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Description
I wanted to do a more unusual planet this time around. I'm always doing Earth-like planets with biospheres based on the standard carbon/water cycle used on Earth but I've been feeling a bit adventurous lately. I've been playing a lot of Sid Meier's Beyond Earth and I love the fungus biomes, though fungi by their very nature are unlikely to be the dominant "flora" of any environment. This planet is Earth-like, but has taken a very different evolutionary path. It's global oceans are unusually high in ammonia, and one could argue that the oceans are in fact mostly ammonia. The surface is dominated by organisms that use a form of photosynethsis utilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide and ammonia to produce nitrogen gas and methane. Animal life on the planet is methanotrophic, requiring methane to live as much as Earth life requires oxygen. Most terrestrial animal life appears insectoid due to the prevalence of metal-exoskeletons used to protect the flesh from UV radiation, which bombards the surface in high concentrations because the planet's atmosphere lacks free oxygen and thus has no ozone barrier to reflect UV rays. The methanotrophic lifestyle is also not as metabolically efficient as an oxygen-based metabolism is, and thus most animal life on the planet has adopted slow, energy efficient lifestyles. Due to this the variety of animal life is not as diverse as it is on Earth, though there is the interesting development of sessile predators which one might mistake for plants if they didn't try to kill and eat you when you go too close. The surface of the planet is quite balmy despite being far from the parent star thanks to an atmosphere rich in methane and carbon dioxide, both of which act as powerful greenhouse gases trapping what little heat the planet gets. This planet has no native intelligent life and no sapient species has expressed interest in colonizing it, so it remains a sleepy little world floating all alone in the vastness of space.

Description
I wanted to do a more unusual planet this time around. I'm always doing Earth-like planets with biospheres based on the standard carbon/water cycle used on Earth but I've been feeling a bit adventurous lately. I've been playing a lot of Sid Meier's Beyond Earth and I love the fungus biomes, though fungi by their very nature are unlikely to be the dominant "flora" of any environment. This planet is Earth-like, but has taken a very different evolutionary path. It's global oceans are unusually high in ammonia, and one could argue that the oceans are in fact mostly ammonia. The surface is dominated by organisms that use a form of photosynethsis utilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide and ammonia to produce nitrogen gas and methane. Animal life on the planet is methanotrophic, requiring methane to live as much as Earth life requires oxygen. Most terrestrial animal life appears insectoid due to the prevalence of metal-exoskeletons used to protect the flesh from UV radiation, which bombards the surface in high concentrations because the planet's atmosphere lacks free oxygen and thus has no ozone barrier to reflect UV rays. The methanotrophic lifestyle is also not as metabolically efficient as an oxygen-based metabolism is, and thus most animal life on the planet has adopted slow, energy efficient lifestyles. Due to this the variety of animal life is not as diverse as it is on Earth, though there is the interesting development of sessile predators which one might mistake for plants if they didn't try to kill and eat you when you go too close. The surface of the planet is quite balmy despite being far from the parent star thanks to an atmosphere rich in methane and carbon dioxide, both of which act as powerful greenhouse gases trapping what little heat the planet gets. This planet has no native intelligent life and no sapient species has expressed interest in colonizing it, so it remains a sleepy little world floating all alone in the vastness of space.