FreeOrion

Yes there have been threads before. But they were either not devoted to this or several years old. So I felt like making a new one. Especially after reading this. Interesting stuff, apparently Gas giants would be almost impossible to form in this scenario. NOTE: this situation is what I'd described in one of my earlier posts as a "Mid" system.

Then there's Rigel. Which a combination of a "far" system, and a "mid" system. Love to see a planetary formation model done for that one.

For a definition of "near", we have spectroscopic binaries. Too close together for their seperateness to really influence planetary formation. Thus they'd be only be distinct visually. Algol makes a nice reference here.

Yes I understand it's not a priority item but still..... Like the Moons thing it seems like something worth persuing in future versions.

EDIT: I did a mockup..... This would be "Near".
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f297/ ... uryC2B.jpg

And I did one for "Mid".
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f297/ ... taninC.jpg

And now we have an example of "Far".
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f297/ ... /rigel.jpg

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I don't have a problem with something like the "Near" It's a graphical variation on stars that doesn't mess anything up. I'm all for graphical variations on stars and planets as long as the catagories they fall into remain distinct.

"Mid" seems like an unnecesary complication of the UI. What's the point of sticking star(s) into the part of the sidebar normally used for planets?

"Far" is two stars connected by a really short starlane, right? The obvious negative is the lables would tend to overlap, as they do in your example. Otherwise a little more starlane length variety is not a bad thing.

Actually in the case of "mid" you'd have the star in the place of a gas giant and little else would change.

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I understand your idea: i checked your mock-up.
I just don't think it can work well.
Either the star takes up too much space, it's halo interferes with the surrounding text, or the secondary stars are smaller than gas giants. In any implentation it's doesn't look good, and there's no strong reason to put it in.

The size differential becomes more glaring if as pd and myself prefer the primary star is shown like this.

Ah. I see. I suppose it could go the "dwarf star" route, but either way it's just a cool effect and has minimal gameplay value.(unless it would factor into space combat in a meaningful way)

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I was thinking about this and came up with something. It'd make sense to have this affect the planetary distribution. For "Far" it'd be minimal if anything. "Mid" would have smaller than average sizes and few gas giants. "Near" would be halfway between the two.

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I'd like to see binaries look something like this on the galaxy map:


This should add a nice bit of variety to the galaxy map. It would sometimes be impossible to differentiate the 2 stars when zoomed out, but that's how binaries work. They would be selectable and react to mouse-over as a single unit. It is 1 star system with 2 stars. Possibly such stars would be collectively named "Tegmine A&B" etc. One lable for each star would generate too much clutter.

The simplest thing would be to have the largest star govern the planetary composition.

Looks good! Any ideas how to display this on the sidepanel?

I'd show it in the sidepanel basicly like 'hawkman's "near" example, except as stated earlier i'd like to see bigger stars in the sidepanel. The smaller star should be in front for visibility.

Some unresolved questions are how much trouble should be taken to show the relative size of stars. Found here, in my most controversial post. Obviously the different star types can't be to scale, but for scientific and visual reasons, i'd like to hint at the relative size of different star types.

Well first we need to decide whether we're going to actually switch to stellar types over star colors. If all we're gonna do is have star color then it's largely a moot point. We just pick one to have as the central star and use that to generate planets/non-planets.

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As stated in the post linked above, the current star colors already correspond to actual star types too closely to be a coincidence.

It's not a question of using one or the other, but a question of what additional aspects of real star types, when utilized, add value to the game.

Well..... they match well, but there's no distinction in the game between a red star that a hypergiant (like betelgeuse) or a red dwarf (Barnard's star). I'm pretty sure it'd make a HUGE difference what sort of planets you'd find there.

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From the 0.2 requirements:
Clearly "red" is meant to be "Red Giants". I didn't claim that the colors correspond to every star type, nor should they. IMHO the number (6 + black holes) of star-types is well chosen: enough to add variety, without complicating things overmuch.

ah. so they skipped the dwarfs completely. hmm... don't like that. I read about this on Wikipedia recently and found something interesting. Apparently red dwarfs are the most common star type. so leaving them out...... I don't like that idea. (and yes this is the first I'd seen the "large cool stars" description.)

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