Replicating reality in this case might provide a better variety of size. In reality there can be gas giants that are larger than a star.

http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/space/stories/super-jupiter-is-13-times-more-massive-than-our-gas-giant

and

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=1082

I would suspect that the planets orbiting a star shouldn't be larger than the star it orbits, but shouldn't preclude the possibility of having a gas giant larger than some other star in the universe.

What I mean is more often then not Suns bigger but fair enough. 

Interesting to hear people's thoughts on the unit indicators. I really like having them, since trying to remember what "10" population represents in Sins breaks the fourth wall (for me, at least).

Brad, why not just make it a menu option? Everybody gets to be happy...

I'm putting on my science nerd panties for a second :3 Let's actually consider this.

Generally, stars can fuse hydrogen and helium in abundance at roughly 70-80 Jupiter masses, making that the generally-accepted cut-off point for red dwarf stars. Below that, any potential "stars" are only capable of fusing deuterium, making them brown dwarves.

Planets or brown dwarves, until they reach about 50 Jupiter masses, are generally smaller than Jupiter, because their gravity compresses them into a denser configuration. Most planets that are larger than Jupiter actually have a lower mass, but orbit much closer to their stars and bloat from their 1000+ Kelvin temperatures (like Bellerophon orbiting 51 Pegasi, I believe).

So to conclude, while some planets and brown dwarves are in fact larger than Jupiter, the only 'stars' they can feasibly outgrow without becoming stars themselves are white dwarves, neutron stars and other likewise hyper-dense things. But those really aren't stars by the conventional definition.

Then again, this conjecture is all pointless considering the map isn't to scale, and is actually heavily distorted by gravity and the need to display objects which have hugely different sizes.

This color system would probably work if it wasn't for the fact that they do it different than other games I've seen. Average is from 10-15 that is an earthlike world. Which would be brown/blue world. The green would irritate me, and I'm not talking about good irritation when you can't beat a opponent because it is to hard. Radioactive is green, and I have bad eyes it would be to hard to see the difference. Maybe if you mised blue with green for the good terran worlds. I actually the fact that the water is so good on some worlds its purple. Oh did you notice that you forgot to include average on your classification. Isn't heavy gravity planets red. The Terran color sceme would have to be done in a way to not mix up the extreme planet color sceme.

Agree as long as this doesn't cut down on the number of habitable planets on the map. As far as dwarf stars go you forgot brown, and red dwarfs.

Agree on this. Though this may be kind of confusing. The size of the star doesn't necessarily affect the heat of the star. Cooler stars would have closer and smaller planets. Larger planets doesn't necessarily mean more habitable. Giant stars doesn't necessarily mean more habitable than dwarfs. White or Yellow stars are probably good. Depending on how many stars are orbiting a common center that orbits around the galaxy, or if there are gass giants around.

Couldn't you convert the 12.3 to a 9 and then use the 9 as needed.  Maybe with some fuzzy obfuscation so players don't min-max it, or some sort of logarithm scale between the amounts for 8 and 9?

You've got to be very careful with that solution.  If you solve disputes with preference options too much you end up with a huge list of options that nobody wants to read through.  Plus you've got to test every blessed one of them and even then you can get blindsided by certain combinations of preferences.

I think you might have misinterpreted the original content.

The "Colour" scaling refers to the colour of a little icon displayed on a planet's info tile when selected to give a quick indication of how good or bad the planet is for colonizing (A green icon would mean a good quality planet, Class 10 or above imo). We're not actually talking about making the planets themselves Green, red, blue or orange as a representative of this scale.

Well you didn't misinterpret what I said sorry.

True, but for something that seems to divide people as much as those unit indicators, I would say it`s worth it. It would hardly be a cryptic setting. ''Show meausrement units : Check '' 

Besides, GalCiv is a Nerd Game. Nerds love settings and menus :p

In my current game of Civ, my city population shows as 9. 9 what, you ask? That's the number of workers I can assign. That number is far more useful to knowing the size of the city than knowing the population is 472,381.

In Warlock, it shows as 9, with the population in the city details. That's the number of tiles I can work. Again, the 9 is the number that actually matters. 

Depending on what the population in GalCiv 3 does, having a simple number could be a lot more useful on the main screens than 14.7b. What does that number mean in terms of how effective the planet is? Is it any different than 14.0b?

Doing that means the UI has to be designed to accommodate both, at any time, at any supported resolution. It's a worthless thing to have code and UI to support and test. 

This is like saying people are divided on the color of the sector lines. Maybe they are, but it's irrelevant in the end. People will get over it fast, no matter what way it goes. Wasting time building settings for every trivial thing is a great way to ensure development never finishes. 

Having a secondary number converting the abstract game mechanical counter into a "planetary population" for roleplaying purposes, would not hurt the first readout! And having this second number as an optional feature disabled by default, means that you are really not looking at any kind of conflict here! Because then you could like you know, not turn it on!

Not all want to have a clean spreadsheet without a soul. This is supposed to be a simulated universe, in some fashion at least. Let us not forget that! The number guys will not lose out when the number one man is in charge. So we are just asking for that little extra something, so we can pretend there is something more than a well oiled machinery running. Just because that is how some of us roll. Being the ineffective fleshlings without proper numerical conditioning.

Having the actual population as a secondary number somehwere in the details is fine. Thats a fairly common way to deal with it. But since this is a strategy game and not a sim, I want the number I need to know at a glance to be the prominent one. That's why in the games I mentioned the 9 is prominent, and the population itself is in the details. It's a good model. 

But no, no option. Just put the population number in somewhere, there is no reason to need to be able to turn it off.

This is a ridiculous thing to waste developer and testing resources having options for. In fact, there should be a ban on people trying to solve arguments on what to build into the game by saying "do all of them and make it optional!"  That's not an answer, it's a copout that just adds complexity. Doubly so for an option off by default, because the default is what 90% will use.

Good to hear you can abide less useful numbers out in the open! Options in 4x games are usually plentiful, so I doubt they represent a flat out waste of time and effort, because they help you customize the game to your own liking. Having more people liking the game is usually a good idea!

Sorry to hear you have to reply in snarky tones about "abide less useful numbers" as though someone else's opinion is so obviously less sensible than yours.  This is especially unfortunate because I do disagree with you and feel "put down" even before I got my two cents in.  My opinion may indeed be pitifully inferior to yours, but I'd like to get it out before it is rejected so dismissively.  I hope replying to you is not a "flat out waste of effort" on my part.

I will speak up for limiting the number of options put in to resolve this kind of subjective option choice.  I hear it over and over saying "Well, just this one option would be important."  That ignores the fact that every option choice is important to someone who thinks that only their one change is important enough to be the exception. There have to be some options, but it has to be recognized as possible option clutter and definitely for possible regression testing overload.  This particular choice probably doesn't affect the regression testing, but QA people usually can't make those assumptions. 

I do think that things like this are excellent fodder for non-gameplay mods, though.  I think that these choices are important to people and that is something to be taken into account, just not necessarily important enough for the devs to address directly.  With an active mod community we can achieve choice overload or choice minimalism depending on individual opinion.   I love that part of game communities like this.

The only lesson here, is that if you try to please them all, you end up making them all angry. We have established that these numbers serve no practical purpose, that is why they are "less useful". Litterally, and technically. No sarcasm intended.

But they can still have a different kind of purpose. That of storytelling, or "immersion". Why should the universe have to be modded in order to "come to life"? If we go by earlier argumentation, many people will not use mods at all.

Sorry, but an option to turn off showing fluff data in a tooltip is a total waste of time implementing. Is it going to block all fluff data, or just that one? What if I want to see fluff manufacturing capacity but not fluff population? We now need an entire array of options, or to make the UI editable in game. Which the overwhelming majority of users will never do. 

Its the type of thing that should be solved with mods. 

I don't even understand why you'd want that option at all, since you also want the fluff data. Why would having it off by default in a tooltip make any sense at all? The proposal by Brad was to put it somewhere like that. what is the point of being able to remove it except for the sake of having more options? Developing this option isn't free, why is it worth the cost?

Dude, what are you even arguing against? The  original idea was exactly that - having the fluff numbers shown somewhere, just not on the primary display. Nobody ever said to get rid of them entirely. 

If you want to get grouchy at me for something, don't make up stuff I never said. There is plenty of real quotes to be angry at.

This is about liking the original data as they appeared onscreen. If some people do not like them, the fairest compromise is to have them hidden for those that do not like them. Tooltips should come with an on/off button, for they represent a layer that is extremely easy to ignore and forget very fast. This is not about the tooltips. This is about the original onscreen data. Thanks.

Personally I would just have the "fluff data" there, I like the measurement units. They also already have them programmed and the suggestion was to have them taken out.

Ultimately it wont break or make the game obviously but notice how this whole thread has been taken over by this arguably petty debate?  So for some obscure reason it seems that some people like them. 

I think a screen full of numbers is easier to look at with the measurement units, especially when all the numbers mean different things. I made an experiment and fetched my last Bank statement. They put the $ beside every amount on the sheet, despite basically every amounts being money.

So, well, I think its food for though at the least :p

( Edit: I thought about it for a minute and I guess the $ is useful to differentiate it from other currency accounts, for those who have them )

I was talking to the guy talking about me talking to you. So now you are talking to me about that. As you might understand, this is bound to cause some confusion, sooner or later. He he.

Ah. Yeah, that is certainly going to mix stuff up. Cheers! 

I got lost in the references, but I am glad to hear that we figured out how to disagree.  I think that's what we did.

Actually, I vote for fluff stuff.  Well, if I had a vote, I'd vote for fluff stuff.  Well, I do have a vote, but since I'm signed up for beta, I guess it doesn't count yet. 

People are seriously getting hung up on the whole "Fluff numbers" thing. Basically every post is about it lol.