Putting this out there as food for thought for FDev,
Wolf-Reyet stars are typically characterised by being so bright that they are shedding huge amounts of their mass. This typically forms planetary nebulae around them.
Currently in game they don't differ too much from O type stars.
My proposal/suggestion/whatever is to find a way to depict that outflow of matter and the denser than normal nebular space. Perhaps by using the same code that draws the solar prominences, flares and coronae of stars now, but retooled to produce an infinite (or at least several 10,000's of Ls across) "layer-cake" of coronal mass, that fades out as it is approached, making interplanetary distances seem to be filled with a constant outflow of stellar mass, but being too fine to affect smaller scales.
At the same time, manipulate the stellar jets code from white dwarfs and neutron stars to make sunspot-jets producing many smaller jets all around the star. smaller and more random than those of the existing types of jets.
Finally, allow fuel scooping in any of the area that the stellar mass is occupying, and perhaps allow FSD supercharge from the jets, but that'd be a massive risk to any player attempting it, as it means turbulent flight right up next to the exclusion zones of some of the hottest stars in the galaxy.
Combine these traits with a hotter than normal environment, as all that mass would act to re-radiate a lot of heat, and at supercruise speeds, the interaction with a stellar wind that dense would cause conductive and maybe frictional heating?
Basically this would make the WR class stars interesting, if terrifying, locations to explore, feeling like exploring the inside of a forest fire, with inherent risk, but some reward for the effort (or at least assistance with the inevitable egress from the system)
Wolf-Reyet stars are typically characterised by being so bright that they are shedding huge amounts of their mass. This typically forms planetary nebulae around them.
Currently in game they don't differ too much from O type stars.
My proposal/suggestion/whatever is to find a way to depict that outflow of matter and the denser than normal nebular space. Perhaps by using the same code that draws the solar prominences, flares and coronae of stars now, but retooled to produce an infinite (or at least several 10,000's of Ls across) "layer-cake" of coronal mass, that fades out as it is approached, making interplanetary distances seem to be filled with a constant outflow of stellar mass, but being too fine to affect smaller scales.
At the same time, manipulate the stellar jets code from white dwarfs and neutron stars to make sunspot-jets producing many smaller jets all around the star. smaller and more random than those of the existing types of jets.
Finally, allow fuel scooping in any of the area that the stellar mass is occupying, and perhaps allow FSD supercharge from the jets, but that'd be a massive risk to any player attempting it, as it means turbulent flight right up next to the exclusion zones of some of the hottest stars in the galaxy.
Combine these traits with a hotter than normal environment, as all that mass would act to re-radiate a lot of heat, and at supercruise speeds, the interaction with a stellar wind that dense would cause conductive and maybe frictional heating?
Basically this would make the WR class stars interesting, if terrifying, locations to explore, feeling like exploring the inside of a forest fire, with inherent risk, but some reward for the effort (or at least assistance with the inevitable egress from the system)
