FreeOrion

Could I get some map icons and sidepanel art for systems to represent supernovae? Ideally there would be a series of these that could be used on sequential turns, starting with a small but very bright flash, then several steps of expanding explosion, and finally a few steps of a fading and expanding ring of debris with an empty / transparent centre. I'm thinking of placing these over top of black hole / neutron star icons after such an event, with a new one ever turn or two after a star explodes.

I know an exploding star would be cool once or twice, but what is the point? Stars don't actually matter. Colonies function just the same weather their star is Blue, Red, Neutron or None.

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Supernovae:
* would destroy much of what's in the system, or nearby systems
* would be visible from the whole galaxy
* could be induced to happen by players, monsters, or large moving space storms (like a hurricane causing tornadoes)
* could be an integral part of a late-game monster's reproduction cycle
* could be anticipated and prevented by appropriate player actions to provide a quest-like objective and a natural but manageable threat to empires
* might make it more or less attractive to place an important colony at or near a star (blue?) that could become unstable by one of the above means
* could be necessary to construct end game / game winning stuff like portals to other universes
* would be really cool to see happening, especially if they're happening to another empire

Ok, i can get behind blowing up systems, and possibly neighboring system. That's all you needed to say.

Supernovae are rather rare and may outshine entire galaxies. Non-super Novas probably fit the bill here.
Any idea how many uu the swath of destruction should extend before fading out?

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I'm not concerned if supernovae visual magnitude on the screen isn't realistically proportional with the rest of the on-screen galaxy, and I'd rather call them "super", especially if they're going to extend between systems. Outshining doesn't mean they are physically as large as a galaxy, if that's your concern.

I wouldn't object to having the much-smaller regular novas - that affect only one system - occur more frequently to neutron star binaries, though.
Maybe a radius of 100 uu?

No, i was just trying to point out that the "super" ones are extremely super.

Having two size variations sounds cool though. Maybe you never know if a nova will be "super" or not. Or maybe inducing "Supernovae" is a peak of the tech tree type multi-system destructive weapon.

I'll whip up some serviceable FPO images.

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There is some overlap in the stellar configurations that (real universe) can produce both events, though there are several varieties of supernovas that arise from situations that can't produce a nova. I'd like to be reasonably consistent with reality in this case... (I'm not an astrophysicist, but I believe novas require a white dwarf accreting gas from a binary companion, which can also cause supernovas, but supernovas can also occur if a very large star collapses. Novas leave a white dwarf after - so can recur periodically - but supernovas leave a neutron star or black hole)
I hope they will have several uses, including mass destruction.

Supernova will occur after a large star collapses, but first the star will expand into a red giant. When hydrogen is used up other elements are used for fusion, which release energy faster forcing the star to expand. When the star has no fuel left for nuclear fusion the fusion stops, reducing the pressure acting against the gravity of the star, this causes the star to collapse, get hotter and explode. There are no red giants in the game, so there would be no supernovae. In real life the different types (blue, yellow, red) of stars are different masses, but in this game the different colours are different ages, since Solar Rejuvenator building will change the colours. Larger stars in real life are hotter and 'live' for less time - so they are all young as they die young. Smaller cooler stars live thousands of times longer than large stars, so they are mostly older (but they could be young or old). Switching between the types would require changing the mass of the stars. Also, Solar refers to the Sun not to stars in general, the building should be a Stellar Rejuvenator. I am also not an Astrophysicist, but I do have qualifications which would let me be.
The game is not realistic in many ways, but so what? There are so many different advanced aliens and space monsters messing with the stars and planets in FreeOrion that I doubt if any of them are still in the state they were when they were formed.
I think supernova should be in the game, but only occasionally. They should destroy all the planets in the system they occur in and maybe mess up the starlanes too. Each of the systems in the game connected by starlanes are really far away from each other. The galaxy is tens of thousands of lightyears across. 1 uu in the game is more than 10 lightyears (maybe 50 lightyears). The other systems would not suffer any physical damage, but could have very increased levels of radiation - like X-rays and gamma rays, so colonies and spaceships could suffer, but it would be many turns later. If the effects travelled down starlanes it would all be much quicker. I think it might be fun if all the spacemonsters ran away from the supernovae, like a stampede. For graphics I think making the star much brighter, followed on successive turns by an expanding 'wave' of energy would be good. For the sidepanel A really bright star followed by a blackhole or neutron star with expanding dust which eventually expands off picture leaving a standard neutron star or black hole graphic after a few turns.
Leaving a neutron star or a blackhole would make sence, for reasons of making them have a game effect an asteroid belt or two should remain, so that outposts can be built to use the neutron star or black hole. Maybe colonies with lots of sheilds should become unihabited asteroid fields, or gas giants could become tiny worlds (they can have solid cores), and everything else is destroyed. Ships should all take a lot of damage, but maybe the very best defences could be enough to survive, since it would be cool to have a ship so tough that it can survive supernova!

Edit - I did some reading... Some types of supernova leave nothing behind. If mass from the companion star of a white dwarf is pulled onto the white dwarf, increasing the white dwarf's mass above the maximum possible mass for a white dwarf a supernova occurs destroying the white dwarf and the companion star. No mention is made of planets.

revision 4354: I uploaded preliminary graphics for the ring of destruction into ...art/stars/

At a scale of 1 pixel in the graphic to 1 pixel on the screen at max zoom, the 5 graphics should account for a ring of destruction that increased 20uu in radius with each increment.

That makes the graphics rather large 2000x2000. It's probably preferable to make the graphics half that size even if they look slightly pixelated at max zoom.

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Presumably like galaxy gas, whatever final graphic is used for novae / supernovae won't have a lot of sharp edges, so a bit of blurring / interpolation shouldn't make a huge difference int he on-screen result.

Something like that, though the gas is really a best case scenario with the way it's created from multiple layers of arbitrarily rotated images. The nova explosion, (especially if we are supposed to be able to tell with fair accuracy which systems are in front of the edge of destruction and which are behind) will need more resolution than that.

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