I always got the feeling that the role of Gas Giants in GCII was simply to float there in the map looking pretty, which was exactly the thing, they had no uses.
Most Gas Giants host a number of moon's, Jupiter for example has 67 or more, with a combined surface area of an earth size planet. That is a bunch of of territory waiting to be colonized.. Many scientists even ponder the possibility of life evolving on such moon's.
I really hope GC3 gives Gas Giants some purpose other then being just for show. At least add the possibility to harvest gases from the atmosphere...
Kind of an interesting idea. If Stardock are looking for features to add, be it for the game or future expansions. I would say moons and Gaz giants would be a nice place to look at. I like complex games, but how complex is too complex?
Endless space allows you to colonize gaz giants and use moons but it is also a simpler game than GalCiv in several regards.
This could be faily easy to implement, just by making the gas giant and it's host of moons act as a single planet does in the game now. When selecting a gas giant, instead of a map layout of a planet with 72 tiles, it would be layout with 20-50 moons, each moon a single tile, and on some improvements could be built.
That would be the easy, simple way. Of course I personally wouldn't mind something a bit different and new to the game
Yes, resurrect the EEE! Space Empires has a race/species that live on (upper atmosphere) of gas giants. They also allowed ships to refuel by skimming across a Gas Giant. So many resources, as long as you don't go too deep!
I can think of three uses right off the top of my head;
-Skim gas giant planets for Helium and Hydrogen for a small amount of credits or production.
-Limited colonization potential in floating cities and orbital stations
-Habitable moons
This is something Stardock is considering at least Tyrannasaur has is for class 0 planets to do something. Gas giants give off radiation. Gas giants also have metallic hydrogen. Gas giants has water. I agree that I want to do something with class 0 planets. Not to mention they got the mass for wormholes.
1. Everything gives off radiation, and this is actually a bad thing.
2. You can create metallic hydrogen in a factory more easily than extracting it from the inner 'mantle' of the gas giant, with millions of earth atmospheres of pressure crushing you. It's just not feasible.
3. Almost every celestial body in the universe is expected to have water, as water is the second most plentiful molecule in the universe after hydrogen gas.
I also think we need some sort of exploitation of 'useless' planets, but we have to do it in a relatively believable way or else it comes off as being ridiculous. Galactic Civilizations is both science fantasy and science fiction, and we must pay some lip service to the 'fiction' part of the equation.
Well they say all mass is energy, and a lot of it. I would like to be able to do something with the class 0 planets to. Maybe you got some ideas.
So you want Stardock to make Stardocks on gas giants...
maybe if it was for all the METHane. (world of nerds reference).
DARCA
Haha!!! I think.
Class 0 planets = target practice for Terror Moons
I think it would be kinda cool to have habitable moons around Gas Giants - give them special bonuses or abilities from the type of GG they orbit kind of like moons and rings give bonuses to planets in GC2. Would also be a great opportunity for some sick graphics watching the tiny moon circle a GG in the planet screen too.
Endless Space also let you terraform them, which got silly if a game went long. I once turned a system of lava worlds and gas giants into a system of jungle worlds and it produced a fleet every turn.
Letting youn do something with them with a tech is a great idea. The terraforming craziness was not so awesome.
I agree, the whole radical planet changing techs in endless space were a bit eyebrow raising.
Radiation is energy. Gas giants are huge batteries of nearly unlimited energy, almost as powerful as a star. Speaking of which, we should also be able to do something with stars.
Something none of these games really do (that I can think of) is properly address the growing power requirements an advanced space empire would require. We should be building giant power arrays in close orbit to stars and gas giants and beaming the collected radiation to space stations and planets with lasers, or transferring it through quantum entangled particles around the universe instantly.
Short of adding an entirely new resource and gameplay mechanic though, we should definitely be at least creating colonies on gas worlds. A colony on the surface of a gas planet is basically going to function like a colony on a "dense gravity" or "barren" world, just with a bit more effort required to get through the thick stormy atmosphere. Or we could build floating colonies on the outer edges of the planets, using the vast oceans of fuel below to power the engines required to keep it afloat. Collecting that fuel and sending it offworld would be a big reason to actually do that.
Terraforming a gas giant into a jungle world would not be impossible, it would just require a tremendous amount of effort removing most of the atmosphere and converting what was left into the right composition. Then genetically engineering vegetation that thrives in whatever environment (gravity/temperature/sunlight) is left. It is not at all unrealistic, given enough time we are likely going to harvest all the fuel from Jupiter leaving a rocky core only a dozen or so times the size of Earth which could be easily terraformed at that point into whatever we want. This might take 10s of thousands of years, but it will probably happen eventually.
Since this is all speculative anyway maybe the devs could 'borrow' from David Brin's Uplift Universe - create a second form of GG life with unique traits that competes with oxygen-based forms - hydrogen-based breathers that can't live on tiny Oxygen worlds and vice-versa. Could open up some interesting scenarios. Diplomacy/influence skills and Planet buster weaponry could take on a new life. Could use an ability bit flag to set the ability of which type worlds they could use similar to the way GC 2 used harsh world tech abilities to determine the types of worlds a race could use.
This surprised me in school that there are only three kinds of energy potential, kinetic, and thermal. This means most forms of energy are either potential and thermal. This k.ind of makes the fact that it is radioactive is irelivent. The only issue is really how much. We always mess with released radiation it is solar energy. This actually would be easier than a Dyson swarm. I would consider space stations or the moons would be like water worlds before I would colonize the planet.
So, where does the energy of electromagnetic radiation fit in to your three categories?
If it is on a descent level it would be thermal. I imagine if you are talking the level that bonds mass together it would be potential until fission or fusion is done it then would be both thermal and kinetic. So for the most part it would be thermal, but it is interconnected.
"So, where does the energy of electromagnetic radiation fit in to your three categories?"
This conversation is getting close to a part of a novel I am working on. But has anyone notice how things work in 3's and then combine to become something else.
And the Admiral is always right because we're fb friends.
Thermal energy is kinetic energy on the atomic level, so that part of your theory is kinda flawed
I was wrong on something on this. I think electromagnet is artificial where magnetism is natural can someone help me on this. I imagine radiation means how much energy is being put off. I know some of this stuff, but not all. I would like to hear someone more qualified give as detailed of an explanation on how what I'm talking about applies to this it would be interesting.
Radiation can be particles or light. But in gas giants its mostly particles. IIRC
an example of magnetism would be a black holes magnetic field with absolutely nothing around for light years. There would just be pure magnetism from mass. But no one knows for sure. Basically everything else has some amount of "electro" taint in it.
DARCA?
What's complex here? The OP suggested, to what would probably amount to, another repetitive way of gaining the games artificial limiter, resources. There is nothing interesting about just giving us more shit to colonize and it's gas giants so you need to do this and that to get there. Throw on a culture bonus or two and act like you're doing something new and interesting.
And I know, the OP didn't feel inclined to go on any further because this is a forum. It's purpose is discussion.
Sorry
Never be sorry when your speaking freely. No one can put you in prison or worse...give you negative karma.
The radiation Jupiter gives off is primarily infra-red produced by the heat inside it caused by the massive pressure and friction of its fluid ocean, and that is at best difficult to utilize. The second type of 'radiation' Jupiter and other gas giants give off is in the form of their Van Allen belts, which in the case of Jupiter can kill a person within hours and is more of a navigational hazard than a potential resource. This is because it's so high-energy (per particle), and most collection devices are useless.
Like you said later, it would be much more logical to skip all that 'radiation' jazz and focus on building floating structures in the upper atmosphere; putting anything on its solid core would require you to fly, swim and tunnel through ridiculously hazardous material (Hydrogen and Helium in their gaseous, liquid and metallic solid states) at tens of millions to billions of earth-atmospheres of pressure. Considering how many other potential colonization sites there are in the universe, I can't reasonably expect that to ever happen.
And finally, 'exhausting' the Hydrogen and Helium of a gas giant on the timescale of a conventional civilization like in GalCiv is basically impossible; there's literally nonillions of tons of resources, and there will in all likelihood be multiple giants exploited at once, reducing the drain on an individual planet.
I apologize if I'm being a smart-ass and overtly dickish, but someone has to fight for realism, right?
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