Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

It seems that there is only one picture for a sphere world, and it's a dark grey color regardless of the atmosphere type. I thought that it would be nice to have a blue sphere world for an oxygen atmosphere, red for hydrogen, and so on, just like the planets.

But I guess that the atmosphere is on the interior of the sphere and not on the outside, so the inside surface will have different colors, whereas the outside has no atmosphere and has the same appearance as a "none" planet..

So the facilities and population live on the inside surface of the sphere world, and they get sunlight from the star in the center, right? Now, I'm assuming that the sphere rotates around to create artificial gravity so that everyone stays on the ground and doesn't fall down into the star in the middle. But with a rotating sphere, the artificial gravity will be strongest at the equator and get weaker as you go towards the poles, and at the poles there won't be any gravity. So if you live on the equator, and experience 1G of gravity, you start walking north. As you progress north, you will get lighter and lighter, and then become weightless, and then the direction of the gravity will reverse, so that you fall towards the star.

Does this make sense, or am I missing something?

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

if the sphear world has enough mass you wont need to spin it as it will have its own gravity.

how well that would work on the inside of a sphear I dont know...

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

I always thought that was strange, that you build a Sphere World, and live on the inside. Why wouldn't you live on both sides? Admittandly the inside would be huge, but surely you would have your Space Yards, possibly explosive Weapons Research labs, etc on the outside?

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Assuming a solid, opaque sphereworld, there won't be any sunlight on the outside. On the other hand, if you have the technology and resources to build a sphereworld (which, incidentally, practically no one would), then you can proabably find a way to get enough light and heat on the dark side.

I don't know why you'd assume there wouldn't be things on the outside, anyway.

As for the original question, a ringworld could turn to give the desired amount of centripetal force to be equivalent to gravity, although that would be part of the already absurdly enormous engineering problem.

The sphereworld ... egad. If you have the technology and resources to actually do such a thing, then I expect you probably just use whatever magic gravity-making tech you probably mastered a few thousand years earlier, to make it work. But, generally speaking, yes, if you spin to 1G at the equator, the centripetal effect would get less and less as you moved away from the equator towards the poles, where there would be no centripetal force, and yes things approaching the poles that weren't held some other way would fall towards the sun.

I haven't done the math for over ten years now, but I hypothesize that the mass of the sphere itself can't be used to compensate unless it is very uneven, because an even sphere of any mass would still have it's center of gravity in the center, where the sun is. Perhaps by using a ridiculous amount of mass increasing at the poles, actual gravity could take over at the same rate that centripetal force tapers off, resulting in an even 1G everywhere on the inside of the sphere.

Again, though, there are so many other problems of ridiculous scale in the proposed project, that if you can solve all of those, I expect you've got plenty of solutions for keeping objects from falling inwards... and probable, even more good ideas for other things to do besides build a sphere world.

Besides, your plants and animals will get really confused by having it always be 12:00 Noon according to the sun. I sure wouldn't want to live there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

[ November 24, 2003, 05:15: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Hmmm, never thought about what gravity would be like inside a Sphere World. My totally non-scientific guess would be that the local gravity of the Sphere-world structure would hold you against the pull from the sun. BUT I cannot see that that pull would be great enough to equal earth's gravity and so any atmosphere should be very thin. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
Of Course, anyone advanced enough to build such a thing, might have some way to augment the local gravity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
MY QUESTION is where would the Solar Wind go? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[ November 24, 2003, 05:05: Message edited by: Taz-in-Space ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Directly onto the bald spot on the top of your head, as long as you were standing up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

I think that it's misleading by calling it a sphere world. Sure, once you surround a star and maybe use it's planets as the raw material to make this sphere, then it might be called a sphere world. The only example I've seen in tv or movies was the TNG episode where they find Scotty on the outside of one. Unfortunately, they never really got to explore the "planet", but I would have loved to see them do it. I think there was a Star Trek novel dealing with such a world (called a Dyson's Sphere), but I can't remember now if it was TOS, TNG or Voyager.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

A Ring World can be spun for gravity. For a sphere world to work you must have some sort of artificial gravity. If spun so there was no gravity at the poles and not only you, but the air there would fall into the sun as well. Not to mention that the slope of that side would be 90 degrees. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Think of the slides you could make! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Lets slide down 12 Million miles (or KMs) Thick Pants needed. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ November 24, 2003, 16:04: Message edited by: Parasite ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

if you can build a sphereworld, it's either your (usefull) Version of the great pyramids, or you don't need it.

and by that time, you'd have personal space travel, so falling toward the sun wouldn't be a problem - just tell your 7585 model ferrari to pick you up while your clothes turn into a space suit. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

just drop this in there real quick... the size of the sphere world as suggested by its graphic would be too small. Lets assume that the species building this sphere world lives at the "hot edge of life" just below the point at which matter breaks up into energy- 1000s of degrees celsius. This is fairly generous since only a few of the strongest chemical bonds would exist at this point and they would not be varied enough to provide the kind of complexities that sentients require...anyway- gravity would be the least of your problems. As i said the graphic suggests that the interior surface of the sphere world is inside the orbit of mercury now granted the species i described might like this right up until the MASSIVE amount of energy produced by the sun is trapped in this small area (we worry about global warming and we only get 1% maybe less of the suns energy, a sphere gets and traps 100%) and compounds like no other greenhouse in the galaxy until not them or their beloved planet can with stand it and the matter they're made up of goes nuclear just like the matter in the sun. All matter can be used for nuclear reactions at a certain temperature...anyway- besides this even at half the orbital radius of Mercury (toooo close to the sun) it would take the planets of many solar systems to build the actual sphere itself so that the amount of resources required is actually unimaginably tooo small.

my solution to all this- far larger graphic! lol seriously though i refuse to build the things because of thes scientific impossibilities and build ringworlds- the problems with them are in my opinion small enough to overlooked LOL

well i lied when i said this was gonna be quick but ill try and cut it off now by not going into the other ten problems i can think of off the top of my head for the sphere world...

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Omnicron has good point. Sphereworld would only be the biggest atomic bomb ever made. Unless there would be the way to gather all that extra energy and lead it to some place else.

In addition Omnicron suspected that we get about 1% or less of sun's energy, we can check with simple math:

The amount of surface of earth to face us is equal to area of our planet when you cut it half in the middle (yes, the area actually having sunlight is bigger because earth is not flat and not always directed towards sun, but the effect is less on those "not directed towards sun" areas. Equator gets near 100% of the energy but north pole and south pole gets only fraction of that). The 100% effective area would be as follows:

pi~ 3,14159265359
r = radius of our planet (12756 km /2)
pi*r^2 = 511185932,523 km^2

Then we imagine a sphere which radius is same as is earths distance from sun.
r = radius from sun (149,6*10^6 km)

The area of the sphere would be then:

4*pi*r^2 ~ 2,812*10^17 km^2

Now we simply calculate how much is the amount of "earth 100% effective area" of "sphere world aea" which get the 100% of sun's radiation.

Earth sun facing area
--------------------------
sphereworld sun facing rea

~ 1,818 *10^-9 = 0,0000001818 % of sun energy.

On other words, there could be 550 million areas size of our "100% effective areas" in one sphere world. SEIV sphereworld seems to be utterly ineffective construction. Damn engineers!

That is the amount of the energy earth receives from the sun. The calculation is rough, but decimals are right. If I am not wrong, of course.

[ November 24, 2003, 19:36: Message edited by: Karibu ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Omnicron1, the "size" of the planet graphics are all relative. The sphereworld is not actually within the orbit of Mercury, but for Sol, would be at about the orbit of the Earth. That, and the "sectors" are not 1 AU or anything like that, they are again completely relative (and apparently different for different systems and different distances based on distance from the star).

[ November 24, 2003, 20:49: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

This is why I gave up my dream of being an astronomer. Too much math! I'll take your word for it. But it would seem to me that if you have enough material, you could build a big enough shell around what would be the distance of a solar system. Maybe not the size of our solar system, but it would have to be big enough to trap a sun and not fry everyone inside it.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Keep in mind that channelling most of the solar radiation out of the sphereworld would be one of those many engineering problems to be solved before building the SW, so it is a null issue.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

channel the energy and use it for your little projects...like moving the sphereworld, destroying black holes, creating pocket universes...you know, the little things.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

And for those really adventourus mathemathicans:
Try to calculate the actual strength the sphere material need to have to stop it from collapsing at the poles (earth orbit, spinning so it has 1 G at equator), using all available building materials in the solar system (except the sun) for the construction.

You would have to discard the Atom and find another way to connect Quarks to get a material strong enough. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">of course. get more articulate ducks.

i'm in a weird mood.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

If the area is 550 million Earth-profiles, then I think you're probably going to want to import some material, or find away to make the sun pop you a bubble of matter to exactly the desired radius.

Good luck...

PvK

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Heck, in the Star Trek universe, anything seems possible. But hey, that's supposed to be our future, so who knows. Anything could be possible. Maybe not in 10,000 lifetimes, but it could be possible.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

To get around the problem with artificial gravity not being uniform inside a sphere world, maybe we could build the world so that it is not a solid one-piece sphere, but a combination of ring worlds stacked one on top of each other. So at the equator, you have a large diameter ring world, rotating to produce 1G of artificial gravity. Above and below this ring world, you have two more ring worlds of slightly smaller diameter, rotating at a different speed as to also produce 1G. Then, above and below those, have slightly smaller-diameter ring worlds rotating at its own speed to produce 1G, and so on. So the sphere world will consist of hundreds of ring worlds arranged in the shape of a sphere, with the largest ring at the equator and the smallest rings at the poles. The smallest rings will have to rotate the fastest to produce the same gravity. All the ring worlds could be enclosed in a larger, solid sphere so that it looks like a solid sphere world from the outside, but would consist of separate ring segments with independent rotations inside. Hmm, I guess this really isn't a sphere world...

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

but it is a Dyson's sphere. a Dyson's sphere just has to cover the entire sun.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

I was thinking about ring worlds, and it occured to me that artificial gravity created by rotation would not work the same way as natural gravity generated from mass. If you have a spinning cylinder, the centrifugal force causes objects sitting on the inside walls to experience an outward force, causing them to stay against the walls, right? But imagine the spinning cylinder, and placing a ball inside the cylinder, close to the wall, but not touching. It's not clear to me that the ball would be attracted to the wall. It seems to me that the ball would not experience any force towards the wall at all; it would just sit there.

Imagine standing in a circular room, with curved walls in the shape of a cylinder, and the walls were turning but the floor is stationary. It doesn't matter if the walls are turning really fast, you'll just stand there and you won't be pulled towards the walls. Now, if you were leaning against the wall, suddenly you'll be pulled against the wall.

So what would happen if you lived on a ring world, and you jumped up? Would you fall back down?
...
...thinking...
...
OK, yes, you would fall down, because before jumping, you were rotating with the same velocity as the rest of the ring world. When you jumped up, you still retain that instantaneous velocity (speed and direction) that you started with, plus a small vertical component added from the jump. Now, whereas the ring is constantly changing velocity (even if it's rotating at a constant speed, the angular direction of the movement is constantly changing), while you are in the air, you still retain the same instantaneous velocity you started out with as your feet left the ground, the velocity at the same speed in a straight line. Because the ground is curved and rotating, and you're moving in a straight line tangent to the point where you jumped from, you will hit the ground - a straight line intersecting an arc - so it's just as if you've fallen back down.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

you know, someone once wrote an interesting story about people using dolphin suits to fly in a spherical orbital habitat.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

ecosystems are directly dependent on the one way flow of energy into them from the sun to support life...there are a few instances of life without sun near heat vents and such but still a one way flow of energy and the earths core would cool if it were too much farther from the sun....sooo i assumed that even the farthest planets in the game werent beyond jupiter and not beyond saturn at the most by this it would not be an accurate graphic but if the solar systems in the game, despite the fact that even the farthest planets can support life, can in fact encompass pluto's orbit im sorry about my rant about the inaccuracies of the graphic but i now have to rant about the inaccuracies of the star graphic which is now faaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr too large (1000s of times our suns own mass and volume and too large to support itself making it a blackhole or very near to it)so some graphic is wrong....

narf poit made good point about centriFugal force (someone said Centripetal and thats the opposite) not being a good artificial gravity...but he said that jumping would bring you back to the outside but Narf you were right to begin with because the rule about matter continuing in the same speed and direction would be negated by the jump if you had enough strength to jump from the centrifugal force then you turned the speed and direction around and you would float away from the "ground" which points out that this type of artificial gravity would not support a thick enough atmosphere because air is not dense enough to be significantly affected by centrifugal force..try spinning a balloon around really fast and see if it follows the same course as say a balloon of water...soo if this were the method of gravity it would be more than 1G if you wanted to breathe...

nother importante questione!! if you can move all the matter in many solar systems to cover a star why not sift out all those resources on the way... i can see getting lots of radiactives(energy from sun) or organics (grow real well if they can handle the constant sun) but minerals c'mon you built the place for god's sake!!!!

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

no, that was Kamog.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Omnicron, it is highly unrealistic to expect all graphics to be to scale. If the star was displayed as a single pixel, you would still need millions of pixels to display the solar system to scale! Of course, then the star and planets would be the same "size". So lets make the sun take up a few 1000 pixels, so we can get more accurate scales for the planets. Now we need billions of pixels for the width of the system map! Give me abstract scaling any day! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif (note that numbers are made up, and are likely to be overly generous, with real values probably being many times larger)

Also, please note that SE4 is a game, not a simulation. Some level of unreality is not only expected, but required! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif Who cares if it is practically impossible to build a sphereworld (or even a ringworld) in the real world! It is practically impossible to colonize a planet in a different star system too. Should we remove that because it is unrealistic? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

[ November 26, 2003, 06:08: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's very easy to make all se4 system graphics to scale. just replace all the sun with single pixel image and all the planets with complete blank images. That should be about what the solar system looks like from above. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Might be hard to play though.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yea who was that? wasent one of asimovs short storys was it?

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yea who was that? wasent one of asimovs short storys was it? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven't read any of the books, but there's a series by David Brin that involves intelligent dolphins using space suits. I just can't remember the name of the series, however.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

The gravity of a shell is not precieved by objects within the shell. For this reason, the gravity you experience will grow less and less as you penetrate deeper and deeper into a body such as the Earth.

This is how black holes work. There are many, many stars with sufficient mass to become a black hole. However, they are too big and continue growing as they get hotter with age. It is the heat that pushed the mass of a star ourward from the nuclear reaction that occurs at or very close to its core. At some point a the fusion reactor at the center of the star runs out of fuel that it can fuse at the pressure exerted by the mass of the star pulled inward by its own gravity. At this point the star collaspes in on itself, as it is not producing enough heat to keep itself puffed up. When a sufficient amount of the stars mass gets compressed into a sufficiently small space then you will have a black hole.

At least, I'm pretty sure that's how that works. I am sure about the shell part.

From the outside, the shell will will be an immense amount of gravity. But if the outside surface is spinning, and it will be spinning much faster than the earth's orbital velocity, then at the equator one would be thrown off at around 1 G. In thruth it would be pretty damn hard to ladn on, you'd have to be on one wicked eliptic... though I could have the scale wrong.

Additionally, no human would be able to run or jump fast enough agaisnt the spin of the world to escape it and start floating. I believe, in order to get the 1 G, you'd have to be cranking damn fast.

You actually have some options, where radius and rpm are concerned, since the equation for relative centrifugal force goes like this.

RCF (in g forces) = 1.119x10^-5 x rpm^2 x radius (in cm)

hmm... that rpm is going to be troublesome... oh, centimeters, too... Yeah, the units in this equation are going to kill me.

In any case the gravity will definately be sufficient to keep the atmosphere pinned into the 'bowl' at the equator.

Kamog, that is an excellent solution for the "gradient gravity of a sphereworld" problem. Note, however, that you would need huge, ringworld-style walls between the rotating sections or the atmosphere would all flow downhill. Note also that when the plane formed by that ring does not bisect the star's center of gravity the ring is not in a 'stable orbit' the way a ringworld or solid sphereworld are Though the outer sphere could just provide a mounting point for these various rings, which I think you suggested. Remember that they would, however, be subjected to a pull away from the sphere and toward the star, and the 'ground' would have to be inclined to compensate.

[ November 26, 2003, 18:27: Message edited by: Loser ]

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The heat of the earth's core is currently thought to come from heavy radioactive elements decaying. It's 'mostly' iron, but not all iron! This energy will probably Last many millions of years yet. Jupiter emits two and a half times as much energy as it receives from the sun. This is probably from the sheer pressure of its size causing a little bit of fusion -- just not enough for it to ignite as a star by itself. It could also be from heavy radioactive elements in its core as well. It is presumed to have a rocky core. Jupiter's moons are heated from the sheer tidal force of gravity as they orbit, and so it is thought that Europa could have liquid water oceans under its ice crust.

So you see, there are all sorts of sources of energy other than direct solar radiation and all life needs is a source of energy. We have seen right here on earth that sunlight is not the only way to operate a metabolism.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Air is matter just like any other matter. Other than the different viscosity, what you are seeing with the balloons is the relative proportional difference of friction to weight. The air inside a balloon weights very little compared toa similar volume of water, so the friction of the surface it is sitting on, or even the air outside of it, will stop it much more quickly than the water balloon. There is no reason that air moving in the right direction would not be held by centrifugal force as well as water or solid material. The problem is that air will be heated by the sunlight/radiation hitting it and tend to get 'knocked' out into space. This happens to planets too, and earth would have far less atmosphere if it didn'thave a strong magnetosphere to help contain the atmosphere. Mars has almost completely lost its atmosphere, which may have been almost like earth's a billion or more years ago. As with all other technical problems in SciFi engineering, you'd have to imagine a new technology (super-magnets that Last for millions of years?) to keep the atmosphere in yours Ringworld.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

I was about to come back and point out that the heat at the Earth's core was because of the manner in which the Earth formed (radioactive elements? Sure!) or the pressure it suffers under its own mass subject to its own gravity.

But I see that the Baron has already covered this.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

infallibility is a bore and everyday is a learning experience but i still don't think centrifugal force could hold down an atmosphere as for all other statements granted i was wrong... but no one touched the statement about the economic ramifications of such a project...

if you could overcome all the inherent engineering problems with building a sphere world why when your moving this many solar systems worth of matter around this sun don't you sift out the important parts? I think the only thing you should be able to extract from ringworlds and sphereworlds are organics, population and energy which is everything but minerals i guess what im saying here is why on earth are you mining resources from something you built?! I think looking at the real cost of one of these things it'd be more efficient to build a huge close-formation satellite field around the star to gather its energy...If it ever gets built it will be more a monument of achievement (tower of Pisa or Lady Liberty) than a useful source of resources though it'd be great place to stick all those naggy scientist characters!!

military strategms of a sphere world... If you can somehow manage the intense heat of the star that a sphereworld would generate>>then when someone attacks you why dont you just aim that crap in their general direction....... more food for thought

also i want to give a hand to all the great minds assembled here i've taken 5 AP courses including AP Calculus and AP Chemistry and i could neer have carried on such engaging and fascinating conversations and everyone has good points...even when they prove me wrong!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Gravity applies inside a shell, but if you're inside, the shell's gravitation comes from all sides, so some of it cancels out some of the rest. It then depends on where you are within the shell, and whether the shell is of uniform density or not. A Dyson sphere's own gravity would be a major factor in its engineering.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Naturally. If you design the spin so interior objects have a 1G acceleration towards the inside, then objects on the outside will fly off at 1G. On a ringworld, or the equator of a sphereworld with no scifi artificial gravity on the equator.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Certainly it'd a much simpler problem than assembling the contraption in the first place.

Try flying through a docking port and landing on the inside.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Try jumping off the Earth (no offense; I only suggest it because I'm sure you won't succeed) - it's exactly the same amount of difficulty - that's the point.

PvK

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">See for example THIS page about "Centrifugal" vs. "Centripetal", which says, in part:

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

PvK

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

As for economic aspects, yes Omicron, I imagine, as I more or less said before, that if you can move the matter from many solar systems to one in order to build a Dyson sphere, and build it and get it to work, then I tend to think there would be many other more practical and/or interesting things you could have done with your time and energy. As you say, resource extraction is a much smaller task than the above.

PvK

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

You guys are nuts.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

i don't remember who wrote it.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Check out "Startide Rising" about the dolpins. "SunDiver" had a scene of a human in a dolpin suit, but only swimming. IMHO one of the best current authors.

Check out Larry Nivien short story "Bigger than Worlds" in "A Hole in Space". It starts at a colony ship, then ends with covering over a galaxy and filling it with air. Then people just swim around (Maybe using those suits).

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

I have always wanted to play baseball (or cricket) on a spinning colony. If you hit the ball in the direction of spin, it would be "heavier" and not go as far. If you hit it against the spin, it would be "lighter" and go farther. Hitting it sideways would cause it to travel in a curve as the "world" spins around you but the ball is floating free.

But a Ring world would be large and fast enought to make these only be slight differences.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

so whats the collective conclusion on sphere worlds?

I say their economically improbable to the extreme and thus won't be built but its just MHO... interested in what some of you others came up with and what is this about flying dolphins!?

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

More than economically (though that is a problem too) it's just not physically realistic. As pointed out, there is no material strong enough -- cannot be a material strong enough -- to make it work, and even if you could build it there would be other problems like the effects of rotation on the non-equatorial regions and like where does the solar wind go? The Ringworld idea by Larry Niven is much better.

SE V is going to be a very different game. Maybe there won't be ringworlds/sphereworlds at all, or maybe just as 'artifacts' that you can configure in the map instead of buildable in the gameplay.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

You could use all of that solar energy to create fields strong enough to hold the SW together. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">well, i made a remark about a (short) story i read once that had people flying in an orbital habitat using (suits designed off dolphins) dolphin suits.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Talking about sphereworlds: there is any way to create a map in SE4 where all the empires, or just some of them, start the game in a sphere or ringworld?

Or to create unihabited ring/sphereworlds in random locations in the map?

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

You can make a custom map where each race will start on a specific RW/SW that MUST have the correct atmosphere and planet type for the race that will start on it, or else it will be converted to a huge planet.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Theoretically, you could just put 'ringworld' or 'sphereworld' into a new system in SystemTypes.txt and this new system would be generated in the usual way according to how you setup the QuadrantTypes.txt file. The problem would come when the empires were placed. If you were just relying on random placement there would be no guarantee that a ringworld or sphereworld would be selected.

And even when it was selected the way the creation of a homworld works is hard-coded (will not respond to the AI file settings) and you'd end up with the default number of research and other facilities and 100+ mineral miner facilities. If you started with some good organics/radioactives planets nearby I suppose you could scramble to get those started and start to exploit your resources but it's still a bit clunky.

You could design a map with deliberately placed ring/sphere worlds and set starting points on them to insure that empires were placed in them. This doesn't fix the above problem, though.

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

Actually... half of the space after the SP, RD and SY and one Organic Farm and one Rad Extractor is used for Mineral Miners and the other half is used for Research Facilities (with the extra facility if there is one for MM). So, you would not get 100+ mineral miners, youd get 50+ mineral miners and 50+ research facilities (assuming a planet size of a bit over 100 facilities).

Re: Thoughts about sphere worlds
 

But how i can generate a map with random ring/sphereworlds?

And if I forget about a Homeworld Ring/Sphereworld, and just wish some "empty" ring/sphereworlds in the maps, so I and the AI can find and use them well before the tech comes available? Is it possible to generate such a map?