Giant Stars?

[geoschmo]

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

It loses them. (Hmmm, I think. I didn't actaully double check that.)

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

[dogscoff]

D, A spherewolrd isn't worth all the mucking about?

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.

[Mylon]

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.

[dogscoff]

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]

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

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

Huh? Wha? What was this bug/exploit and how did it work? That would hve been cool.

[dogscoff]

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...

[kalorrith]

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 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. 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
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! 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

Scrytub Ka'Lorrith Drakkar
Krintarian Imperium