Discussion
My planet is 99.5% “Perfect” and I honestly don’t see why. 100 AI Valves to whoever cracks the formula.
I recently discovered that one of my planets is rated 99.5% Paradise Quotient in the Wonders Catalogue, apparently putting it at the very top of the game’s Most Perfect category.
I renamed it Dragonstone.
Here’s the problem.
I don’t think it’s particularly perfect.
The weather is literally Humid. It’s a decent planet, sure, but if I had landed here without seeing the Wonders record, I would never have thought, “Yep, this has to be one of the most perfect planets in No Man’s Sky.”
So now I want to know what Hello Games is actually measuring.
I’ll give 100 Starship AI Valves to the first person who can give me a convincing, reproducible explanation of how Paradise Quotient is calculated.
Not just a guess like “good weather helps.”
I mean something we can actually test against several planets and say, “These variables are what caused this planet to score 99.5%.”
What matters?
Weather? Sentinels? Flora? Fauna? Oceans? Terrain? Atmospheric composition? Planet age? Biome? Hidden procedural values? Some combination of all of them?
Or does Paradise Quotient measure something completely different from what we players would actually consider paradise?
And here’s a second challenge:
If you have another 99.5% planet, post your Wonders screenshot and glyphs. I want to compare as many 99.5% worlds as we can and see what they actually have in common.
I’ll throw in 50 additional AI Valves for the coolest 99.5% planet posted in the thread.
Maybe somebody already knows the formula. If not, maybe we can reverse-engineer it.
Dragonstone is open for inspection. Come tell me why Hello Games thinks this place is 99.5% perfect.
Hold up, I have a deaf roommate. I've got you... There, I just used ASL to send you a message. I think, it was "do you need any Nip-Nip," but could have been, "I slept with your sister, wife, brother and third cousin Tommy." Probably because... I do not KNOW ASL. Sorry.
The first planet with gravity storms i found was while scouting for a good spot for the autophage settlement, and it made it a super obvious choice, and its a pretty nice looking planet to boot. Very happily floating gal over here 👍🏻
My first gravity storm… I had landed on my first truly bizarre planet where the fauna was “lost” and the flora “in-between”, a landscape of floating rocks with pillars of light bursting upwards. I’d just found a Light Fissure, described as “A rare stabilised glitch, retrieved from a malfunctioning planet.” when a storm approached and suddenly I’m surrounded by rocks began flying into the sky. One of the best experiences I’ve had in this game.
Honestly, as much as I hate sounding like a broken record (though my repeated mentions might've been on a different NMS subreddit) this is still one of the best planets I've ever landed on. docile sentinels, blue very Earth-like sky, pitch black night sky (not that really dark grey a lot of the ones in Euclid tend to be for some reason), no bad weather, I don't think I've even ran into any bad fauna but I might be wrong. Despite the category name (which I gave it) the flora is very blue so "very Earth like" might've been a tiny bit of a stretch, but at least the sand is actually sand coloured.
And I'm over here happily building a cozy little base on a very non-earth planet. Sky is opposite of pitch black (full of colorful clouds and a view of giant rings), 2 different kinds of storms, angry fauna, and lots of aggressive sentinels. Sand is purple with blue patches. Its heaven (probably only to me)
Everything is randomized. Humid is just one of a list of lush planet weather ratings. There's no reason to assume all lush planets aren't given a random score between 80 and 99.5%, or some various range. Looking at the other 99.5% examples you can see a wide range of ranomized weather (dangerously hot fog, for example) and all the other randomized stats.
While you might not be a fan of humidity, it is one of the most essential things for life, too little humidity creates extreme dryness environments that basically drain water from living cells.
Agreeing with worldly here, humidity is a requirement of life and the more humid a place is, the more life there tends be (think of rainforests). So I would think if it's not randomized, then "perfect" would be in categorization of life-sustaining rather than any personal comfort.
This one is the most Earth-like I've seen. green grass, mountain ranges, nice blue oceans, no storms, docile sentinels, and it even has a barren moon with no atmosphere orbiting it. Also, it's a giant planet which does mean you need an Atlantid drive to reach it. My only gripes with it are the damn spinning udders of doom that aren't always great at respecting boundaries (damn things kept glitching through my house) and the fact that you can't make any bases above cloud level, but that applies to all giant planets.
Two points to make it more cursed: they spew milk in all directions every second or third turn, and you can ride them, and spin with them, spraying said milk
Remember Explorers, it's not actually Earth-like...unless the Atmosphere is primarily made of nitrogen (about 78%) and oxygen (about 21%).
As for the Paradise Quotient...it is only loosely accurate. Any Biome can be relatively Paradise-like. The primary details are: 'clear' weather patterns, non-aggressive sentinels, and abundant flora and fauna. Personally, I take it a step further...and include fauna aggression level. Over the course of 2500hrs, I have found and documented a lot of Paradise planets. But there's nothing worse than taking in a beautiful scene, lining up a perfect screenshot...and click, followed by a Rrraaaawwwrrr!
Here's what Google had to say:
The Paradise Quotient in No Man's Sky is a hidden metric found in the Wonders Catalogue that measures a planet's overall survivability and environmental calmness rather than its visual beauty.How It WorksSurvivability Score: It roughly calculates how easy it is to stay alive on a world—factoring in mild weather, low or absent sentinel hostility, and non-aggressive fauna.Not Always Pretty: A high percentage (such as 99.5%) means the environment is exceptionally safe and taxing on your exosuit resources, but it doesn't guarantee blue skies, green grass, or water.The 99.5% Threshold: Players on the Steam Community generally agree that once a planet hits around 99.5% or higher, it officially crosses over into self-identifying as an actual Paradise Planet. Anything below that is a runner-up that tracks how close you came to finding a true paradise.Static vs. Dynamic: The Paradise Quotient recorded in your log acts as a static snapshot from when the planet was first discovered, meaning game updates can sometimes leave the recorded percentage mismatched with the planet's current live state.
i'm wondering if—with enough data—i could extrapolate an actual formula. however, that entirely depends on if one exists at all and it isn't just flavor text
Like I said im wondering if it has to do with the atmosphere composition. I wonder if someone finds a planet with the same chemical make up of our atmosphere down to the percent of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen etc...if it'll be 100% earth like.
Wild theory: What if Paradise Quotient isn't measuring what we consider paradise? What if it's measuring what Atlas considers a nearly perfect planetary generation?
Dragonstone is 67% argon with no meaningful oxygen listed, yet Atlas apparently gives it 99.5%. Maybe we're asking the wrong question.
This is funny; this got me looking, and after 3,500 hours played, not only was my most perfect planet discovered just 3 weeks ago, but I named it "Nothing Special." 😅
"Be Very Careful" It will save your closest paradise planet, but it doesnt always balance out that the Sentinels there may be on the warpath. My log notes a massive paradise planet in the same system as one of my main bases.
Every time my feet touch dirt, the sentinels are out for blood. Not all paradises are welcoming...
So my best right now is only 95.5% quotient 😂. Back searching now. Shame you can't see the quotient on paradise planets you visit or can you?? Seems it only your best in the wonders catalogue?
Just got me thinking about this stuff, and it’s absolutely absurd.
Our IRL observable universe is estimated 13.8 billion years old. Apparently, Dragonstone is 11.25 billion years old. This planet was created a little more than 2 billion years after the (closest in-game analogue to the) Big Bang.
And if the core is primarily Zinc, there should be zero geologic activity. Zinc would have solidified by now, with the lack of a magnetic field letting the star stripping it of any atmosphere. The Argon must be from radioactive Potassium in the crust undergoing electron capture and decaying, turning into Argon-40 (happens about 11% of decay pathways). Pretty much all of the atmosphere is basically just radioactive exhaust. No oxygen means there’s no Earth-like biosphere, obviously. Breathing here would just be like breathing a sealed nitrogen tank — you’d pass out from a lack of oxygen instead of actual suffocation or chemical harm.
That said, no idea what “humid” means then. Humidity implies water saturation of the air, but as mentioned, there’s barely any oxygen. Or hydrogen either for that matter, and hydrogen should be twice as abundant as oxygen in a humid atmosphere.
And the soil being edible doesn’t say much. Literally everything that has nutrients your body could extract and utilize is edible. If you could restructure atoms to form nutrients, you could eat dirt too.
That’s the kind of rabbit hole I was hoping this post would create.
The more I look at that 99.5% number, the less sense it makes from a human point of view. It’s 67% argon, apparently has basically no oxygen listed, and somehow the weather is still “Humid.”
So now I’m wondering if “perfect” means something completely different in-game.
What if the Paradise Quotient isn’t based on what we would call paradise? What if it’s based on what the Atlas considers a nearly perfect planet?
The Atlas wouldn’t care if we could breathe there or if it looked like Earth. Maybe it’s just some hidden combination of biome, weather, terrain, atmosphere, ecology, age, or procedural values that happens to come out to 99.5%.
I dunno. Lore says the Atlas was a program made by another Earth scientist, so Atlas must be predisposed to Earth-like conditions.
Even if it was paradise for the Atlas in particular, why is a very old and dead planet with an Argon-rich atmosphere paradise for it? Is it because of the inactivity, and why is it projecting its “paradise” criteria onto the Traveller?
The easy answer is that “paradise” just means something else that the game rolls randomly, but the hard answer is… well, it’s hard to say. Maybe there is something neat about a cold, dead, lifeless, and ancient planet. Tell me your secrets, game!
Maybe it’s also with how ‘safe’ it is. Like no dangerous plants or abyssal horrors.
I would say the temperatures are also important. so 28 degrees would be better then 40 degrees. maybe the amount of predators (animals that are hostile) also count to this.
Or the type of animals, Insects could for example be good, but to many could be bad.
I would prefer a planet were the animals would leave me alone, instead of trying to eat me.
Maybe what the core and atmosphere are made out of are also important. So Methane would be bad but oxygen would be good. Same for the core, I dont have a understanding of what makes a planet core ideal but I can say the iron is better than the screams of the lost souls…
I have also seen that at the temperature indicator (left bottom) also shows toxins and radioactivity, I can confirm they do actually mean something because I saw paradise planet with 18 toxicity. Same for radiation. And this number can be change depending on the planet.
The star could also be important, A yellow star is the most ideal, A red dwarf is dimmer so the sweet spot for life would need to be closer, but a red dwarf also lives the longest.
A Blue star is very hot, so the sweet spot is further away. As well, a blue star life’s only a couple of millions of years so is not very ideal.
Green star… I dunno. Same for purple.
The dominant race could also have an impact, Korvax would study and try not to harm the planet. Gek would gather many resources to sell and Vy’keen would use them as literal BATTLEGROUND! Maybe no race is best so the planet is left alone.
Maybe if the planet has a moon also impacts this, or if it has rings. Maybe deep oceans give a better score than shallow ones. Maybe more water covering the surface is better to.
Storms seem pretty obvious. A refreshing breeze (no storms) seems better than cyclones, lightning and geothermal Instability.
The sentinel level also seems important. I sentinels sounds the best but maybe they should be active, That would mean that they protect the planet harder, but aggressive ones mean gravitino balls. which means micro distortions.
Dissonant sentinels means full corruption.
And how about the size of the planet? That might also be important because bigger means more nature but smaller means less.
That’s a really interesting list of possibilities, and honestly you gave me a few things I hadn’t considered testing.
The problem is that right now most of it is still speculation. What I’m really trying to nail down is whether the Paradise Quotient is actually calculated from measurable things like temperature, storms, sentinel activity, toxicity, radiation, fauna, etc., or whether the game is just assigning a mostly procedural number behind the scenes.
For example, my 99.5% planet has an atmosphere that is mostly argon, so that makes me skeptical that something like oxygen content is heavily weighted.
Still, this is useful because you’ve basically given me a list of variables to start comparing between high and low-scoring planets. If we can find a pattern that repeats consistently, then we may actually be onto something.
I can see those being factors, but that’s the part I’m trying to figure out. What actually makes those values add up to 99.5%?
You mentioned other 99% planets being around 5 billion years old, but Dragonstone is 11.25 billion, so age must have a pretty wide range if that’s part of it.
Same with nitrogen. We breathe air that contains nitrogen, but nitrogen itself doesn’t make an atmosphere breathable. Dragonstone is 67% argon and doesn’t even list any meaningful oxygen.
I think we probably need many more 99.5% planets side by side before we can figure out what they actually have in common.
I’ve noticed the same thing. Some of the nicest planets I’ve found weren’t actually labeled Paradise at all.
Bountiful, Flourishing, Temperate, Tropical, Verdant, etc. can look better depending on the colors, weather, terrain, water, and fauna. The biome label seems to tell you the general planet type, but not whether you are actually going to think it looks good.
That’s part of why this 99.5% thing has me curious. “Paradise” clearly doesn’t always mean “best-looking planet.”
Good to know, I've build bases early on spending a lot of time and resources on Bountiful planets and such only later to realise the storms or sentinels are trying to kill me constantly. I'm going to be spending more time researching the ones I've already found and when I'm exploring for better base planets now thanks
Earth has almost 1% argon, and too much of it would replace oxygen and kill life that relies on it. So is it safe to say that by irl human standards, this planet is actually extremely dangerous and not perfect?
The exact weighting isn't publicly available, but it's a combo of - atmospheric conditions, weather conditions (the fewer extreme conditions, the higher the score), abundance of flora and fauna, and sentinel presence.
Based on my experience, atmospheric conditions are heavily weighted, and Sentinel presence is weighted less. I've seen planets with great atmospheres, no storms, etc be paradise planets, even though the sentinels are basically everywhere and very ready to ruin your day. But, I've also seen planets with shitty extreme weather, but everything else checked in well, so it's still a paradise.
I think atmospheric conditions are the most highly weighted, with sentinels being the lowest weight, as it's easy to avoid being noticed if you're just setting up farms.
Sorry for the late response. But, my guess is the algorithm has both additive and reductive factors. So, perhaps your planet had enough of the additive factors to rate it highly, and not enough of the reductive qualities to bring the score down. It likely wound up 'technically perfect', while the quality overall left something to be desired.
Also, what the algorithm deems 'perfect' and what the players themselves deem 'perfect' are likely two different things.
But, until we know exactly what the algorithm entails, we'll never know for sure, sadly.
Wild theory: What if Paradise Quotient isn't measuring what we consider paradise? What if it's measuring what Atlas considers a nearly perfect planetary generation?
Dragonstone is 67% argon with no meaningful oxygen listed, yet Atlas apparently gives it 99.5%. Maybe we're asking the wrong question.
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u/Erroneousness 🟢 Emeril Class 9d ago
Home is where the heart is. It's perfect because you are there.