I think one of the updates also included information that synthetics could colonize toxic worlds, which they could when I played as synthetic. When the Korath were added to the game with the ability to create toxic worlds with spore ships, synthetics lost the ability to colonize toxic worlds, but it was not mentioned in the change notes.
They should not be able to colonize corrosive worlds because they will corrode without proper tech.
Here is some information about settling extreme worlds from the 3.0 patch notes.
- Corrosive Worlds: Can be colonized by Carbon based life but not by Synthetic without tech
- Bacterial Worlds: Can be colonized by Synthetic but not by Carbon without tech
- Frozen worlds: Can now be colonized by Synthetic civs without tech
- Barren worlds: Can now be colonized by Synthetic civs without tech
- Radioactive worlds: Can now be colonized by Silicon civs without tech
I think it took several more patches before everything worked correctly.
Note: One of the later updates removed the ability of silicon-based races to colonize radioactive worlds. It was never mentioned in any of the patch notes that this was done. Maybe it is a bug. I made a mod for my use to return that ability to them.
Special Note for Rhonin_the_wizard
While trying to gather information for this, I checked the Master Changelog List for GC3. I noticed it had been updated since the last time I checked, but there are major problem with the links for the updates for the 3.6 patch to the current 3.96 patch. While the visible text in the links is different, the actual links are the same as for the 3.5 patch. This makes it difficult to get to the desired change log.
