The habitable zone of a star is the area between the minimal and maximal distance from the star that life can exist. Usually taken as the zone around a star where water is a liquid on the surface of a planet.

so .. a place where planets can orbit and outside the zone its just "an empty space"?
I think an indicator would be that within the zone I can see my icon on the map .. outside the zone no icon.

That it?

Planets can orbit in or outside of the zone; anywhere's fine as long as they're in the star's gravity well. Inside the zone is simply where life could conceivably exist, whereas outside it - either too close to, or too far away from the star - is the opposite.

It's mostly just a nice little in-game indicator, same as the star type roughly determining how many planets/what type/where they orbit and so on.

sorry man but you said absolutely nothing understandable to answer my question

Originally posted by sh3riff:

sorry man but you said absolutely nothing understandable to answer my question

Then I admittedly don't know what exactly you were asking, I guess?

You asked "What is habitable zone?", and I said "life could exist within that zone" as part of my answer. Which is true; a habitable zone is where life can exist in a star system, as we currently understand things.

Originally posted by sh3riff:

what is habitable zone?

In the context of this game I don't think it exists as a concept. (Or it if does it only occurs as "flavor text" in the description of planets)

You play as a mech robot, and there are no people or animals in the game; so habitual zone is irrelevant to gameplay.

You can mine and build factories on any solid planet in the entire game. Environmental conditions have no effect on you, the factories, or the combat. Doesn't mater if the planet is closer to the star than Mercury is, farther from it than Pluto, orbits it directly or orbits as the satellite of gas/ice giant. All solid planets are the same size and you can build on all of them.

(Okay, wind and solar strength mater for wind turbine and solar panel power generation but the rest of your factory doesn't care if there's no air or if its constantly blowing a hurricane)


And the only non-solid planets are the gas of ice giants.

Originally posted by sh3riff:

so .. a place where planets can orbit and outside the zone its just "an empty space"?
I think an indicator would be that within the zone I can see my icon on the map .. outside the zone no icon.

That it?

Not empty space. It can contain planets that orbit too close or too far from the sun to sustain life. Think of it like a donut. In the hole or outside the donut, conditions are too harsh for life to exist. Inside the donut is the "goldilocks" zone. Things are just right.
The habitable zone has no meaning in this game. Its just part of the astrophysics the game included as an extra parameter.

Habitable zone is a zone which is habitable.

Originally posted by sh3riff:

sorry man but you said absolutely nothing understandable to answer my question

You asked a question which has a stock astronomical answer.. just Google the same question and you'll get the same answer. Pretty much all Sci-Fi games use the same designation, although 'life' is just our designation of 'some form of carbon based life form as we could conceive it'.
Within the confines of this game the concept has no bearing on gameplay. In Galactic Empyrion for example it makes a huge difference.

Every star has a area around it known as the habitable zone, an area of space that is at the right distance away from the star for liquid water to exist on a planet. Earth is in our suns habitable zone. If we were farther away, water would freeze, if we were closer to the sun, water would evaporate.

I never paid attention to it, but I'd assume planets with plant life, oil, organic crystals, and liquid water will all be in this zone in the game (as all of these aside from possibly water could not exist without being in the habitable zone), so it's probably not entirely mechanically devoid of meaning. Coal should be as well, but the game definitely takes liberties with it for the sake of smoothing out the early game. But if you can see the resources on a planet, that's much more useful for game purposes.

The habitable zone is the orbital distance at which astronomical bodies can have liquid water on it's surface. It has nothing to do with life being possible or present in this zone other than the fact that the carbon/water based life that we know of in the universe required liquid water to emerge. There may be other types of life out there such as silicon/ammonia based life forms that could exist outside of it, or potentially some kind of exotic life forms that we don't know about.

It's a bit confusing with the naming as many planets that exist in habitable zones are certainly not habitable by earth like life, but it really just serves as a guide in exoplanetary studies to say that a body in this zone can support liquid water on the surface, so we should take a closer look at those and ignore the ones outside of it.

some people are a bit confused about the "where life can exist" part


the habitable zone is a set of orbits (mostly a circle .. elipses wont work all the time) in which water is neither frozen nor evaporating and therefore life such as ourselves is possible.. since the only reference of life is the one that allows the kind of life you can find on earth

but who is to say that there isnt any other form of life ????


so the habitable zone should be renamed to "liquid water zone" to prevent any misconceptions what this zone is about


funnily enough Europa lies far out of the "habitable Zone of our Sun" but its theorized that beneath the Icy Shell is a Ocean of Liquid Water heated through Friction (cause the moon orbits Jupiter which Tugs on the planet all the time)

>There may be other types of life out there such as silicon/ammonia based life forms that could exist outside of it, or potentially some kind of exotic life forms that we don't know about.

The best-reasoned speculation I've encountered is _The Anthropic Cosmological Principle_ by Barrow and Tipler. They make a case that any extra-terrestrial life likely to exist will be remarkably similar to life forms on earth.

But paradoxiically perhaps, they believe that anything we would call intelligent life is very rare indeed, despite the anthropic principle itself suggesting that it would be commoner than people used to suppose.

The description is in AU
I just wonder what it does .. what it means .. what it affects