Giant Stars?
 

So if you've got a system or two that are dominated by giant stars, is there any way to get rid of 'em? The various star destroying torpedoes won't work, do you just have to leave them there?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Pretty much, yeah. I suppose you could mod it so that there is an invisible star at the centre of each of those systems. Then you'd be able to destroy that star, but I'm not sure what would happen then. You might be stuck with the same background pic, and you there wouldn't be any asteroids for you to turn into planets. You could build a new star though and create a sphereworld, but I think you could do that anyway.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Try creating and then destroying a Black Hole in the system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Giant Stars?
 

What do you get when you destroy a black hole then? Just an empty system or does it have asteroids too?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

I wish there was a way to create or at least move asteroid fields so you could populate these dead systems. Obviously it would have to be hugely expensive for the sake of game balance, but it just seems so pointless mucking around with black holes and nebulae and things when you know they can't ever be turned into worthwhile real eastate.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Well you can turn an asteroid field into a planet then colonize it, or them! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Giant Stars?
 

D, A spherewolrd isn't worth all the mucking about? It's the equivalent to eight huge planets, which is more than you will get in any other system without some kind of a mod. Of course you won't be able to have a sphereworld and a bunch of planets.

Actually you can do that by modding a tetonic bomb that can blow up a sphereworld. Then by a series of create star, make spherewolrd, blow up spherewolrd you can create something out of nothing and end up with a spherewolrd and as many planets as you want all clustered in the center sector of the system.

There is also a way to move planets/asteroids, but you have to be using a Version before 1.78. Basically it's exploiting a stellar manip bug that was fixed with that patch.

Geoschmo

Re: Giant Stars?
 

If you turn a special system into an empty system by the process described, does the system lose or retain its special abilities?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It loses them. (Hmmm, I think. I didn't actaully double check that.)

[ October 16, 2002, 14:22: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not in a system like that, no. If I'm gonna build a sphereworld, I'm gonna build it somewhere useful.

Apart from the well-known fact that you only ever build a sphereworld for the hell of it anyway, why would you place it in some dead-end system with no planets? By the time you've got the necessary stellar manipulation for all this arsing around you've probably cut the useless empty system out of your warp-point network anyway.

I think an option to shift asteroids about in some horrendously out-sized ship would be a good idea. The project should be even more of a folly than building SWs / RWs, but do-able.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Is what I don't understand is if you can build ringworlds/sphereworlds out of nothing, why can't you build planets in the same manner? I understand the game balance aspect, but it does seem a little silly, anyway. Sure, the ringworld/sphereworlds need a star, but that's for energy, not for actual building material. A planet that doesn't have a star would have to produce its own energy, and a huge amount of it, and would have a limited lifespan unless people brought in water for fusion or some such.

Now, is what really bugs me about ringworlds/sphereworlds is they they really should take up more than one square. Like a radius of 2-3 for both. At that point, it might be better to call each sector a "planet", which would alleviate the problem of taking forever to fill a ring/sphereworld. In the ringworld series, the ringworld builders collected all of the mass of the system to built it, so those 5 huge worlds worth of ringworld were at the cost of everything else in the system.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Mylon: Agreed, although sometimes I'm prepared to forget about realism for the sake of gameplay.

I guess you could use the Oort cloud or whatever else you call that gigantic shell of asteroids (theoretically) found around every solar system. I mean really, even if you were to take the asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter you probably have enough matter for a smallish ringworld, but in the game that would get you one planet. A ring of sphereworld would also be thousands or millions of times bigger than it represented in a game as well (in terms of facility, population space) but that's just the way the game is.

SE4's star systems are basically nothing like realty, and you just have to accept it. The planets don't move, they're too close together... you could go on ages picking holes but eventually you just have to accpet that it's an abstraction, nothing more.

[/Ramble]

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Huh? Wha? What was this bug/exploit and how did it work? That would hve been cool.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Actually from interviews and things I've read I believe Malfador has always had an interest in adding planetary engines to the game.

How cool would that be?

*Dogscoff rubs hands together in glee...

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Actually modding an invisible star in the center of the system would be really cool. Once I was playing a game, small galaxy, low tech start, anchent quadrant, many other races, and had just destroyed a major enemy on my half of the galaxy. I had secured about 8 systems and I noticed that one of may allies that I had was building up his fleets and was taking the planets that I wanted. He represented my greatest threat so far (He controled about 10 systems). I decided on a preemptive strike and I lead my 3 fleets (a total of 74 ships) of LC, C, and BC through the choke point. I had just 'liberated' four juicy planets in that system. I had mine sweepers with me and I was near the exit W.P. when it happened. I didn't finish looking over the log and I noticed that I couldn't find my attack fleet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif After much swearing, I looked through the log carefully and noticed that a star had exploded. It just so happened to be the star in the system that my fleets were in. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif They were only in the system for 1-2 turns. I didn't have a real presence in the system until a year or so ago. So I missed the 'start will go nova in 3.0 years' message http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif
After going from 91 to 17 ships (mostly support) my fickle allies decided that they didn't like me anymore and went to war with me, on that same turn. I ended up winning that war. The final insuly of the game was after fighting a long drawn out war with the amero'ke(?) and finally had my fleet of 20 ships parked over their homeworld. I invaded their homeworld and Captured it and demanded their surrender. I had beat them back to their home system and had over 40 ships in the system. They decided that it would be wise to surrender. Needless to say, I was happy with my eliminating the final threat to me. The Last 2 empires were not a threat. As I look through my log a bit more closely, my jaw dropped. It happened again. Their star went nova! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Twice in a game. I couldn't even savor my victory. By the way, for both supernovas none of the races had steller manip to distroy suns (at least I don't see how they could.)
Anyways, back to the point, if you modded it so the giant starts could be blown up then those systems could be used as booby traps. Perhaps hiding a cloaked star killer. Normally this would be dumb because you would destroy the planets. It also would provide some use for those worthless sectors.

Just my lil' story http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Scrytub Ka'Lorrith Drakkar
Krintarian Imperium

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Huh? Wha? What was this bug/exploit and how did it work? That would hve been cool.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It had to be done in Simultaneous Movement games. I don't recall the exact procedure, but it was somehting like this:
1) Move a ship with a Tectonic Bomb over a planet
2) Tell it to move to another location
3) Give it the Destroy Planet order

Numbers 2 and 3 might need to be in the other order; I don't remember exactly.

The planet will be destroyed, but the asteroid field will be created whereever the ship ends up after 1 turn of movement. So, you could then rebuild the planet, and essentially move it. This resulted from a glitch in the way that various orders were executed during the simultaneous movement phases. I hear it was fixed in 1.78, so you'd have to use an older Version of SE4 to try it out.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh that's too funny, I'm sorry I didn't hear about it back then. If I could move planets to nebula's that would have been funny.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Or move every planet in your empire into 1 sector, where you have constructed a Sphereworld.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

When you destroy a black hole you get an empty system. But I don't think you can do this in the first place as I think to create a black hole you have to have a star in the system to begin with don't you? I mean a regular star, not one of these new giant stars.

Geoschmo

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Like I say, you could mod an invisible star into the centre of each red giant system and then perform stellar manip on that.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Actually you can do it without a mod. The game considers these giant star and other funky systems to be simply normal systems. There are three types of systems. Normal, nebulae, and black hole. Everything else is just background pics and abiliites.

What you do is you build a ship with a star creator and build a star in the center of the system. Then collapse that star into a blackhole. That will change the system type and the background pic.

THen you collapse the black hole and you are left with an empty system with just the regular starfield background. You can then build another star there and turn it into a spherewolrd later if you want. But there is no way to get planets or asteroids into it with the stock game.

Geoschmo

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Asteroid moving and the new treaty system suggested in another thread, alogn witha DEDICATED SCENARIO editor are way up on my list of features i want/need.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Hope that Asteriod/Planet engine comes to be at some point. Would be nice to move a planet here an asteriod belt there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

[ October 18, 2002, 00:38: Message edited by: mlmbd ]

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Hey, I'm fairly new to the game and I was wondering about something when I was playing earlier today. In the regular gold game, unmodded(not-counting the TDM-pack, because those are just AI files, right?) how much of a production bonus does a sphereworld give you once it's fully populated? It can fit what, 64 billion people in it? I imagine thats a hell of a boost for a advanced shipyard, espically for a temporal tech race.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Look in settings.txt for the Pop Modifiers. It will tell you.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hopefully I am reading this wrong, but it only boosts production 100 percent? A 10 billion pop planet boosts 90! What is the point of building a sphereworld if it is that big a waste?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

You are reading that correctly.

SWs have little point in a normal game. If you can devote the time and effort to build 1 (or more), you could easily build war ships and end the game anyways.

SWs have tons of slots for facilities. Try building one at a chokepoint system and moving all the warp points onto it's sector, and then heavily fortifying it.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Ahhh, I see. Thanks for the help!

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Also, in some mods, sphereworlds have more of a point (mods that have population modifiers high enough for sphereworlds to use effectively).

P&N (Pirates and Nomads) is a good one for this. With a Temporal / Advanced Storage race, I was able to get a 77B population on one sphereworld ... and SpaceYard rates of 117K/117K/117K ... !!

On a semirelated topic ... as far as modding planet sizes, does anyone know the theoretical maximum number of facilities a given world, ringworld, or sphereworld could be assigned ... ?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Possibly 999. That, or 256^2-1. Or, so completely random arbitrary number. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ October 20, 2002, 08:42: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Giant Stars?
 

So you could build a sun destroyer in like one turn?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Or a fully armed Battlemoon in about three,
and about a zillion fighters. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Yes, just think, It'd be like Trantor of Foundation fame, it woudl require 20+ worlds to support its voracious appetite for resources (if you ignore the fact it doesn't produce resources).

Now there's an idea, how about making a sphereworld that doesn't produce resources, it has like 10 slots or so, so its only useful as a shipyard with 64 B people. By the way, growing that many people is truly heinous

Re: Giant Stars?
 

I'll be adding spaceyard expansion projects...

Then you could have the Sphereworld filled up with 200 spaceyards, and be getting 25-50 times more build rate instead of resource production facilities.

[ October 21, 2002, 03:47: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oh man, that's brutal. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
I hope Malfador implments planetary/stellar engines. Being able to move planets around as the ultimate in late-game assult technology would just be fantastic. Well, for MP games. Wonder if the AI would be able to use them in that fashion?

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I dunno'? Somehow fighting (and fleeting) planets just seems a little overboard to me. Maybe being able to move asteroid fields - OK IMO - but not planets... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Making an ability to allow population growth in storage, an ability to allow weapon platforms to fire from storage, an ability for resource value and an ability to build facilities.
That would be just about enough to make nomadic planets in the form of ships.

Re: Giant Stars?
 

Close off all the warp points, and move the entire System to a friendlier location in the quadrant. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Just kidding, guys, just kidding!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Giant Stars?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually it was surprisingly easy. P&N has some "crossover" techs, things you get if you have TWO (or more?) Racial Techs.

The race in question was a Temporal/Organic race ... so it had Temporal Cloning Centers as an option. IIRC, +400M per year per planet. Since there were 12 planets in the system, I had a couple BIG freighters make the rounds, sucking about 450M per year per planet, in total, and dropping them on the Sphereworld. Including the SW itself, we're talking about 5.2M in growth per year, from that one facility alone!

And it got to 77B, not 64B. Advanced Storage = 120% population, as well as 120% facilities. It was at 77B *years* before the facility slots were full ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

And yes, a fully armed battlemoon in ... about 5 or 6 turns (considering all the mounts I used, heh ... they were costing over 500K minerals apiece). Absolute gadzillions of fightercraft or troops, if I'd wanted. Very fun, especially considering ~150 monoliths produced QUITE a nice bit of resources ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Also very UNlikely to actually happen in any "real game" sort of situation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Giant Stars?
 

On the topic of moveing asteroids how about a gravitational slingshot. Holds 1 asteroid at a time, must return to a field for reloading. Can't be done in current Version but that would be sweet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif