Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (Full Version)

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Baleur -> Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/20/2010 4:39:16 PM)

Is there any form of stellar evolution in this game, a la Space Empires, where old stars can go nova etc?
I understand the real time aspect of this game, which is awesome. But i had to ask :)

If not, would there be any possibility of such a thing in the future?
I have lots of crazy ideas.. [X(]

For instance, lets say the star-going-nova event is very very rare, happening perhaps 1 or 2 times during the entire session, depending on how long it takes to finish a medium/large galaxy.

When it happens though (and only on large old stars), about 30min before (real-life time) an alert is sent out, with the following evacuation of all the planets surrounding that star. The private industry evacuates all their freighters to nearby planets, maby even packs up / disassemble their mining stuff, and all the nearby population transports rush in to evacuate the population, thereby saving some for migration to your other colonies.

Once it's gone supernova though, most planets will be barren, but probably very suitable for extreme mining due to blahblahblah radiation blahblah exposing rare minerals, whatever lore reason you want to make up [:D]
Perhaps even destroying the planets if that's how you wanna go.

The resulting remnants from the supernova could be different semi-random things.
(if the planets werent destroyed or became barren, maby the star just died quietly, relatively)
White Dwarf: slowing down the orbits, shifting the habitable zone inwards, making the previously volcanic inner most planets habitable, and the previous paradise planets become ice balls.
Black Hole: vastly speeding up the orbits, pretty much ruining the system with radiation
Pulsar: also speeding up the orbits (just for visual effect, they'd need to go faster to avoid "falling down" anyway), and possibly having a random direction jet shooting high energy particles, so whenever a planet's orbit crosses that jet, population starts to die, but rare minerals or whatever slightly increases.

That last pulsar idea would add an interesting mechanic to the orbits, want more rare resources? Colonize a pulsar-planet close to the stars that hence passes through the jet more often. Want population? Colonize a planet as far out as possible, with fewer jet passes.
Ideas? Is this completely ridiculous? [:D][:D]



lordxorn -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/20/2010 7:20:36 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Baleur

"Is there any form of stellar evolution in this game, a la Space Empires, where old stars can go nova etc?
I understand the real time aspect of this game, which is awesome. But i had to ask :)"



Ohh Great question, MOO2 comes to mind here, it should be more than just Stellar Evolution like Baleur suggested, how about just plain random events. Remember GNN, where a certain system would have a chance to go Nova in say 10 years, and you have to research a solution?
The same thing for other disasters like a plague. Or the funny space dragon that would extort you for $500 credits?

4x titles have mainly forgone these random events that can have a major impact on the game, and of course an option to completely disable them. [:)]



elliotg -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/20/2010 7:43:28 PM)

Those are cool ideas Baleur [:)]

There's currently no dramatic changes in the galaxy itself during the game - at least, not naturally caused changes...

Supernovas are in the game, but as the remnants of a star that's already gone nova. They're modelled as dense radiation fields with fields of metallic asteroids. Good for mining or research stations.

I'll keep your suggestions on my list of cool things for next time [;)]

Thanks



elliotg -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/20/2010 7:48:55 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: lordxorn
Ohh Great question, MOO2 comes to mind here, it should be more than just Stellar Evolution like Baleur suggested, how about just plain random events. Remember GNN, where a certain system would have a chance to go Nova in say 10 years, and you have to research a solution?
The same thing for other disasters like a plague. Or the funny space dragon that would extort you for $500 credits?

4x titles have mainly forgone these random events that can have a major impact on the game, and of course an option to completely disable them. [:)]

There are a lot of events in the game, some of them exploration-related (i.e. you have to travel to a location to encounter something) and others a bit more random.



Baleur -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/20/2010 8:38:16 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: elliotg
Supernovas are in the game, but as the remnants of a star that's already gone nova. They're modelled as dense radiation fields with fields of metallic asteroids. Good for mining or research stations.


Wowow! Really? [:D]
But yeah, i understand the current lack of random mega-events. This is a real-time game after all, so i suppose it could be a bit of a challenge to balance it properly.
For instance, in a turn-based game, if you have a random "omg star dead" event that takes place between turns 300-500, you know that the player and ai empires are large enough by then to deal with it, no matter how much real-life time the player spent on each turn.
While in a real-time game, a player might expand very quickly, or very slowly.



Epsilon -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/20/2010 9:30:19 PM)

I would imagine if the game is as easily moddable as is being let on, that something could be made by the community to enable further interaction between empires and stars.
However if it's hard coded it might be impossible. Release the game already so we can start tinkering :P



Captain_Proton -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/21/2010 12:39:14 AM)

Baleur,

I like the way you think, those are asome ideas [;)]



martok -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (1/21/2010 4:37:30 AM)

I would only support supernovas as long as there was an option to disable them. I hate those types of random events with (if you'll pardon the expression) the fire of a thousand suns.

I despise supernovas in Birth of the Federation, and would not enjoy seeing them in Distant Worlds either. If we were able to turn them off, then fine, but otherwise please leave them out.



Gargantou -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 11:20:39 AM)

quote:


There's currently no dramatic changes in the galaxy itself during the game - at least, not naturally caused changes...

That's the way it should be.

This 'stellar evolution' stuff should be up to the player whether he wants them in the game or not. Personally I do not since it's quite unrealistic, given the timeframe one has to think in when one looks at the evolution of stars and so forth.

Personally I'm a bigger fan of 'hard'-style science fiction rather than science fantasy where space is filled with magic anomalies everywhere you go and so forth.

And I know, I know, FTL travel is very much fantasy but it's a sacrifice that I understand because it's necessary to keep the game somewhat decently paced. The ideas of ultra-rapid 'stellar evolution' however, is not.

But, as I said before, I'm fine with it being added to the game as long as it's completely optional, I don't want to be forced to deal with a sci-fantasy universe where stars can go supernova like the ones we get in some other games.

And just to throw some scientific numbers into my rant, a supernovae occurs only approx. once every 50 years, in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

That should give everyone a fair idea of how how extremely low the chances would be to run into a supernova.

So if someone makes a supernova mod, please make an option in it to have it on a realistic scale, i.e. only one starsystem once every 50 ingame years!

P.S. I know I'm crazy, no need to point that out.



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 11:48:31 AM)

quote:

And just to throw some scientific numbers into my rant, a supernovae occurs only approx. once every 50 years, in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

That should give everyone a fair idea of how how extremely low the chances would be to run into a supernova.

So if someone makes a supernova mod, please make an option in it to have it on a realistic scale, i.e. only one starsystem once every 50 ingame years!

P.S. I know I'm crazy, no need to point that out.

Consider, also, that a galaxy consists of billions of stars. In games like this portraying a galaxy each star system represented is likely abstracted to represent an average, or the best, of millions of stars in it's vicinity. Thus, that supervova that happens every 50 years in real life would be FAR less likely in game...almost to the point of not needing to include supervovas in game or to have it super extremley rare.
I would except supernovas as super extremely rare in game. I won't try to come up with a ratio number chance for them happening in game.

Gargantou, you are not seeming crazy.



Baleur -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 2:30:43 PM)

Do you guys realize that this is a game about galactic civilization and colonization, eventually resulting in 1 species (yours hopefully) conquering the entire galaxy?
What makes you think that would happen within 50 earth-years? Highly unlikely.

So lets say the "realism-converted" timefram of a game session, starting from 1 planet to conquering the entire galaxy would be 100 million years, there'd be plenty of supernovae through that period of time.
And again this is a game. As will wright would have put it (and has several times), they are about giving us mere humans a more vast view on the universe in timescales we otherwise could never hope to witness.
What would the point of a 4x space opera game be if it was 100% realistic and moving in real-time, you'd not even colonize a single planet unless you play the game for 20-40 years nonstop.

And thirdly, who says the civilizations in this game run on our human sense of time? Who's to say that a lifetime for them doesnt equal a thousand years for us?
lol at your arguments. Some people on these forums are incredibly narrow-minded (or should i say earth-minded) in their view of the universe.



Gargantou -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 3:00:17 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Baleur

Some people on these forums are incredibly narrow-minded (or should i say earth-minded) in their view of the universe.

All "some people" are saying is that it should be optional, and whilst unrealistic timeframe for stuff is vital to keep the game-pacing intact, the same can not be said for stuff like supernovas/stellar evolution etc.

It seems you took slight criticism of your proposal as a personal attack against you given the way you felt the need to retaliate with attacks against "some people"

Also, since you bring up Will Wright, I don't really recall 'stellar evolution' in Spore, aside from terraforming planets and stuff. I don't recall suns changing into new types etc.

Anyway, try to lighten up and try to avoid resorting to calling people narrow-minded etc just because they don't completely like your idea, eh?

By the way, last time I checked time is measured in the game the same way people tend to measure time, if a developer/betatester sees this and I'm incorrect, feel free to correct me!



Mad Russian -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 3:31:03 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Gargantou

And I know, I know, FTL travel is very much fantasy but it's a sacrifice that I understand because it's necessary to keep the game somewhat decently paced. The ideas of ultra-rapid 'stellar evolution' however, is not.



There was a paper released last week that showed if Kirk and The Gang went to Warp Speed it would kill them and Probably destroy the ship.

So, who knows? It's a game like Star Trek was a show. It's all entertainment.

Good Hunting.

MR



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 3:54:13 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Baleur

Do you guys realize that this is a game about galactic civilization and colonization, eventually resulting in 1 species (yours hopefully) conquering the entire galaxy?
What makes you think that would happen within 50 earth-years? Highly unlikely.

So lets say the "realism-converted" timefram of a game session, starting from 1 planet to conquering the entire galaxy would be 100 million years, there'd be plenty of supernovae through that period of time.
And again this is a game. As will wright would have put it (and has several times), they are about giving us mere humans a more vast view on the universe in timescales we otherwise could never hope to witness.
What would the point of a 4x space opera game be if it was 100% realistic and moving in real-time, you'd not even colonize a single planet unless you play the game for 20-40 years nonstop.

And thirdly, who says the civilizations in this game run on our human sense of time? Who's to say that a lifetime for them doesnt equal a thousand years for us?
lol at your arguments. Some people on these forums are incredibly narrow-minded (or should i say earth-minded) in their view of the universe.


If I am one of the people you are refering to with my post about me saying that supernova should be very rare in game then I think you might have misunderstood my meaning and maybe you should open your mind more to notice and organize details.
I will reiterate. Of course the time scale in these sorts of games that lead to one master civilization of a galaxy can easily reach tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years...or even alot longer (heh), in lore/story time(thus game time can flow accordingly in the game or your imagination). Yet, in a lore setting(and real life) there are billions(maybe 200 to 400 billion)of stars in a galaxy. Look at the game map. There are NOT billions of stars there. Thus, there should NOT be supernovas every like 50 years of game time. Supernovas should be like extremely rare, or never, in the game...unless an update adds billions more playable star systems to the game.

Jeez!

These sorts of games are abundant in ABSTRACTIONS. You should also accept that each planetary structure built represents not one but many on the planet. Maybe also that each ship represents many, depending on the flow of time and the time it takes to build one...unless you want to imagine each ship as super massive, tens of kilometers(miles) to hundreds of kilometers(miles) long. That is how I imagine them. That's how some science fiction does also.

Abstractions...like in a Civilization 4 game a soldier unit might equal 1000 people, a tank or plane unit might equal 100, a water ship unit might equal 10...or 1, depending on the game flow of time and how long it takes to build one.

Abstractions. There are not biliions of stars on the game map like in a real galaxy. Each game star is abstracted to represent (maybe the average of, or best of) tens of millions of stars, maybe representing up to around 100 million stars each in game.
-----

Another thought: These sorts of games with units of population are abstracted to also. A unit of population might equal 1 million, 100 million, 1 billion etcetera...depending on a population centers capacity and your imagination. Thus, transports and colonization ships carrying several units of population are carrying the corresponding quantity.
In relation to the game stars and real stars in a galaxy; a person can die on a planet(of varying reason in life)but that does not mean a whole unit of the game's population dies.
Thus, a star can go supernova but that does not mean that a whole unit of the game's stars dies.



Gargantou -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 4:02:20 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian


quote:

ORIGINAL: Gargantou

And I know, I know, FTL travel is very much fantasy but it's a sacrifice that I understand because it's necessary to keep the game somewhat decently paced. The ideas of ultra-rapid 'stellar evolution' however, is not.



There was a paper released last week that showed if Kirk and The Gang went to Warp Speed it would kill them and Probably destroy the ship.

So, who knows? It's a game like Star Trek was a show. It's all entertainment.

Good Hunting.

MR


Yes I know it's a game, but there's different levels of sacrificing 'sci-fi' for 'sci-fantasy', FTL is one of those sacrifices I understand fully.

However adding in 'random events' like supernovas occurring within every 5 years or something of the sort is something that does not add to gameplay for me, but rather becomes an annoyance.

So all I'm saying is, if the developers decide to add (accelerated) stellar evolution into the game in the future, I hope they include options for it to be disabled.



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 4:15:42 PM)

Super advanced ,magical like, high technologies of the far, distant future can be imagined to do just about anything including ways to safely travel far and fast.

An equivalant anti argument might be someone from the past stating that they believe in known science-based fiction thus they don't believe in magical advances such as fanciful flying machines, metal vehicles that could travel faster than a horse, near instant communication across hundreds of miles, etcetera.

The future will have wonders that science fiction has both imagined and not imagined.



Gargantou -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 5:57:10 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Super advanced ,magical like, high technologies of the far, distant future can be imagined to do just about anything including ways to safely travel far and fast.

An equivalant anti argument might be someone from the past stating that they believe in hard story fiction thus they don't believe in fanciful, magical like flying machines, metal vehicles that could travel faster than a horse, near instant communication across hundreds of miles, etcetera.

The future will have wonders that science fiction has both imagined and not imagined.

The thing is, based off everything we know about physics so far, it's considered generally impossible for an object such as a spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light, in fact most scientists consider it to be fairly unlikely we'll even come tens of percentages close to the speed of light.

Sure anything could happen in the future but such a logic can be used to come up with all sorts of crazy theories.

I mean the future could potentially prove that the Scientologists were right and we are in fact possessed by the souls of aliens(which cause all our illnesses, be it physical or psychological) that were transported to the earth by the Dark Lord Xenu and mass-murdered(Note, this is what Scientologists actually believe!)

Anyway, sorry for off-topic.



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 6:44:28 PM)

And again, at some point in our past most scientists disbelieved many true things based on all the physics they knew of their time in history.
Science fiction has sensible and outlandish ideas that MAY come to be true. There are also the ridiculous science fiction ideas that may ALSO have a chance to come to be true...but it's all a matter of what unknown possibilites realities consist of and the direction taken by the potential millions of civilizations in each galaxy.

Other stories are less science fiction and more about philosophical, moral, and religious concerns.
-----

I like to consider that many things might be possible we have imagined. Also many things that we have not even imagined due to possibilities we know not of, especially when considering the future in millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years from now.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/14/2010 6:44:47 PM)

Just a reminder, we welcome all ideas and suggestions for the game here, but politics and religion are not acceptable discussion in our forum, even when used as examples. Such subjects are too divisive and there are other places on the internet for that. Here, we focus on our shared love of gaming.



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 12:24:28 AM)

Understandable. Cool, so the usual topics we were discussing are okay; just not politics or religion, like the mention of scientology.



Webbco -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 1:11:22 AM)

....obviously.



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 1:24:37 AM)

Yeah, some times I like to state the obvious. Heh.



Gargantou -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 10:40:38 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Yeah, some times I like to state the obvious. Heh.

I hereby declare thee Captain Obvious!

Anyway, I re-read your post about abstractions, and whilst I agree with some of it, I do not find the populations in space 4X games to be abstractions generally, IMO they do quite a good job at making proper estimates on how much population a planet could support before overcrowding and resource logistics become a serious problem!

I prefer to not view it as abstractions in DW but more like that it plays out in an alternate universe with a far less star-populated Milky Way, rather than abstractions. Partly because when I think off everything as abstractions it sorta pulls me out of the game and makes me feel less immersed, but that's just how I work as a person! Besides so far DW seems a lot more connected to 'reality' than most other commercial 4X games IMO, it's real-time, it has proper orbits of celestial bodies etc, no carrier combat(if I recall correctly)!

Damnit, I can't wait for DW, just 8 days to go. Someone put me in a cryotube and wake me up when it's out!



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 1:21:51 PM)

quote:

Anyway, I re-read your post about abstractions, and whilst I agree with some of it, I do not find the populations in space 4X games to be abstractions generally, IMO they do quite a good job at making proper estimates on how much population a planet could support before overcrowding and resource logistics become a serious problem!

That statement is totally not related to the point I was making.

Game abstractions to me:

One population unit does not equal just one person.
To me, one star unit does not equal just one star.
To me, one structure unit on a planet does not equal just one structure on the entire planet. The unit would more like represent various structures spread across the various areas of the surface.

In other 4Ex games, like Civilization 4, one soldier unit or tank unit does not equal one soldier or tank. Instead those units would equal like 1000 soldiers and 100 tanks.

Those are just my way of thinking of these sorts of games. :)



Gargantou -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 1:27:57 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

One population unit does not equal just one person.


Well most 4X space games I've played makes it clear what number they count in, like Space Empires series makes it clear that "100" in population means "100 million", not just "100"

They do not leave the population numbers to the imagination generally, but usually makes it clear what number the population is counted in, i.e. numbers of thousands, millions, billions.

Anyway, I fully understand what you're saying though I personally would say the Civ series have a far bigger emphasis on abstraction than DW appears to have.



Shark7 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/15/2010 5:35:43 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Gargantou

quote:


There's currently no dramatic changes in the galaxy itself during the game - at least, not naturally caused changes...

That's the way it should be.

This 'stellar evolution' stuff should be up to the player whether he wants them in the game or not. Personally I do not since it's quite unrealistic, given the timeframe one has to think in when one looks at the evolution of stars and so forth.

Personally I'm a bigger fan of 'hard'-style science fiction rather than science fantasy where space is filled with magic anomalies everywhere you go and so forth.

And I know, I know, FTL travel is very much fantasy but it's a sacrifice that I understand because it's necessary to keep the game somewhat decently paced. The ideas of ultra-rapid 'stellar evolution' however, is not.

But, as I said before, I'm fine with it being added to the game as long as it's completely optional, I don't want to be forced to deal with a sci-fantasy universe where stars can go supernova like the ones we get in some other games.

And just to throw some scientific numbers into my rant, a supernovae occurs only approx. once every 50 years, in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

That should give everyone a fair idea of how how extremely low the chances would be to run into a supernova.

So if someone makes a supernova mod, please make an option in it to have it on a realistic scale, i.e. only one starsystem once every 50 ingame years!

P.S. I know I'm crazy, no need to point that out.



I agree with you. Unless the game lasts billions of turns, then the chances of something cataclysmic happening are pretty low. Take a look at our own galaxy, while it is constantly growing, the growth rate is minuscule...change takes much time to be accomplished.



Wade1000 -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/18/2010 8:55:06 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

quote:

And just to throw some scientific numbers into my rant, a supernovae occurs only approx. once every 50 years, in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

That should give everyone a fair idea of how how extremely low the chances would be to run into a supernova.

So if someone makes a supernova mod, please make an option in it to have it on a realistic scale, i.e. only one starsystem once every 50 ingame years!

P.S. I know I'm crazy, no need to point that out.

Consider, also, that a galaxy consists of billions of stars. In games like this portraying a galaxy each star system represented is likely abstracted to represent an average ,or the best, of millions of stars in it's vicinity. Thus, that supervova that happens every 50 years in real life would be FAR less likely in game...almost to the point of not needing to include supervovas in game or to have it super extremley rare.
I would except supernovas as super extremely rare in game. I won't try to come up with a ratio number chance for them happening in game.

Gargantou, you are not seeming crazy.




Okim -> RE: Stellar evolution? Future possibility? (3/18/2010 9:45:11 AM)

I liked cataclysmic events in MOO2 and  SE4. While the first has not so many stellar events (just a supernova, time anomaly and warp flux) all these events were funny to deal with: develop a star rejuvenator or be suspended for unpredictable period of time building additional firepower to unleash it as soon as flux is gone.

In SE4 it was possible to adjust the strength of events. I always played on cataclysmic level as it introduced supernovas, core instability and other nasty things that cannot be controlled. All you could do is just to evacuate citizens. It provided SE4 an additional juice as you had to fight not only your opponents, but also a universe itself.

I sometimes return to MOO2 as i miss its monsters (especially amoebas) and to SE4 as its extremely devastating events are unmatched by any other 4x game. BTW, when i first saw a monster in DW i was almost happy - space dwelling creatures are a rarety in modern space games )





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