Terraforming

It's been bothering me for awhile.

The subject of terraforming is interesting and complex. Since we started the project I have been trying to think of ways to strike a good balance between blindingly simple and mind numbingly complex.

The issue with the terraforming is that a lot of a planets makeup comes from the system it is in and what sort of star it is orbiting.

I have to look at terraforming without the idea of having a star. It is simply assumed that the star the planet orbits is perfect for the formation of life.

Now the planet starts as just plain rock... In order for it to support life it must have a good balance of atmosphere, temperature and liquid water. The range has to be very good.

(The following is my dumbing down of the reasoning. please do not be upset if I'm a little general or inaccurate. This in no way corresponds to actual physics. merely it is a mockery of them)

Component	To Much	To Little
Atmosphere	To much atmosphere results in all planetary life being crushed and the heat going through the roof. Thing of it as like having 30 sweaters on in the middle of summer.	To little atmosphere and your planet gets cold. Not to mention water cannot exist properly. If there is not enough pressure than water boils at a lower temperature meaning at some threshold it will simply evaporate.
Temperature	This is easy to figure out. to much and the planet cooks	To little and water can't exist in a liquid state
Water	To much water and the planet becomes an ocean and can't support advanced plants and animals	To little water and the planet will be arid and unable to support plants and animals at all

So in reality the life sustaining of the planet is dependent on only 3 variables. Temperature and atmosphere. So the goal in the terraforming stage will be to get those into the proper range.

Obviously we will not get the variety of minerals and life by merely monitoring whether or not the values are in a correct range. The true fun and variety will come in playing with those ranges. So for example we have all 3 variables at the highest percent they can be. suddenly you have a planet that is hot and arid. There is plenty of water but it has difficulty moving around as the atmoshpere is to dense to allow the water to evaporate and create humidity.

Any thing that can be done to change the terra variables of the planet will affect all of them

Here are some of the things that will be made possible in order to change the planets

Meteors
Comets
Volcanoes
Earth Quakes
The addition of moons
Solar Winds

Thats the list as it stands now. the more I think about it the more I will be able to come up with. Although 6 different actions seem pretty decent to me. I can see there being one or 2 more at maximum