FreeOrion

I say we incorporate a Dyson Dodecahedron. So much more sophisticated and certainly gets an 11/10 on the awesome scale. And you'd also be mistaken if you thought what I just said was serious.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Well, yes and no. Planets don't seem to adopt a second axis on their own, but it is possible for them to have more than one. The net effect of having two is much like having a single axis that changes constantly in a regular pattern. But yeah it would need to be artificially induced, but hey Dyson spheres are artificial.

For further explanifying:

Visualize the North (N) and south (s) poles of a planet as a stick that's been stuck through a sphere. The planet rotates around the N/S poles like normal. Now if we add a second set of poles at the equator, we'll call them Z/Y, and have the planet rotate at the same rate along both axes. The surface of the planet would seem to tumble rather than rotating normally. An observer on the surface would see the sun move in a somewhat zig-zag line through the sky.

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Not really. It depends a lot on how fast the rotation of the axes are in relation to one another, but assuming they're at the same speed, you wouldn't see any zigzag pattern. That would require two rotations: one that we experience normally, and the other that moves in one direction, stops, and reverses, in order to make a zigzag pattern "across the sky". If we had the same exact rotation with all qualities copied onto an axis that drives straight "across" the earth, in the plane of the equator, the sun would be moving in a long curve along the sky that would be different every day. Different how I'm not certain and would require a good deal of calculations. However, and I'm not sure about this either but it's possible, if you tracked the movement of the sun across the surface of the earth for a year, and layed it out flat on a long paper representative of the Earth for every day, there might be a kind of zigzag pattern, but one that takes way to long to notice it zigzagging. Again, I don't know. Chances are I could easily make a 3D animation to determine how it would look though.

edit: in regards to a sphere having a 3rd axis rotation, it could. But if it were a planet it'd be pretty crazy to live on it. The surface would be going all over the place like your dinner after that hard partying you do every Saturday night.

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Well having two (or three) spin axis would cause the N/S axis to change orientation in regards to the star. but you on the planet wouldn't really be able to feel it. We can't feel the motion of Earth.

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[waste of a post] i know, it was in jest [/waste of a post]

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[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Goodmorning all,

Since we're talking about a Dyston Sphere, the star always stays in the same place regardless of rotation...

But,

what you can have is that you have a primary axis, north/south, which the Sphere rotates around, and a secondary axis, which the primary axis rotates about. Earth has this, the north/south axis itself rotates around a secondary point. over the course of 1000's of years[i think it's thousands could be more or less].

if you wanted to get an appreciable gravity out of this secondary axis, the primary axis would have to rotate about the secondary with a 'fixed' angle between the two axis of ~90 degrees. and with a velocity approaching that of the primary. This would mean that over the surface of the Sphere, the spin induced artificial gravity would very with location between a min and a max, where the max would be approximately squareroot(2) * the min (could be 2 times the min, but i strongly suspect it's root two..) but at least the gravity heavy spots would stay fixed relative to the two poles.

If you wanted to get REALLY crazy, you can have even more subpoles, where the primary axis rotates around a pole, which rotates around a pole which rotates .... but such solutions have Dynamic gravities distributions, where the effective gravity experienced in one location can vary in time, including approaching 0 at certain locations. This would make living in such a location suck.


In planet like systems, the secondary rotation is 'mostly' irrelevant. As long as the primary axis maintains a fixed inclination as compared to the star. If the secondary axis is itself tilted relative to the motion of the planet relative to the star, then the relative tilt between the planet axis and the star makes for more and less severer seasons over the course of the secondary rotation. Also it would make it so that the star appears to rise at a different location each year on the same day going through a very long zigzag over the course of the 1000's of years. Earth's secondary axis is not aligned, i believe, with the solar axis, making for less and more severer seasons, over the 1000 year cycle. but you'd need to ask a real astronomer ... or google... if you actually care.


Not that any of this is relevant, it's a game, not reality, we can do whatever makes us smile. But i thought i would give my two cents.

best wishes all Robbie

Cool! your way of explaining it made more sense than mine.

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As a side note,

A sphere may be functionally limited to three axises of rotation, due to the rotation being in three space. meaning a three dimensional matrix of rotation. . . any additional axises would be simply a linear sum of the first three . . . Again, I'm not sure about this either, and it's even less important

Best wishes, Robbie

Ok, I'm going back to gameplay issues.

I was browsing a kick starter for the 4x "MORE". And they had one idea I thought was great. They used Dyson spheres as a way to streamline the late game management burden. In other words, if you take a system of 5 planets, and re-engineer it into a single superstructure, you now have 4 less entities to manage. Especially if the superstructure has some down sides as compared to regular planets, I think this is an idea we should investigate.
Though not right now.

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Sounds like a good idea... but it (of necessity) eliminates planetary specials.

If planetary specials are fairly rare (most planets are just an EP and a size) then it is a useful thing. (ultimate in terraforming... make all the planets the ideal EP, and then combine all the sizes).

That would probably be a practical downside... no specials.. (so making a dyson out of a planet would require enough tech to remove all 'planetary negatives'.. ant then you would only do it with planets that didn't have any special 'planetary positives'.)

Yeah, most (all?) specials would be destroyed when you change the planets to a super-structure.
Should buildings also be destroyed? or just non-orbital buildings?
That would be part of the trade-off. I also think the population capacity should be greater for a superstructure than the constituent planets, but not as much better as would be realistic, say perhaps the max size would be the same as 10 huge planets, but the size would be 125% or 150% of the planets that made up the structure more or less. (Maybe the superstructures come in small through huge sizes as well)

I really don't want a system where it is optimum to turn *all* your planets into similar super-strucuctures

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I agree on that.... I could see the
Benefits
1. Slightly more pop (than combined planets terraformed to best level)
2. Consolidation (better defense)

Costs
1. Planetary specials lost
2. Production point cost


Cost #2, and Benefit #1 are the two big ones...
Population=> ongoing production
Production point=> one time production
[so in the Long term it might make sense to turn all your non-special Systems into Dyson Spheres... but it would be an investment that might not pay off in time for a win]

Well...I'd say it should keep buildings (as long as those buildings don't require a planetary special)
also.. it should consume ALL the planets in the system.

I'd say

Size of Dyson Sphere (and its population) would be determined by the star.
Cost of the Dyson Sphere would be determined by the Size.... with a discount for the sizes of the planets that will be destroyed.

One problem is how this relates to meters... if the best possible planet has an output of 100... then how can a Dyson Sphere be better.
(perhaps a Dyson Sphere is just like a planet.... pop meter 0-100, production meter 0-100, research meter 0-100, etc. However, it gets a bonus of 10x when contributing to the Imperial pool for research or production.)

The other big cost is that the system should produce nothing while it is under construction.

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Well I thought about the sphere and the ring again. Why not make this thing a really big project

The sphere will never be complete because of the lack of material, but you can expand a ring further and further. So you start with one system, construct a ring with some stats on the planets there. But if this not enough then use that funky planet movement techs to bring more planets into the system - and then going on with building even a bigger ring/sphere. With high end techs you might be able to construct worm whole vacuum cleaner placed on other suns to produce construction material to construct planets from nothing (very ineffienctly of course, so that it cools down the sun or make it instable or whatever). Those planets you can bring to the sphere under construction and go on constructing it.

If you have a really big ring with really high max population, then this might be a alternative nonmilitary way to win this game (exspecially if you do this stealthy). Or you decide to play further and further. It can become an alternative way to long term play the game besides the normal mechanics.

Sorry for my broken English,

Skyfire

So instead of winning the game by destroying your opponents planets, you steal them and put them into your ever expanding ring, so they can't be stolen back!
As the game stands you would have to build quite a few rings; one for each species in your empire (since no-one likes sharing).