So are you saying that the temperature, gravity, and visual skins should be considered as incorrect?
The in-game statistics used to be widely off (temperate planets with near absolute zero temperatures, say), but those got somewhat fixed a while ago.
For example, Pator IV (Matar) is described as a lush paradise world in PF which has suffered somewhat under industrialization. The planetary data lists it with 306 K surface temperature (33 C) and a surface gravity of 9.87 m/s² (very close to earth's 9.81 m/s²). The other planets of PF look similarly "ok". So I would assume that at least the main PF planet numbers are roughly correct. (Obviously, those are averages, not "the whole planet looks like this"; Matar has vast somewhat cold tundras, for example.)
The Sansha incursions seemed to treat any temperate planet as inhabited.
If someone gives me a rough definition of when a planet counts as "habitable", I can provide per-faction counts (and lists, if wanted) of them ...
I made a personal list of each planet type (minus lava and plasma) near the Amarr system that have earth like conditions and should in theory be habitable. I have storm, ice, oceanic, barren, and temperate planets that all have similar gravity and temperature (with the exception of the ice planets being colder and barren planets being hotter, but not by enough to make them uninhabitable) to Earth, but if it's considered that the stats that show when you look at the planet's info are incorrect then all of that work seems like it was for nothing.
It sounds like you might be in a good position to tell us if the current numbers are reasonable, then.
They used to be way off, quite a few of them in the physically-impossible-or-really-unlikely realm (as I discovered a couple of years ago when I started doing what you're doing now, hence my current dose of :bittervet:, sorry). They've changed since then, and seem to have improved. Could you help us work out if they've improved enough to be useful?
We generally evaluate this type of data by checking whether it's:
- internally consistent: would having diameter X and gravity Y require that the planet be made of solid uranium?
- consistent with explicit canon: do the stats for and appearance of planets like Matar and Caldari Prime generally fit the descriptions we have of those planets?
My impression from comments here is that the current data isn't glaringly internally inconsistent like the old data was. I'd love more feedback on that.
We know that at least some of the planet-
skin changes are inaccurate because they conflict with canonical information we have about those particular planets. That seems to suggest the application of skins to planets was random rather than intentional, meaning that the presence of darkside lights may well be random as well (or it could be the start of something "true", and those of us who got burnt last time might be missing out through allowing our bittervethood to prevail).
As for temperature information, I've had a quick scan for sources for Earth's average temperature and have come up with numbers in the 13-15 degrees Celsius range. We're very concerned about the effects an increase of 2-4 degrees might have here on Earth, so I'm going to take a punt and say that if Matar has an average temperature of 306K = 33 degrees C either it's no longer close to the paradisical planet it once was (possible: we know it was badly polluted), or the numbers are still wrong. (When the new-new planet skins came out some of us did make jokes that the reason
Matar had been in the news because of pressure for real estate wasn't because of an influx of migrants but was due to flooding through global warming.)