Idea For Active Stellar Phenomena

[Greasetrap42]

Crazy Wednesday idea... just a thought. No need to jump over the idea saying "stellar forge can't do it" I know, I know. Its complicated and difficult. Maybe an idea for 5 years down the road. The idea i have has some interesting consequences.

Idea: Active stellar phenomena. Not many, just a few. Like a star exploding. If the ingame scientists predicted it in advance players could go to the location and visually watch it happen from a safe distance. (too close and I guess you blow up) But if you missed it, that's okay. A day later you could watch it happen 24 light hours away. Two days later you must be 48 light hours away.

I'm not sure what the safe distance is. I might be one of the first ships to be destroyed.

Depending on your ship's location the area would have 3 states:
1) normal star about to explode
2) actively exploding star
3) aftermath

It would still remain fairly local. Obviously it takes a full year for the visual experience to travel a light year. So unless you get with a few LY it just looks like a regular star. If it simplifies the game concept after a couple years each specific phenomena could mysteriously vanish when a game update happens. So it stays very local within the game.

It is interesting that our ship effectively becomes a time machine. We can watch the event as many times as we wish and from different angles... just keep travelling further away.

Of course you gotta get your distance from the event just right to see the show.

This could be a really cool scientific exploration mission. This would be a huge enhancement to exploration.

 

[muroko]

I approve. If it's doable, why not?

but now that you pointed out that our ship is time traveling (sort of) .... when im in supercruise and i go over lightspeed, then drop out of supercruise, shouldn't i see myself drop out of supercruise if i turn around?

 

[space voyager]

Stellar forge leaves a lot to be desired. I support. Space should be dangerous. Also, please add a data black box to be retreived by the explorer.

 

[JuhaEske]

This game needs a lot more various kinds of danger&phenomena Greasetrap42 above mentioned.
It is sometimes really hard to find interesting and "dangerous" places while exploring the Galaxy.
Only by serious mistakes in ship handling some good feeling of vulnerability will occur.

 

[Sylow]

Space should be dangerous. Also, please add a data black box to be retreived by the explorer.

Hmm. While space should be dangerous, stars don't explode all that often. (The estimate is about 20 per milennia in our galaxy. ) Mind you, i am all for more things in the game to find. Plenty of them could be dangerous. I just think that exploding stars are not among them. Remains of a supernova on the other hand will be there for a long time, might be very interesting to explore and might have plenty of quite dangerous features.

 

[space voyager]

Hmm. While space should be dangerous, stars don't explode all that often. (The estimate is about 20 per milennia in our galaxy. ) Mind you, i am all for more things in the game to find. Plenty of them could be dangerous. I just think that exploding stars are not among them. Remains of a supernova on the other hand will be there for a long time, might be very interesting to explore and might have plenty of quite dangerous features.

Look, I want a planetary nebula of my own. And right now, they seem to be all taken. So... new stars must go off!

Ok, I'm all for staying at least roughly within the realm of reality, but right now space is pretty boring. And safe. So I agree with you, let's bring other unsafe stuff in and also let's make the really dangerous stuff already in the game actually dangerous. Most obvious example being black hole.

Right now the only star remotely dangerous is a white dwarf and even that one when you push your luck.

 

[sandkid]

This is very doable in system - not sure about the skybox for other systems (great idea, no idea how that would program easily if at all).

But it's a great idea and I agree it ought to be related to GalNet probably or CGs to enhance player awareness of the phenomenon occurring. Could even build CGs around 'protecting' or 'saving' nearby colonies and the like, a la Vulcan-gonna-die!, and this would give a neat set piece for that.

 

[Linnunrata]

So I agree with you, let's bring other unsafe stuff in and also let's make the really dangerous stuff already in the game actually dangerous. Most obvious example being black hole.

I guess the exclusion zone could be removed, but I can't see how black holes would be that dangerous unless you purposefully fly into one - the Elite ships are capable of flying faster than light anyway.

 

[space voyager]

I guess the exclusion zone could be removed, but I can't see how black holes would be that dangerous unless you purposefully fly into one - the Elite ships are capable of flying faster than light anyway.

They could have accretion disks and spew out jets even worse than neutrons at the poles, you get too close and your engines simply can not pull you out... You get too close and people are playing Elite 3 when you get back.

Edit: is there any reason why neutron jets are WAY more friendly than those of WDs? Is this just gameplay simplification for faster travel?
The other day I turned on the jump when still in a WD's jet... You don't want to do that... While a neutron's jet has no impact at all.

 

[aXeL]

I've just stumbled across this a bit late but totally agree. I was so disappointed at how lame black holes, binary stars, co-orbital planets look. Why people bother with the trek to Sag A is beyond me; No accretion disks of degenerate matter, no disintegrating objects, no jets of rejected material. Close binary stars and co-orbiting planets - again no evidence of their mutual proximity whatsoever, no accretion, no object distortion even vaguely approximating tides or Roche Limits.

The algorithms to even just vaguely approximate this has existed for decades. Heck like me, doubtless many people here wrote code to simulate the effect when we were kids just for kicks - not that my Beeb or even Arch could do it at any great pace. The reason it irks me so much is that it seems like such an obvious opportunity to draw people in with more physics based eye candy. Seriously I was so disheartened looking at Sag A and thinking - "That's it?"

Am I just missing something but after all the work to model the galaxy is the physics simulation really lacking in some very basic areas? I'd rather not have black holes at all rather than nothing but a simple lens effect and instead wait for something much more dynamic. I'm conscious this is a moan on a game I love but I was so hoping that more would've been done considering how easy it is to code some basic approximations.