General Timed Supernovae

[Uvelius Sång]

A great feature that even could chain in nicely with the procedually generated stuff could be some kind of "timed supernovae". Empty star systems with the correct star classes in them (White Dwarfs, for example) could experience a count-down timer to a Supernova. Which, itself, could be a giogantic explosion, accompanied by an event like a system-wide White Dwarf cone effect (unprepared/weak ships would just pop, others might encounter extreme damage to systems, plus an extremely supercharged FSD) lasting for some weeks, after which all bodies in that system would be replaced with the "expanding colour net effect" we get in Supernova illustrations.
Would be a great touch, without actually having an influence on the GalMap structure, due to the masses of small empty systems around.
Those spots could be great surprises for the unprepared traveller, or even POIs for those who want to seriously supercharge their FSD.

 

[varonica]

Stars don't change in the ED galaxy, it's how the stellar forge works. And there's no way in procedural generation you can change what's been generated after the fact, that's not how procedural generation works either. Procedural generation is really good at making a forest full of a large number of unique but similar looking trees, but it can't make one suddenly turn into a cactus at some time in the future.

 

[Gorrister]

And then? You would just see the effect in that system. Maybe 4 years later in another. Maybe 400 years later in Sol. You could as well leave it the way it is. Saves capacities of the developers.

 

[Alex Korr V]

And then? You would just see the effect in that system. Maybe 4 years later in another. Maybe 400 years later in Sol. You could as well leave it the way it is. Saves capacities of the developers.

Devil is in the details and small things, that's what makes it alive and breathing.

 

[Montgomery Dog]

Stars don't change in the ED galaxy, it's how the stellar forge works. And there's no way in procedural generation you can change what's been generated after the fact, that's not how procedural generation works either. Procedural generation is really good at making a forest full of a large number of unique but similar looking trees, but it can't make one suddenly turn into a cactus at some time in the future.

It's not unthinkable that the stellar forge could be tuned to create and flag supernova progenitors that then 'go active' at some defined point in the live game. Once a star goes supernova it basically follows reasonably well understood lightcurves and behaviours which could be scripted based on values from the stellar forge (class, luminosity, radius, etc.).

It would be lovely to start to see some transient / time-domain phenomena in the game.

However, as others have pointed out, the phenomena would be so rare as to perhaps not be particularly worth bothering with.

Out of interest, and on an almost related note, are variable stars (Cepheids) modelled in the game?

 

[Greasetrap42]

Those spots could be great surprises for the unprepared traveller, or even POIs for those who want to seriously supercharge their FSD.

A system with a supernova would be an instant rebuy screen with no obvious explanation of why you died. Unless a banner popped up saying:

"Sorry about your bad luck but you just insta-died from Supernova. This was not a game bug. Please enjoy the rest of your day".