FreeOrion

I just tried out FreeOrion and have a few ideas.

I liked it even if it is far from finished even if I do not like starlanes.

I was surprised by finding black holes with planets. I would think that a supernova that produces a black hole should destroy any planets, but then maybe not.

Another strange thing was poor planets with mineral bonus. That looks a bit strange to me.

Research I found worked well, but it is confusing to find out what I need to focus on to get what I want. As the game is now this is not really a problem but with a more finished version it might be.

A few ideas to large scale things that might be possible to build
Ringworld
Dyson Sphere
Shellworld

The 2 first would likely be very endgame and when you should have won the game using resources on other things since one would have to clear out a starsystem (or start a place with only a star) to make them and bring in a lot of resources. Shellworld would not be that great in size but still a huge undertaking. I know Space Empires V do have Ringworld and Dyson Sphere as something that can be built. All of these have one problem in that since it is artificial there are no resources to mine at all

A few other possibilities
Starlines to an empty system
Supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy maybe no ship can survive going there
Make it dangerous to go to black holes.

As far as I know, black holes are currently coded in as regular stars and this is on the to-do list to change them into normal black holes.

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Ringworlds, dyson spheres have already been proposed (and I think rejected), the threads are still kicking around this forum if your interested, probobly better to reply to them and adress the old arguments than start a new thread.

I don't really what you mean. I don't think that's the case. It would be trivial to make blackholes planet-less if we wanted to.


Not rejected IIRC (though i don't think they are good for the game), but simply not a high priority item.

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I like the idea of Planets around Black holes. But I think it should be uncommon.

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I was just referring to them still being on the To Do list.

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The two are unrelated measures of planet quality. The "poor" means the planet isn't suitable for colonization because your race can't survive in its environment. Mineral bonus just means there are extra minerals available. There's no particular reason you couldn't have both.


Right now it doesn't matter what you research, since most techs do nothing. Much of the tree will be filled out and perhaps reorganized as we add more game subsystems that will add things for techs to interact with.


Having a "no star" star type is a possibility I've been pondering. It could be useful to allow destroying stars, apparently hiding stars, or just to make the starlane systems more interesting and mysterious ("Why *is* there a starlane to apparently nowhere?")


Once ships are fleshed out a bit and can do things like take damage, this will be possible.

I'm hoping at some point to make the universe generation system into a Python script, which is able to call the existing C++ universe generation functions, or do everything on its own. This will let us resolve the major bugs in universe generation and make is more customizable (than the current broken table of numbers method) and easier to modify to do things like make black holes have no planets.

That might be useful if used in a limited way... however it could serve just as well to create a different "start type" (which perhaps couldn't have planets) to serve as the remnant of blown-up stars.

The other problem is that people use the stars as nice, obvious targets to click on to direct ships around the galaxy map. Star-less starlane intersections would be problematic.


Once ships are fleshed out a bit and can do things like take damage, this will be possible.[/quote]
That's the kind of mechanic that makes more sense in a reflex-based space game. Rules like the old civ mechanic that Galleons have a 1/3rd chance of being lost on ocean squares are ultimately just annoying, and was wisely dropped in civ4.

Besides black holes are no more dangerous than a star of equal mass. Both are gravity wells, you get too close and you fall in and die.

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I'm not sure what you mean by that. Is "start type" a typo, or something different from star type? I was thinking of adding another "star colour" value, like Red, Yellow, Neutron, etc., which is "None" to represent no star at a location / in a "system". This would be shown in-game as nothing / empty space. Universe generation could avoid putting planets here if desired, but it might be useful to treat it just like any other star colour / system which can contain planets, should the situation arise.

I would hope that the end of a starlane or intersection of several starlanes would be enough to click on. If not, there could be a special map icon for no star. A special icon would be particularly useful if a no-star system is connected to two starlanes at almost 180 degrees apart, which might make it hard to tell that there's anything there if there's no special indicator icon at the location. Alternatively, there could just be a visible gap in the starlanes at the location of the system... but I think a simple empty-looking icon - distinct from a black hole - would be better.

sorry, typo.
What i was trying to stay, is rather than have a totally star-less system when a star goes boom, we could leave a "residue" something dimmer and/or more nebulous than a neutron star-- but still something you could see and click on. I'm tired and i can't think of the astronomical term. But i'm not sure i like the GUI implications of that either.


I know realism isn't out goal, but it seems too silly to normally generate perfectly habitable planets without a sun to heat them. I'm generally concerned with core content. I don't especially care if the code allows planets in a starless system, but i would argue vigorously that the player shouldn't normally run into such things.


Yeah, it would need to be some sort of icon. IMHO the stubby end of a starlane is not enough to click on, especially as you point out in a ~180 situation.
The main problem is the small sizes. I couldn't really think of anything sensible that wasn't really similar to what i did for the tiny black holes... but maybe that's OK... it depends on how important it is for the player to distinguish empty systems from black holes. Currently it would be fine, but if black holes become dangers to navigation it wouldn't be.

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Maybe a red X? it wouldn't look like a star. If it was the right size it wouln't obscure anything.

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A red "X" already means something in standard symbology. It implies you can't go there.

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well, what colors of X aren't taken? Or maybe just use a similar symbol.

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How about a little grey "O"? It implies emptiness, and it doesn't stand out as much as a star or black hole.

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