Disasters

[BlackBox]

Well, "quakes" and "plate quakes" are the exact same thing.

ALL earthquakes are caused by tectonic plate motion. Basically it involves the edges of the plates grinding together, eventually they will slip and that is when the quake occurs.

If you want an example of how this works, push your palms together tightly and then attempt to slide one away from the other. Eventually with enough force your hand will suddenly slip. This is what happens with the edges of the plates during an earthquake.

And yes, the tsunami in 2004 altered the rotation of the earth slightly. A tsunami is caused when the ocean floor is displaced (which is usually caused by an earthquake).

By the way, do we know anything about the geology of Cythera anyway? Is active plate motion happening? (There isn't a lot of evidence for it recently on Venus). If there is no plate drift then earthquakes are not going to happen. (On New Terra, there originally wasn't but the terraforming experiment caused the plates to become geologically active again).

[Tramis]

Combine Cruiser, do your homework.  When one plate slides on top of another, that doesn't cause a quake, that causes a volcano.  OP2hacker is right about the cause of earthquakes.

As for Cythera's tectonic situation, I'm not sure.  No, Venus isn't seismically active to our knowledge, but Cythera isn't an exact carbon-copy of Venus - we just use the description to give a vague idea.  I don't think we've decided on its tectonic situation though.

[Freeza-CII]

tectonic dont mean volcanic tho.

[Tramis]

I never said it did.

this is what it means.

[Combine Crusier]

Another possible disaster that could happen is actually a bunch of a particular type..... METEOR SHOWER!

Alos you could have a type of disaster where the magma chamber beneath the ground collapses......... SINK HOLE!

[Sirbomber]

Meteor shower has been done in OP2 maps.

And if you built on top of lava you have more than sinkholes to worry about.

[Prometheus]

Sinkholes form when the roof of a cave gives way.  Since you wouldn't have groundwater on a Venus-like planet to form caves like we have on Earth, the only caves on Cythera would be lava tubes.  Lava tubes would only be found in lava flows(the black  low-lying areas in op2).  If cooling lava is going to be in op3 then sinkholes make sense.

     op2hacker, magnetic fields have nothing to do with cosmic radiation.  It's the sheer bulk of Earth's atmosphere that protects us.  Since the atmosphere of Cythera is much thicker than Earth's (the atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus is 90 times that at sea-level on Earth), cosmic rays wouldn't be an issue.

The planet's cloud cover might prove a problem for transmitting power from solar power satilites.  In theory, the satilite gathers gathers sunlight and uses the electricity produced to power a microwave beam at a microwave receiving station on the planet.

Just my 2 cents
 

[Hooman]

magnetic fields have nothing to do with cosmic radiation

Northern lights.
 

[Freeza-CII]

Ozone and the Magnetosphere both protect us how ever the ozone cant do the job that the magnetosphere does.

[Prometheus]

The Magnetosphere protects us from the Solar Wind.  The Ozone Layer protects us from UV produced by the Sun and the bulk of our atmosphere protects us from cosmic rays.

[chicer_mister]

on a venus like planet: acid rain, volcanic ash induced lightning storms, volcanoes, and evry 500 years planetary crust is melded down and repplaced.
so supervolcanoes are prety useless, especialy if they land on planet as it is about to happen, but they are plauzible.
aas for meteor shower-i don't think so, not unless planet is moving thru debris cloud

[Norsehound]

How about mudslides and geysers?

I think adding Mud as a terrain might be interesting, presumably it would bog down units for a good while after they were through it, and make other units sink in deep mud.

And occasionally you'd have geysers or mud surges, raising the 'level' of the mud and mucking everything up.

*shrugs*