Orbital Colonies

[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 ]

[Puke]

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.

actually, you would want to set constructed to true. the component would have to create planets of that size, and asteroids would have to be that size or larger. and of course, the game would have to let you create planets of a size Category reserved for stellar constructions, which it might not. its worth a try though.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
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.

IIRC Giving the star a cloak abilitiy doesn't work. You can still see the star. Same for planets, warp points and storms.

You can give a facility on a planet cloaking ability.

Geoschmo

[ December 12, 2002, 20:15: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Arkcon:
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.

IIRC Giving the star a cloak abilitiy doesn't work. You can still see the star. Same for planets, warp points and storms.

You can give a facility on a planet cloaking ability.

Geoschmo

---

Ah, oh well -- I still like the idea of some rare Lagrange point invisible stars -- but then someone would try to build an orbital colony on an ordinary star, oh well

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by 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.

I don't see this as a problem. I like the idea of them being regular asteroids than can be made into planets later once you develop the stellar manip tech. I see the asteroid colony as a new tech comparable to the colony techs needed for colonizing different atmospheres. But it gives you a component that you can use to turn a standard asteroid filed into a colonizable asteroid field. As far as the game is concerned this colonizable asteroid field will just be another planet. But it will have the image of an asteroid field and be colonizable, or destroyable and turned back into uncolonizable asteroids.

The random placement of this new type of colonizable asteroid planet is a problem. But can be easily bypassed by making the maps before the game. You can make a random map, not look at it, save it and load it into your mod game when you set it up. Not hard at all.

Geoschmo

[ December 12, 2002, 20:25: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Captain Kwok]

Here are the results of my test:

The special ability number does not affect the map generator from placing a planet.

Setting constructed to "true" restricts the planet from being place by the map generator. If you set the sphereworld/ringworld to false, it will place them on the map.

So, it should be easy to create a component that converts asteroids into the specified size.