not possible, they already drastically reduced texture quality in a lot of areas and removed the 2nd terran, 2nd ice, 2nd desert and 2nd volcanic. Really, this game has had its fill, time to upgrade the entire game and give me back my quality models.

@Bilun - The culture bonus is a percentage increase of what the planet is generating currently; with the total amount being determined by planet type (i.e., Terran and Oceanic are better for social specialization, so can be upgrading further than say a Volcanic).  The max culture bonus is 100%.

@Ibnpatuta - No trailer is planned, but we'll post some screenshots on the site once we finalize the planet textures.

@Timmaigh - Forbidden Worlds contains 40 planet bonuses; the original game only has 37, so I think I did enough.  Unfortunately given current limitations, we cannot add more races or even very many more meshes, without blowing our RAM safety limit.

 The number of those new bonuses is not a problem, its their nature - i assume they are going to be some kind modifiers/multiplicators, giving the planet in question ability to hold more population, or some trade income bonus, or few percent faster ship construction etc, etc... that is all nice and well, but it is still just different numbers. That is not as exciting, as it could be, if in order to take these bonuses you would have to beat some fancy new opponents, like left over ancient starbase, small alien fleet with some unique abilities, etc... 

Anyway, what does very many means?   Cause i obviously was not thinking about many and by additional races/factions i mean maybe 3-5 with 1-2 new unique units each.  Is that way too much?

It means due to engine limitations they just can't add any new models and textures since if they do they're likely to exceed the 2GB RAM limit, which means the game will minidump/crash every time someone tries to play a game.  The only way we're getting a major expansion to Sins at this point is with Sins 2.

May I suggest that social specialization also increase allegiance?  Going to be hard to choose culture + population over trade + production when trade dominates your income source (population is mitigated by allegiance) and the "social" planets like terrans are actually the best for production since they hold the most structures..

Great news!

But I must ask again:

-When You guys release playable Pirate Fraction?

If that was true, he would probably say "we cannot add any new meshes" - instead of "very many",

I am not native english speaker, so i may be wrong though. 

Never.

The way I interpreted it was since their options for adding new meshes are extremely limited they're just not going to bother.  Right now the only way around that 2GB is with modular folders like a few mods have done, but that just isn't possible for the base game.  This of course is why everyone wants a 64-bit engine so the 2GB limit goes bye-bye and everyone can start adding a crapton of new stuff again.

There's also the constant calls for multi-threading, but that's really only to deal with late-game lag since Sins runs entirely on one CPU core instead of the 4 cores people commonly have.

Well that is very exciting to hear! 

And on the nitty gritty level, from what you've described it, it sounds like a mulitiplicative increase(with respect to to existing +x% culture rate tech tree upgrade).  AM I correct in this assumption?  Which is to say with perhaps +50% culture rate from techs would a social-specialized Terran planet be putting out 300%  (1+.5)*2  or 250% (1+1) of it's original base culture rate from culture structures?

FYI, I can confirm what Yarlen said earlier...make sure you have your texture filtering set to at least 4x if you want to avoid polar pinching!

So, just to clarify...there will be no new icons/pictures for the new textures, right?  So, modders, we dealing with those?

Thank you for your response, Yarlen - I look forward to the screenshots.

One question, though - will the newly added planet bonuses have major effects on the planets they are on? At the moment, the bonuses are relatively minor (except for Space Ponies), and I was wondering if the new ones would affect the planets in more drastic ways.

I love the informed (modders/long time sinners?) vs. ill-informed comments in here.  Shows who has the colors.

Depends on the bonus in question. There are several that are extremely powerful, like Fortress World. Others, such as if you discover a planet with an existing government, have many effects.

No new icons; there won't be new pictures for the existing planet types.

Hmm sounds interesting, gives exploration a bit more taste in single player mode, I like it At last not all will be useless or small bonuses like in the original game where no planet bonus has high impact on anything..

You know something about Ferrus worlds? Can you tell me from where did you get your information and what is a Ferrus world exactly? I was unable to find this expression on the internet, though I am familiar with exoplanet types and categories so it bothers me much that a common planet type (because it will be incorporated in Sins..) and I haven't even heard about it..

I would be interested in that too. And what is Fortress World, that sounds good.

Kinda sounds like it will be a special planet, like the gas giant.  Maybe a massive electromagnetic field disrupts electronics?

Either way it sounds like a good DLC, just wish they were more clear on what it contained.

Giving a statement made by Yarlen earlier, this (or something similar) is probably the inspiration for the new planet types...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/earthsized_planets.html

I would assume the "Ferrus" planet is basically a pure iron planet...

If I may make a suggestion, change the name to Ferrous as that makes far more sense....

exactly . with high gravity

Ferrous (Fe²⁺), in chemistry, indicates a divalent iron compound (+2 oxidation state), as opposed to ferric, which indicates a trivalent iron compound (+3 oxidation state).^[1] This usage has mostly been deprecated, with current IUPAC nomenclature with names containing the oxidation state in bracketed roman numerals instead, such as iron (III) oxide for Fe₂O₃.

This will be a great DLC. Well worth my $5 and i wish you could pre-order the DLC already. So want it now! LOL. But can wait. When i read the facebook page post on this DLC i mentioned to all my Sins friends who had not seen the post and they were like. I want it already. LOL. Stradock Entertainment and Sins of a Solar Empire franchise certainly know what their players want!

Great Job. Keep the great potential DLC's and expansions coming to a great game franchise!

gumble

Yup - here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_planet

I just thought Iron sounded kinda meh, so I went with Ferrus for the naming.

You'll find out. It's lore-related, otherwise I'd tell.

You are right, the name is awesome and creative, though I expected you to use existing planet types, but it's ok, this sounds good and suggest what this planet is. The lack of reference caused me to get disoriented on what it might be, I knew it has something to do with iron just wasn't sure.

Aaaah. cant wait.

BTW, this lore related stuff, and things tied to a "dark past of Sins universe" - where is it going to be "described" or "explained"? I doubt the planet ingame infocard is going to hold info in regard to what Fortress world is lore-wise, And obviously, there wont be any campaign or some kind of opening cinematic i guess... there is no "encyclopedia" inside the game either. So are these things going to be posted here on the site, under that lore section, or is it going to be part of the manual?

Apropos, talking about campaign. I think, if you consider other DLCs for the game in the future (and you should, unless you plan to work on Sins 2 right away), this would be probably  a right time for the campaign/scenarios (as DLC). Personally i would prefer more of the gameplay related stuff to be added, as i am not really into playing SP campaigns (i only ever finished Homeworld campaign and regret not finishing Star Command Revolution), but given the fact, you cant really add a lot due to the RAM limitations.... i guess lot of people would be actually happy, if you finally gave them some "missions" to beat. And more narrative along the way. 

Especially if it's some sort of horrible death planet.