I’m currently working on a personal worldbuilding/speculative evolution project involving a planet similar to Earth, albeit with some slight differences. I was hoping to use GPlates in order to create a geological timeline which I could then map changes in climate, evolution, and eventually geopolitics onto. Before diving into it, though, I wanted to get some clarification (and possibly some advice) about some things.
First, if I want to change some features of the simulated planet, such as volume or gravity, is there a way to do that?
Second, as far as I understand, plate tectonics are heavily influenced by our moon–does GPlates take that into account during simulation? And, if it does, is there a way to edit that influence in order to account for a moon or satellite with a different size or distance from the planet? (Is it possible to have more than one satellite? This bit isn’t super important, but it might be good to know if I decide I want to use this for other planets).
If any of this isn’t supported by the base software, how difficult would it be to implement? Hopefully other folks have coded things that I might be able to use in this context, but I’m also willing to try to make it from scratch if need be.
Sorry, I know this is probably a lot for just one post, but hopefully at least some of what I’m asking about is doable. Thanks!
Not directly, it’d be something you’d have to model yourself in the rotations.