next rank. Like, if I want to turn an arctic world to an ocean world, seems like all I need to do is increase the temperature to the point where the ice can melt and form oceans. If I want to desertify the planet instead, that should be *much* harder. Terraforming a tropical world into a continental one shouldn't be as hard as terraforming a tundra or arid world into a continental planet. That sort of thing.

-In addition it would be kinda cool if there were terraforming events that can aid or hinder a project, increasing its time to completion or having the completion time set forward for better-than-expected results. Maybe add ethical dilemmas as well (previously surveyed planet picked up no intelligent life signs, but it turns out there are unique and potentially intelligent life that evaded initial surveys; what do you do now?).

-That leads me to another point. Atm if you find a pre-FTL civ you can set up observation posts, but oddly not if they're stone age primitives. At least, I haven't been able to see a way to do so.

-This might be going beyond the remit of your mod but I also find it strange that uplifting a pre-FTL species to star travel leads to them resenting you.

-Going back to planets, more variability in habitability would be kinda cool, like different atmospheres or pressure or what not. That might make things needlessly complicated though. I don't really get why an ocean world would be less habitable than a continental world for instance. I can see why it would be harder to settle on an arctic and desert world if you prefer continental though.

-Maybe bigger planets should have more of a chance of higher gravity, and smaller planets and/or moons the same with lower gravity, and both can have different effects. Perhaps planets should also have a minimum size to them, but at the same time I don't know if that's really necessary (Stellaris isn't a hard sf game).

Like I said, not sure how feasible any of the above are, but maybe there's something you can work with? Love your mods all the same :)

@Stofsk: Terraforming: I think the one-time cost is just a convenience of game-coding since pretty much every other project in the game works that way and I doubt you could change that without making everything a separate event—which would be nightmarish. I do wish to expand terraforming at some point for non-habitable planets like barren and frozen world and, ideally, the current costs would be for those and the already habitable world will be much cheaper—especially since SNW allows you to colonize them right off the bat. Indeed, I might (if I can figure out how) make it an automatic process that starts as soon as you colonize the planet and takes several decades to a century to complete. I need to learn a lot more about event coding before I can take that on however.

As to Observation posts I agree and want to figure out how to do exactly that.

Regarding the other points all that will (I hope) be doable when I get around to learning planetary modifiers. I feel there should be a lot more and they should be far more common. Every colony should have its unique quirks, advantages, and disadvantages to make selection far more important. This will likely be the first thing to be addressed as it seems to be the most easily approachable to me.

Excellent points, thanks for sharing them and thanks for playing the mod—greatly appreciate it!

I was thinking about the mod this morning and came up with some further ideas/suggestions:

-Does this mod work with fewer habitable planets mod? I really like this mod but I want to try it with fewer habitable planets because at some point it kinda bugs me that there are all these habitable planets around the galaxy. I'd rather there were fewer but higher quality planets that could be colonisable rather than a glut of planets that are pretty meh. It makes colonies that much more important, which ties into how the game treats colonisation anyway.

-Is there any way to make certain planet types more common with certain star types or distance from the system sun? Like for example, arctic worlds being further from the sun than a continental/ocean/tropical world in the same system. Another example, highly energetic and short-lived stars like A and B stars not having any habitable worlds or if they do they'd be comparatively rarer, or M class stars being limited to arctic and tundra worlds (with say F stars having ocean and tropical worlds more common). G and K stars being the nice middle ground where any planet type can spawn.

-I suspect this won't work with the Belt mod (which makes asteroids colonisable) but it would be kinda cool if it could be made to work with it. That has some really nice ideas to it.

Alternatively I really like the idea someone had in the comments, where asteroid colonies were like space stations you can build with a constructor. But you'd still need to simulate the Pop mechanic somehow. This might sound like a silly question but despite having dozens of hours playtime in this game I find I can't actually recall seeing any asteroid belts in systems other than Sol. Do they actually exist as part of galaxy generation?

@Stofsk: No, the two mods both replace an identical file so, atm, they will not work together. I want to have that as an option but I'm still having issues learning to do events correctly so it may be a bit since that would be a complex one.

As to planets; distances from the sun is set by planet type--so frozen worlds will be further out, molten ones close-in, etc. Regarding star types and planets I don't think it is set-up that way but since black holes and neutron stars have their own sets it should, in principle, be possibile to do that. I will look at the files involved and see what I can come up with as that bothers me a bit too. A and B stars would be very unlikely to have more than gas giants and certainly not habitible worlds orbitting them.

I am currently looking into asteroid bases as space stations.

Is there a way to only allow the main planet types to be selected in a random empire generation?

@denialb: I suggest using the "Planet Finder" mod. I forget who made but if you search for that name you'll find it. By random empire generation I assume you mean the AI empires? They will be biased twoards their primary planet types (1 if continental, 2 otherwise) but since the scripts that auto-placed ideal worlds are disabled they will be more versitile when these aren't available. Or am I missunderstanding what you mean?

@docflamingo Apologize for my vauge comment. I was refering to the random player empire generation when starting a new game. Sometimes I enjoy spinning up an entirely random empire. I have not tested this much but with SNW I tend to only get asteroids or barren planets as my starting homeworld. Which from what I understand from your documentation I lose the bonuses from the standard planet types.