Orbital Colonies

[geoschmo]

I really prefer the second option. The idea of a low tech planet creator that can make asteroid colonies appeals to me. And if you destroy them with a planet buster you get asteroids again, as it should be.

The lagrange point idea is neat, except for being able to destroy the system by blowing them up. That seems very hokey to me.

Geoschmo

[Arkcon]

Technically, there are 5 Lagrange points between two massive objects -- probably more I just skimmed that definition. But we don't need that many. We could claim that most of them would cancel each other out, and there were only a few, or they could be even rarer -- only some systems would have one.

[geoschmo]

Ok after more thought there is another problem with the space colony asteroid idea. For a planet to be created out of asteroids you need a comp (no problem) and an available planet size to turn the asteroids into. You can make a planet size smaller than tiny, that's no problem. But if you do the the game will use it when it makes the random maps. You will have these already created planet scattered about.

What you would need to make this work right is to create the map, or do the first turn using the sotck data files, then play the game using your mod data files that has the planet creator and the astrooid colony planet size.

I don't even think you need a special asteroid size. Just allow the colonies to be created on any asteroid size. I don't see that as a problem, that is a feature. If somebody blows the space colony planet up it will probably make a small asteroid belt. Have to test that I think.

Geoschmo

[ December 12, 2002, 19:30: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Captain Kwok]

What if you gave the planetsize.txt entry a special ability ID or set contructed to "false" - would that cause the map generator to ignore it like sphereworlds?

The space colony can then easily be specified for exclusive use by the new component.

[ December 12, 2002, 20:02: Message edited by: Captain Kwok ]

[Puke]

the problem with having asteroid colonies as a standard size, is that you might create a regular planet out of them, instead of an asteroid colony. maybe if only SOME asteroids could be colonizeable, and these were a special size.. but you would still have planets of that size scattered about. rats. unless random planet generation is disabled, and all planets are of a fixed size, i dont think this is going to work.

edit: but if the component can create only an 'asteroid' sized colony, it would not matter what size the asteroid field was, right? Feh, you would still have random wierd planet sizes floating about.

[ December 12, 2002, 20:09: Message edited by: Puke ]

[Arkcon]

Ohh... random thought along the lines of Lagrange points ... then I gotta go do work.

Ok we got an invisible star or two in some systems so we don't overload on orbital colonies. Give it level 5 cloak, since it's not really an object, but level 4 cloak in gravitic.

So you could find the point once you researched high enough in the Gravitational tree. (Yeah, I know anyone who can draw an equilaterial triange can find Lagrange points, just working on technobabble explanations here - it takes some work to find a stable point in the system)

Say, here's where I'm getting my Lagrange point information: NASA web page

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
What if you gave the planetsize.txt entry a special ability ID or set contructed to "false" - would that cause the map generator to ignore it like sphereworlds?

The space colony can then easily be specified for exclusive use by the new component.

Planetsizes don't have abiliites. Entries in the Sector types don't have abiliites. For the planet to be chosen in a random map it just has to have these two things.

Do you mean set the created to true? That would probably keep it from being placed randomly, but IIRC there is a hardcoded restriction making all planet size entries with "created=true" require being made from a star. I don't think you can make them from asteroids.

Geoschmo

[ December 12, 2002, 20:16: Message edited by: geoschmo ]