Terraform

Terraform adds 5 building fields to a planet. You pay for it in credits and it happens the moment you confirm. There is no build time, no resource cost, and it does not use up the planet's build slot.

Fields are the hard limit on how much a planet can hold. Every level of every mine, building and power plant sits on one field, so a planet with 120 fields can only ever carry 120 levels of structures. When the Fields bar on the Buildings page fills up, nothing new goes up until you tear something down or buy more room.

What it costs

The price depends on how many fields the planet already has, not on how many of them are in use. Rescuing a cramped colony is cheap. Pushing a big planet past 300 is not.

Fields on the planet	Cost for a full +5 step
Under 100	5,000
100 to 149	7,500
150 to 199	10,000
200 to 249	15,000
250 to 299	30,000
300 to 319	60,000

Credits belong to one universe, so you pay out of the balance for the universe the planet is in. There is no limit on how many times you can terraform the same planet, only the cap below.

The 320 field cap

320 fields is the ceiling and nothing gets past it. Once a planet reaches it the Terraform button disappears from the Buildings sidebar and the Store card reads Unavailable.

The last step is not always a full one. The game adds 5 fields or takes you to 320, whichever is smaller, and the price follows the fields you actually receive. A planet sitting at 318 gains 2 fields and pays 24,000 rather than the full 60,000. The panel and the confirmation both show the fields the planet can still take.

What can be terraformed

Planets only. Moons, Hephaestus Class Attack Platforms and NPC encounters cannot be terraformed at all. If what you have selected is not a planet, the Store card says so and the button is dead, so switch planets first.

Moons grow a different way. A moon's fields come from its Lunar Base: three fields per level, plus one. Upgrade the Lunar Base and the moon gets bigger.

Where the button is

Two places, same purchase:

• The Fields panel down the left of the Buildings page. It shows fields used against fields available, then the Terraform button with the current price on it. On a narrow screen the panel is collapsed, so tap the fields count to open it.
• The Terraform card in the Store, which sits under the More menu.

Either way a confirmation window opens first. It names the planet and shows the price before you commit. Read the planet name. Terraform always works on the planet you currently have selected, and there is no undo and no refund.

If your balance is short, the button turns into a link to the Credits page instead of firing the purchase.

Is it worth it

Terraforming is the only way to make a planet you already own bigger. Nothing moves and nothing is lost. The buildings, the stored resources, the coordinates, the moon in the slot, all of it stays exactly where it was. You just get more room.

The catch is the price curve. Five fields is one more level of a mine and not much else, and at the top band that works out at 12,000 credits per field. It is best value on a small colony that is otherwise stuck at its ceiling, and on a planet good enough that you are never going to give it up.

Terraform is not one of the Lucky Draw prizes in SFC2. The board pays out ore, crystal, hydrogen, ships and more tokens. Fields are bought, not won.

Other ways to get fields

• Teardown. Taking a structure down one level hands the field straight back. It costs a third of what that level cost to build and it takes time on the build slot, but it costs no credits. See teardown.
• Colonize something bigger. A Gaia Class Colony Ship sent on a colonize mission rolls the new planet's fields from the slot it lands in. Slots 4, 5 and 6 average the most, every roll gets a flat 25 fields added on top, and roughly one colonization in six rolls a wildcard somewhere between 220 and 320. The floor is 40. You can hold 10 planets at a time, so a bad roll means abandoning that colony before you can try the slot again.
• Your homeworld always starts at 163 fields, whatever slot it lands in. Only colonies are a gamble.