Dying Stars

Armageddon · #1 January 30th, 2001, 08:56 PM

Hey all,

Is there any way to prevent a star from exploding? I have already had one do so in a system I controlled. I evacuated the single planet. Now, however, my home system, with three major worlds and a forth outpost, is also in danger. I have been desperatly researching Stellar Manipulation, and am at the point where I can destroy stars, but I have not yet seen a way to save them. Is it possible? ALso, is there any way to tell exactly when the threatened star will die?

With my backyard in such peril, I am having trouble prosecuting the war against my invading neighbors. If I were to lose this key system, I would probably be doomed. I have already evacuated several billion citizens to my outer colonies, but I fear the star will blow before I can save them all.

Any thoughts?

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--Armageddon
"Ernest Hemmingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.' I agree with the later."

Morgan Freeman
Seven

raynor · #2 January 30th, 2001, 09:04 PM

I'm afraid your home system is doomed.

When you start the game, it gives you some options which determine how often random events occur and their maximum severity. I think it defaults to a max severity of catastrophic.

There isn't any technology you can research which will save the star; nothing in the stellar manipulation technologies will work here. Other than the original message warning you that the star will explode in 'X' years, there isn't anything that tells you how much time you've got left.

To be safe, move all your ships out of the system as the star's explosion kills everything in it.

Very, very bad roll of the dice!

Sinapus · #3 January 30th, 2001, 09:15 PM

Supposedly, if you build a ringworld or sphereworld around a star, it won't be subject to an explosion event. Otherwise, I think setting event severity to anything but 'catastrophic' will keep that event from appearing.

I think. I seem to get the planet explodes event on high, but I don't know if it is a bug or if I forgot to set the event severity in the game to something besides catastrophic. Since it seems to happen around two hundred turns later.

Is there a way to view the settings you made on a particular game, and if not, could that be added in a later patch?

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

Armageddon · #4 January 30th, 2001, 09:24 PM

Crap.

The annoying thing is that I didn't even get a message warning me about the star, like I did with the first one. I just happened to notice it had the warning event on it. Thus, I have no idea how much time I have left.

I guess I'll try to build a world around it, but thats going to be tough. I'm in the middle of a massive galaxy wide war right now, and have hit such high maintenance costs that I have begun losing ships. The only thing keeping my fleets in action are the constant trades I am doing with some of the other races, minerals for orgs and rads. I
ve already conquered one enemy and am close to getting a second, but my only ally had broken all treaties and the others won't ally with me even though they are brotherly.

I really hate the diplomacy in this game. Diplomacy is my FAVORITE part of these games, but not a single one has ever really gotten it right. Why the heck can't developers do some more work in this area? Its critical IMHO, but doesn't get much attention at all. I'd love to play a game JUST about diplomacy. Obviously this sort of problem is solved by having human players, but it shouldn't have to be the only way to have a good diplomatic game.

<Sigh> I'm off to evactute the remaming population of my home system. I'll try to build that ring world as a Last resort before I send the Last ships out. How tragic. ;(

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--Armageddon
"Ernest Hemmingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.' I agree with the later."

Morgan Freeman
Seven

WhiteHojo · #5 January 30th, 2001, 09:43 PM

Give it up. If you're already having maintanence problems (upkeep cost) wait till you try to built a sphereworld. those things are EXPENSIVE!!! You gotta have 10 Gravity Plating (50K each resource per unit), 10 Hyper-Dense Cables(50K each resource per unit) and 1 Sphere World Placement Generator (100K per resource)

About the only thing you can do is, at the Last possible moment (which is hard to compute w/o knowing the start date) evacuate the planets, scrap everything of value and trade all the planets to some unsuspecting empire and try to get some worthwhile worlds in exchange.

It sucks but thats life in the Universe. Been there and done that (and lost by the way)

good luck

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[This message has been edited by WhiteHojo (edited 30 January 2001).]

raynor · #6 January 30th, 2001, 10:10 PM

It sounds like you need to mothball about a quarter of your fleet and use any spare resources to start cranking out mines. If you mine the two to four warp points leading into your system, then you can focus all your forces on just one front and still win the game.