Feature suggestion: Make it possible to lock the temperature

[gabriel.dac]

I've posted this on the steam board but I'm posting here as well, since people don't reply to threads there very often. So,

I've created a black Earth. It is Earth with no oceans due to the above 100 Cº temperature and it has fiery glows all around it. It looks really cool. The thing is that I want to make the planet stay that way, without cooling down. There should be a way to lock the temperature, so it won't change. Probably a button in the Temperature tab in the properties menu called "lock temperature" should do the trick.

That is also a problem when I saved the Black Earth and added it in other simulation. The temperature wasn't the same.

Edit: I decided to take a screenshot of said black earth

[The Ventifact]

This would actually come in handy for when terraforming planets and moons. Sometimes you want to set certain characteristics for a planet, but they change after using it in a new simulation. Its not just the temperature changing even after saving, things like water and ice change too.

I made a series of planets with water on the surface, but when placing them in a new simulation within a new star's habitable zone, the surface I created is no longer the same. The water either freezes or evaporates.

So a temp lock option might actually work. However, we do have to remember that this is probably happening due to the climate model in US2. Fire/lave, ice, water, even organics and mineral compositions are affected by how far or close a planet is to a star. Too close, it strips it all away. Too far, and it freezes over.

Whether we get this in the form of a "Climate Lock" or "Temp Lock" is anyone's guess. I do know that GA will figure this out in the future, so we're good. 

[gabriel.dac]

So a temp lock option might actually work. However, we do have to remember that this is probably happening due to the climate model in US2. Fire/lave, ice, water, even organics and mineral compositions are affected by how far or close a planet is to a star. Too close, it strips it all away. Too far, and it freezes over.

What you're saying is that a temp lock wouldn't be scientifically accurate, right? Well, I don't think that matters. The player will be aware that the temperature is constant because he manually chose to. It is also not scientifically accurate to instantly triple a planet's mass by simply changing the value in a field, for example. Anyway, I'm glad you agree with my idea

[Arian]

The changes after placing a saved planet in a new sim occur due to the magnetic field and the surface temperature not being saved.
Putting a saved planet will set its effective temperature correctly but the surface takes a bit to actually reach the right temperature (which at Albedo 0.3 is roughly effective temperature+ greenhouse effect=surface temperature). However, if you place the planet in a running sim, it has no magnetic field at all and the atmosphere will escape. At the right temperature the surface water will compensate the atmosphere loss for a time, lowering the surface water level but it keeps escaping. A magnetic field of 2.5+ radii should make sure your planet doesn't get "stripped"

Anyway, although the argument, changing the starting parameters of a simulation wouldn't be scientifically correct is pretty invalid¹⁾, there is nothing to say against optional parameter locks.

¹⁾Being able to change the starting parameters of a simulation is the only thing that makes a simulation scientifically useful. In that light, locking parameters enables you to simulate something you don't know the cause of but want to see the effect.

[The Ventifact]

So a temp lock option might actually work. However, we do have to remember that this is probably happening due to the climate model in US2. Fire/lave, ice, water, even organics and mineral compositions are affected by how far or close a planet is to a star. Too close, it strips it all away. Too far, and it freezes over.

What you're saying is that a temp lock wouldn't be scientifically accurate, right? Well, I don't think that matters. The player will be aware that the temperature is constant because he manually chose to. It is also not scientifically accurate to instantly triple a planet's mass by simply changing the value in a field, for example. Anyway, I'm glad you agree with my idea

No, I wasn't implying it would make it inaccurate, I just said the climate model in US2 changes a saved planet's look, like water and ice, when placed in a new simulation.  I was pointing out a possible reason for why your black earth was not the same, hence why I mentioned the climate. The climate dictates a planet's temperature, which is why it will be frozen, liquid water, or hot when placed in a new sim.

Climate in US2 overrides user input, that's why when you want to set a specific temperature for a planet, say, a hot Venus, but at the distance of our earth-to-sun, it eventually resets and levels out at the calculated temp at that distance.

Now this brings up a new idea. What if you wanted to have a certain planet trap most of its greenhouse gas and heat by making it a hot planet? For example, you terraform a planet, set a hot temperature, the atmosphere should trap that heat and NOT equalize just because the simulation wants to. An override, so to speak, instead of the climate itself being the main override. That would be cool. Then we could have planets further way from a star trap more heat, if we so desired.

Now, if you're wondering, this is where it would become inaccurate because then you could have a planet as far away as pluto, but have it be as hot as venus (or more). Its still a cool idea because I've been wanting to save planets with certain temps, hot or cold, and have them stay that way when I place them in a new simulation.

I think we'll get there eventually.

[Magnetarhyper4436]

I don't know but locking a star's mass and increasing the size doesn't seen to change the star's temperature...

[Arian]

I don't know but locking a star's mass and increasing the size doesn't seen to change the star's temperature...

If you look closer, increasing the size of a star with locked mass doesn't change the density either. Now Density is Mass/Volume ratio so if only one of the two is changed, the ratio should actually change too.
Density is really important for a star to produce heat (see brown dwarves and how to make them). A huge mass of gas with a huge volume is not a star but a cloud.
There are some issues with locked properties still.

As for the far away planet trapping greenhouse gases example, this should become possible as soon as we can compose our own atmospheres actually. Having a big deal of, say CFC's in the atmosphere of a planet (for reasons up to your imagination) could possibly do the trick (but would likely make the atmosphere rather inconvenient for life). Still you could maybe drive it as far as making said planet heat up to a point where it simply "cleans" its atmosphere by burning greenhouse gases away in endothermic reactions.
Certainly an interesting experiment and only one of many.