Make Duna's big canyon a biome of its own

[Snark]

Duna has a surprisingly small number of biomes-- much fewer than its own moon, which has always struck me as odd.

The planet has a broad, prominent canyon, which I always took to be an homage to Valles Marineris. Back before we got biomes across the solar system, I had always assumed it would get its own biome; it's so distinct. I'd say it's Duna's most prominent feature, other than the ice caps.

Was very surprised when Duna finally got its biomes... and no love for the canyon.

Show of hands?

[Commander Zoom]

*puts hand up*

Definitely.

Custom Biomes gives both the big valley and the 'lesser valley' (the one that follows a snake's curve and empties onto the northern plains) their own biomes, I'd expect to see at least the first in stock.

[jwbrase]

I'd in general like to see prominent features and easter eggs across the Kerbol system given their own biomes. For example, "Chicxukerb" crater on Kerbin (maybe a Biome each for rim, sea, and peak)and each of the Munar arches (if we found features like that on the IRL moon, could you imagine each one of them not being a huge science target?).

[Zombie_Striker]

*Raises both hands*

This definitely. It needs it's own biome. The thing is there should be a whole lot more biomes for each planet/moon in the game, but there really is no need. Biomes do nothing but add more science, that really is just a number.

The way the game treats Science and biomes needs to be revamped. There really needs to be a reason to have biomes besides points.

[Jonney5]

Yes please. I would love to see more distinct biomes for Duna.

[Snark]

Incidentally, this is on my to-do list for mods.  I've already released a couple of mods to add biomes to other planets:

...Duna's next on my list.    No promises that it'll be soon, because I've got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, but the next time I put out a biome mod will be for Duna.

[swjr-swis]

1 minute ago, Snark said:

...Duna's next on my list.    No promises that it'll be soon, because I've got a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, but the next time I put out a biome mod will be for Duna.

Readying the pitch fork if this doesn't come out before <insert a random time frame here>.

[Andem]

*Hands! Both of them!*

[Renegrade]

I concur.

Duna could use more biomes, and better ones.   (and Mun and Minmus, fewer biomes)

Duna is an interesting place to land - the thin atmosphere makes for interesting challenges and also interesting opportunities (I tend to favor a parachute-assisted landing, but there's also high speed plane-type affairs or pure engine landers etc), and naming some of it's distinctive features as separate biomes would add incentive to do more of those interesting biomes..instead of doing like 397 billion Mun landings and 285 million Minmus landings...

[blu3wolf]

*raises hands*

[Joonatan1998]

I think some adjustment to the biomes on neraly all planets would be nice, they simply don't work in any consistent way.

Airless bodies have too many extremely similar biomes, but actually different areas often don't have them.

[tater]

This reminds me. Squad should stop using "biome" for places without life.

[KerikBalm]

Yea, they should just be called "regions"

But which canyon are you referring to?

Heres an image which sort of highlights the canyons of duna

Although due to the way maps are shown in game, you should flip it horizontally (ie left and right)

Anyway, there seem to be 3 valleys... one goes tot the crater where the face on duna is... I like to land at the mouth of that one. The other is the vaguely sigmoidal one on the right in the above image, the other doesn't look so obviously like a channel, and it looks more like its meant as an old seabed with a channel flowing into it. Note that the above image uses a slightly modified heightmap, as the middle channel (the face associated one) was just barely not connecting, and the channel flowing into the one on the left was not full... the one on the right wasn't even a single connected channel... I had to make a 2nd heighmap adjusting those features to get them to be filled with water as in the above image

If you raise the water level a bit more....

This one is an unmodified heightmap, aside from being uniformly lowered so that some parts were below sea level... its still not clear what the "big canyon" that you are reffering to is. I'm tempted to think its the one on the right, or the "face-associated" one near the center.

 

 

Vallis marinaris is a rift valley, none of those look like rift valleys.

Vallis marinaris doesn't actually refer to the outflow channels at the "east" end of the rift valley.... ie the stuff emptying into Chryse Planitia like this:

Anyway... that reminds me... I'm still somewhat interested in modding duna further. I've since added a greent tint to the low elevations around the water... but it really needs some deltas, tributaries, a recognizable volcano or two, etc etc. I sort of gave up on that and just used a mars heightmap... I much prefer the mars heightmap.

If I go back to my duna efforts, perhaps I should also revise the biomes as well, as I did for mars.

 

 

[Tyko]

@Snark More biomes are great and tying them to interesting geographic formations give you the added bonus of getting great vista to appreciate. 

[Codraroll]

All the bodies need location-based biomes, in my opinion. The Mun has several distinctly named craters, why don't the other planets? Craters, mountains, valleys or other anomalities need to be addressed a little better.

Also, biome-specific contracts need to be a thing. "Plant flag on Gilly's Poles" or "bring back surface samples from the Farside Crater". It would encourage players to land in interesting places rather than the first and easiest location they come across.