Every plant grows where its climate lets it
No forest here is painted on. Each plant belongs to a family with its own climate: how warm, how wet and how bright it likes its ground. The world works out, spot by spot, which families can live there and how densely.
Dated 19 October 2026. Plant placement is in the game; regrowth runs in the current build and is still being tested.
Move your pointer across the left half: the ground on the right grows what fits that climate, in proportion to how well it fits. Axes are relative to this world, not degrees; the drawing uses open daylight.
Twelve families, twelve climates
A family is a way of living — a needle-leaved evergreen, a drought-dropping savanna tree, a moss — and every plant model is assigned to one. Each has its own preferred warmth, moisture and light. in the game
The numbers
| Family | Warmth | Moisture | Light | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conifers | 0.30 ± 0.22 | 0.55 ± 0.30 | 0.45 ± 0.40 | |
| Broadleaf, deciduous | 0.55 ± 0.18 | 0.60 ± 0.22 | 0.60 ± 0.30 | |
| Rainforest canopy | 0.88 ± 0.12 | 0.85 ± 0.15 | 0.60 ± 0.35 | cold is fatal to it |
| Savanna trees | 0.80 ± 0.15 | 0.35 ± 0.20 | 0.85 ± 0.25 | shed leaves in drought |
| Hard-leaf shrubs | 0.70 ± 0.16 | 0.30 ± 0.18 | 0.80 ± 0.25 | |
| Succulents | 0.82 ± 0.16 | 0.08 ± 0.14 | 0.95 ± 0.20 | |
| Temperate grasses | 0.52 ± 0.40 | 0.50 ± 0.34 | 0.85 ± 0.30 | the widest range |
| Tropical grasses | 0.82 ± 0.18 | 0.40 ± 0.26 | 0.90 ± 0.22 | |
| Tundra shrubs | 0.15 ± 0.16 | 0.50 ± 0.30 | 0.70 ± 0.35 | |
| Moss & lichen | 0.40 ± 0.30 | 0.85 ± 0.20 | 0.20 ± 0.25 | dries out in full sun |
| Water plants | 0.60 ± 0.30 | 1.00 ± 0.15 | 0.75 ± 0.35 | needs standing water |
| Coastal palms | 0.88 ± 0.12 | 0.35 ± 0.55 | 0.95 ± 0.30 | sand, salt and drought |
Optimum ± tolerance on axes from 0 (this world's coldest, driest, darkest) to 1. The data also holds families for stranger worlds — snow algae, plants that need no light, plants that float — not on this world and not shown here. in the data · not yet seen in a world
Gradients, not fences
A family does not stop at a line on a map: a forest thins out into scrub instead of ending at an edge. Only a few limits are hard, as in nature — water plants need standing water, and mosses dry out in full sun. in the game
How it works
How well a family fits a spot falls off smoothly as the climate moves away from its optimum, on each axis at once. One consequence: there are no banana trees on a mountain, because altitude cools the air and cold kills the rainforest family.
What decides a single spot
Temperature, moisture, soil, slope, light, snow and biome are weighed together for every spot; the same world always grows the same plants in the same places. in the game
The factors
For every candidate spot the game multiplies these together. If any one of them is zero, nothing of that kind grows there; the higher the product, the denser the planting:
- Temperature, cooled with altitude, with cold air pooling in hollows.
- Moisture, from the world's baked rainfall and whether the ground collects water.
- Soil depth: bare rock carries less than deep soil.
- Slope and altitude band, set per plant layer.
- Light, including which way a slope faces the sun, and for aquatic plants, water depth.
- Snow and ice, which rule most plants out.
- The biome's weight for that layer, and the family's fit from the table above.
The draw is deterministic: it comes from the generated world.
What grows back
Fell a tree, blast a clearing or dig the ground out, and the plants return over real time, if the spot can still support them. in today's build · being tested
How regrowth works
- First the ground lies bare for a short while: longer if the roots went with the soil you dug than if only the plant above ground was taken. Each plant's delay varies, so a clear-cut greens up unevenly.
- Then a young plant grows. A felled conifer takes about 90 real days to stand full-grown again. Tropical trees are quicker; savanna, tundra and desert plants are slower, up to several times.
- Poor ground grows slower — down to a tenth of the pace on the worst sites — but it never stops altogether.
- It runs on real time since the plant was removed, not on game time: skipping the clock forward does not speed it.
- Nothing grows back under a ship or building placed on the spot.
- Old crash craters green over: over real weeks, grass and ground cover return on the floor of an old crater, short at first and then taller. A fresh crater stays bare. Trees in craters are not written yet.
Not modelled yet: regrowth reads the world's long-term rainfall, not today's weather, and does not yet ask which way a slope faces (placement already does).
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