While reading some forums I got this idea from a few different posts and wasn't sure which one to post it in so I decided to create my own.
On the topic of dead planets:
There is a ton of them around and it is aesthetically pleasing cause it adds a certain amount of reality to it considering the Goldilocks zone etc. This seems to me to be about the extent of their usefulness. With this in mind I think that Dead planets could become something akin to space stations. Not really colonizing a dead planet but put a way station of sorts on the planet. Their could be multiple uses for these types of stations -
1) A Refueling Station - Whether that be like a moon base or an orbital platform. Taking from another forum thread about the distance in which life support system would function. This would increase a ships range but nothing to drastic as to take away what a space station would give you. Also I would see this as nothing to expensive or extensive to make huge impacts on game play or functionality.
2) A Staging Area - I like this as an added strategic element to the game. When your starting to assault on an enemies area you could begin by taking out their planet bases/platforms to create staging areas for your attacks while you work towards their main planets. This of course would not be necessary to do in order to conquer their area but could ease the progress. I would also limit any bonus you would get from it to keep from unbalancing the game and keeping it as a fun feature and not a requirement.
3) Tech - In the tech area of the game these types of bases/platforms could be used as *minor* enhancements towards certain types of networks -
A) There was one forum post about the creation of space roads, traffic areas, and well other travel based ideas, these stations/platforms could be used as connecting points or something along those lines.
B ) It could be used in the creation of weapons such as planet destroyers (if they ever come) or add little tweaks or requirements for certain weapon systems based on the material or the type of dead planet..ex- need a certain type of mineral or gas that you can only get from said gas giant etc.
C) The creation of certain types of fields or sensor readings could be created by these bases/platforms. Use it as a scouting base etc. or create some kind of distortion in space near the planet that makes enemy ships passing move slower or have reduce sensor range etc.
4) Random boosts or Tiny Events could be derived from them - "an explosion at the station has set research back one turn" (nothing to extensive maybe even one turn is to much based on the number of dead planets and the number of the events would have to be regulated so they didn't happen every turn or all at once. This could be an added feature to the one already in the game for when you first colonize a planet.) '
5) Espionage - These types of bases/platforms could be used as easily infiltrated places to get sensor data or view an enemies' area and movements. So Less risky places to have a spy (I would suggest the view created by the spy be limited, not like being able to see a whole system but just enough to see passing traffic etc.)
6) Pirates - So the Devs said that pirates would be included in the game and i'm not sure if they are going to want them to be able to conquer your worlds or just harass but these types of stations would make prime targets for them and create more interactions between you and the pirates. (This would have to be regulated as to not force you to have to go and take back your stations every turn. Eventually allowing you added tech that protects against the pirates)
Now all these ideas would have to be limited in bonuses, cost, or effect of these types of additions. I would think they would work better as minor additions and extra stuff you could do then to make them a large aspect of the game and creating a million balancing issues. There is also a lot of these planets so their bonuses would have to be limited just so that no one could exploit them thus making the game to easy and losing its value. I would also like to note that the bases/stations health i.e. what it would take to destroy them or capture them be very minimal to reduce any kind of tedious task that could take hours and take away from the main aspects of the game. Also my intent is if these where to ever be created is that they be as maintenance free as possible. You already have so much you can do and will have to do so by adding a ton of maintenance with stuff like this would detract from the game. My intent with these additions is to create options and different avenues that one can take to creating their galactic civilization. Also I apologize if these ideas have already been spoken, discussed, or utterly decimated by those that wish to see us all destroyed.
I agree. This would be something else.
I also agree with the OP. Using dead planets could add a lot to gameplay. Using them for resources would be awesome. I would really like to have to find and mine resources in order to build things or advance technologically.
One other use of dead planets should be to replace strategic resources.
I mean, what are these strange cube or triangular glowing things floating in space described as some kind of gelatinious fluid? Where are the ghostbusters when we need them?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have these strange materials available on a planet?
Same thing about mining, why only asteroids fields? i mean it's nice, but wouldn't it make more sense to install structures on a rocky planet and dig it just the way we do on earth instead of drifting asteroids most of them probably covered in a unstable dusty soil?
Not that i want to remove asteroids mining, but i'm just surprised i can dig asteroids but not planets. (Of course we can discuss about venusian planets full of acid rains and all, but there are alos Mars-like planets and moons like Europa, Titan and Ganymede).
Gas giant exploitation is probably much much harder in reality as they combine heavy gravity and the obvious unstability of being gaseous, but we all remember Bespin station from Star Wars and a good movie reference is as good as a nature's law as far as games are concerned
But generally speaking, it implies some sort of "starbase on planet" and it's not incompatible with "starbases in space". After all, Star Trek's Wolf 357 military starbase or DS9 sounds as cool as Star Wars' Hoth rebel secret base or Riddick's Crematoria prison.
I doubt however that dead planet exploitation, whatever it is, will make it for the initial release of GC3, but maybe an expansion?
I agree with this. I think the easiest way would be to treat dead worlds like asteroids. It could be a higher asteroid mining tech perhaps.
From a "realistic" standpoint, harvesting resources from an asteroid in Zero G is vastly preferable to mining on a planet's surface, then having to blast the product back out of a gravity well. So much so, that the only reason to mine a planet after you've perfected asteroid mining is if you're after some incredibly rare element that isn't found in asteroids in any reasonable quantity - basically, the noble gases and several of the more highly-radioactive elements. Pushing mass out of a gravity well (even if you're using something nifty like a space elevator) is just terribly energy inefficient and no race with any other option would do it, save for the exceedingly rare elements mentioned before.
I'd go with moving the specialty thingies (the economic/moral/research/etc. gizmos that you create starbases around) onto dead planets, and creating a new kind of constructor which creates a "mining colony" on those dead planets. Such planets would have no influence radius, and could be bombarded (and destroyed) rather than invaded. Basically, just dump the bonus gizmos from space, and put them on dead planets.
In the long run, I'd like GC3 to introduce new levels of "colonization", where the type of colony is just as important as the planet you pick to colonize, in terms of how the planet can be used.
The Galactic Civilizations universe has mass-negation technology and hyperdrive, alongside fusion. Those three technologies make it pretty irrelevant where you choose to do something.
Here are some (old) posts by Mormegil that seem fitting for this topic:
Minable planets
From the same thread
About terraforming and extreme worlds
What will happen in the future, a 3 tiered approach, similar but not exactly the same as GC2.
TerraformingPlanets in general will be a bit lower class, and players will have to spend some effort though a new terraforming system to make sure they get the highest class out of each world.
Extreme WorldsThese are the classic worlds that are locked by tech, players will not be able to colonize them untill particular terraforming techs are reached. These worlds will often have several levels, and unique bonuses. This alone will encourage colonization much further into the game.
Technological Age.Both Terraforming, and Extreme worlds will be gated to some degree by the new tech age system. Some worlds will not even be able to be researched until later Ages, this will make sure that there are almost always planets out there to expand to. Not to mention taking other players
I hope this addresses some of you concerns, I hope you will let us know what you think of it when the above features, get finalized.
PS. there will also be a few late game events that can create new worlds.
The only positive point about the resources floating in space is that it encourages really thorough exploration, rather than just bee-lining for stars. Nothing was worse than missing a few spaces of shroud and having someone else claim that economic resource a few spaces from your capitol.
I cannot tell you how many times this ^^^ has occurred. I thought i removed all the fog and viola...the Snathi got that Economic resource right near my home system. HOW>>> how did they afford it?
Out of the three technologies listed, the only one which is easily seen to be relevant to the economics of planetary versus asteroid mining is the mass negation technology, and I don't know where you're getting that from. The two closest technologies I can recall are the implied existence of inertial compensators and the known existence of artificial gravity.
Hyperdrives in Galactic Civilizations appear to not work as well near large masses. Moreover, depending on just where the dead planets to be mined are, access to hyperdrives could at least as easily favor asteroid mining as planetary mining - after all, with something similar to present-day technology, Mars is a more valid mining target than any of the gas giants within this system, and is closer to Earth than the asteroid belt is. Both are close enough that with the apparent in-system hyperdrive speeds in Galactic Civilizations the travel time would be rather negligible, but mining the asteroids is still more economically feasible because it costs less to get the resources to a point where the hyperdrive is usable. Heck, it might even be feasible to strap hyperdrives onto asteroids and deliver them to the point of use that way rather than setting up any significant processing station out in the field. But that's more or less besides the point - the trip home has never been the major issue in making mining planets economically feasible when compared to mining asteroids, the major issue is getting the stuff off the planet in the first place. Hyperdrives would tend to make this more extreme, as with a hyperdrive there's much less of an issue with the amount of time the return trip takes - if you're restricted to real-world physics, then the asteroid belt, being ~50% further away than Mars is, should take ~50% more time for the return trip, and since Mars is a several month trip one-way, that might be a sufficiently significant difference in travel time to worry about as far as the economics of the project go. With Galactic Civilizations hyperdrives in play, there is little practical difference as we're at most talking about a difference of a day or two, possibly even in the favor of the asteroid field.
As far as fusion power goes, fusion is not necessarily directly applicable to departing a planet's surface, as it will depend on how the reactors are set up, and whether or not a fusion-based thruster of whatever designs may be used in Galactic Civilizations are usable in close proximity to a planet's surface. Moreover, while access to fusion power may reduce the cost of providing the energy to move something from a planet's surface to orbit, assuming that it's an applicable power source, it will still take more energy to move mass A from a planet's surface to a waiting freighter in orbit than it would to move mass A from an asteroid's surface to a waiting freighter, even under the rather ridiculous assumption that the freighter waiting to take a shipment from an asteroid will wait at the same distance from the asteroid as it would wait at for a shipment from a planet. And unless the energy cost of whatever form of propulsion Galactic Civilizations uses is completely independent of the mass of whatever is being moved and of the gravitational attraction of whatever the departure point is, this issue will always be present even with magic 'mass negation technology' - especially if the power requirements of the 'mass negation technology' are proportional to the strength of the local gravitational field.
There's a technology that references Mass Effect in ToA, and it describes mass reduction. There's only one mention of it I believe, and it's relatively obscure. I'll find it if I have time.
Of course you're entirely correct. I recall a quote along the lines of "Once you're in space, you're half way there".
However, more distant targets require much more delta-V than nearer ones, even if you are traveling at FTL speeds or relativistically. This necessitates more energy expenditure and fuel, which in turn makes any theoretical ship design more reliant on large amounts of fuel/high-density energy sources. While this is an irrelevancy in game, this means that in real life it will frequently be vastly easier, faster and more economical to send vessels to nearby large gravity wells (like Mars and Venus). Provided the ships don't actually land on the planet (and mine with drones, for example), it would prove easier for them, energy-wise than visiting distant asteroids.
Obviously, asteroids, despite the above, have much richer compositions in terms of ease of access to valuable resources
Yes of course, but then again, the presence of artificial gravity and mass negation would make mining planets much easier as well, directly compensating for their chief drawback. Fusion, as I mentioned before, would also make energy requirements a non-issue.
You're using quite a few assumptions about the technology the races of the fiction have available, I believe.
Ahh, I don't have time to expand on this further, talk more later?
The tech, that comes the closest to what are talking about, is Expert Gravity Channeling from the Thalan tech tree. Here is what it says:
"Every interstellar civilization has some form of artificial gravity. Artificial gravity is merely the basic channeling of gravitational forces. Gravity is, after all, simply the indention of mass into space-time. The unified theory of force that all civilizations at this stage have recognizes that energy can be used to shift the gravity that is exhibited by mass in different ways.||However, what no other civilization grasps yet is just how much can be done with gravity provided that enough power is available. Basic Gravitronics allows us to shift the gravitational outline of a ship in ways that enable our ships to move more quickly through hyperspace. As a result, our ships gain a speed bonus."
There two other techs (Interstellar Navigation from the Arceans, and Dark Energy Research from the Altarians/Drath), that mention the words "mass effect", but neither is about "mass reduction".
I was trying to link to allie-cat's reply#23 so that for those that wish to compare the Alpha Centauri remake "Beyond Earth" they could use the following link to check out the article on the competition and what it includes in what sounds like serious Beta stages :
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/12/civilization-beyond-earth-interview-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-factions-aliens-technology-and-more/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0
nothing happens in a vacuum.
It's worth noting that in pretty much all media (TV, Film, Literature) in the SciFi genre, resource mining is done on either asteroids or low-gravity planetoids. Only in the SciFi/Fantasy genre (Star Wars, I'm looking at you here), do you see planet-based mining, and there it's almost always just fluff (i.e. cool setting to do something in, completely extraneous to the plot, etc.). Heck, the one big SciFi story that's actually pretty much ALL about mining (Battlefield Earth!) takes real pains to show that you don't ever ship the goods out of a planet - rather, you TELEPORT them off. And that was a piece of work that wasn't, shall we say, extremely concerned with technical accuracy.
One thing that I would like to see is MORE random event is thoughout the game, and having Dead Planets around and under your control should increase the frequency of events (I mean, lots of opportunity to find dead alien tech, or the occasional Xenomorph...
My take: I don't want a scientific explanation of SciIF to deny me a good mechanic:)
If mining dead planets makes the game better, then someone can come up with a SCIFI reason that mining it is as good or better than mining asteroids.
Yes, that was what I talking about (Dark Energy Research). It appears I was mistaken.
You're a friggin' savant man.
yes exactly, by "making sense", i was just thinking common sense... i have asteroids and planets on map but i only care about asteroids => doesn't make sense.
It would make sense if useless planets were not displayed, i mean, as the almighty ruler of the mightiest empire in the galaxy, i don't want my almighty empire-management software to display mighty useless stuff. If it is, then i'll summon my Chief Programmer slaveling, ask why there are useless stuff (even if it's mighty) on the map, or if it is useful, then why can't i do anything with it then blasts off his head and make someone else Chief Programmer slaveling.
Anyways, i doubt that most players would think "ah yeah, that's because last edition of Science Magazine explained that asteroids are easier to mine because of some theories, let's go check on wiki to know more so it makes sense that there are useless stuff on the map.", most of them (and me first) would just think "i should be able to mine those!"
Well let us use some real world information here - Members of the giant Google amongest several other major leaders in the world have donated billions of dollars into researching and creating a method that will allow private corporations to grab passing asteroids and haul them to a stationary orbit between the moon and the earth (closer to moon in case of ya know collision).
The main reason for this is of course money but also the fact that one good sized meteor can contain lets say more iron (just an example) then the entire planet of Earth. So while mining our own planet is awesome and utterly destructive it is still more efficient to harvest an asteroid then it would be to continue mining on the planet. They also plan on this process being completely run through robotics. So if you need a scifi reason it is simply a better way to harvest the materials you need. Planets offer a finite amount of resources where as the universe offers a substantial amount more material to harvest.
Since the above information isn't as common to most, I thought I would post it there to state the basics of the point of at least having meteors, asteroids, and other flying pieces of doom. The only thing I see being a real issue is the point of mining them. Your going to get minerals of course which is good for building stuff but then you would have to add mechanics like ships needing special or certain amounts minerals to make which just ends up being annoying and more work then you want to do just for one ship.
There is the second concept of trade, which is a lovely idea. gathering certain gems, minerals, or whatever else an asteroid might have and using it to trade as a commodity is something that would be a lot of fun to have and it wouldn't require as many mechanics or adjustments. This tied in with all of my other ideas for Dead Planets would make the entire universe contain a lot more unique events and almost like side quests you could do. With all that being said the scifi reasons for the asteroids and what not I think give more of a reason to have a mining mechanic then not having one.
well sir its displayed so that we dont crash our nearly invincible armada of warships directly into that planet that no one knew was there. you see our ships have one major weakness and that is objects that have mass greater than 1x10^24kg
nothing's perfect!
You guys are thinking waaaay too small. Here's an idea for you guys.
Why not have the dead planets be a resource for some ultimate project.
Have them be a resource for building a ringworld or dysonsphere around a star of your choice.
This massive ringworld needs multiples and multiples of dead planets. (Dozens? Hundreds? Scaling to mapsize and difficulty perhaps?)
These dead planets need to be broken up into pieces by planetcracker ships (think Dead Space) where a ship takes out a huge massive chunk of the planet. Then these chunks need to be transported to the buildsite, perhaps by attaching drives to these chunks or working with tow-ships.
The buildsite ofcourse needs several foundry-starbases and mining- and constructor-ships that can break up these chunks into smaller pieces and then use some kind of matter transformer to create the high-tech material needed to build this ringworld.
Another ultimate project might be to create a black hole for your civilization to eventually live in. Black holes needs plenty of matter, which is where the dead planets can come in handy.
There are actual theories out there that every civilization will eventually turn itself into a black hole given enough time for technological advances.
A black hole is so dense that processing power is near infinite, it is the most efficient structure in known physics. A civilization living inside a black hole and having sensors placed in strategic places around the black hole (to make use of the gravitational lensing effects) can basically see everything there is to see in the entire universe and thus gather all the information it ever needs. Might be a nice ultimate project for Mechanical races or races biased towards technology.
I'm sure there are plenty of other ultimate projects imaginable needing vast resources.
Another that comes to mind is the building of a Matrioshka Brain. Or matter-to-energy conversion for a superweapon.
I believe you guys can come up with more.
So, suddenly a dead planet is no longer an aesthetic part of the game, but suddenly it is a valuable endgame commodity where you can break up these dead planets instead of the more valuable habitable worlds. Plus you add a whole new level of shipsdesigns, logistics, and game mechanics to the game, adding to its re-playability.
Might be a nice idea for an expansion or mod if not possible for the base game.
The last official word regarding dyson spheres is this:
I think a lot of this goes with the "realism factor". Ships should have to refuel and re-arm. In war, overextending supply lines is a real thing, and that concept should really be introduced here. I understand the support ranges, but those ranges should be attached to something. I think this has to do with GC3 "growing" up into a mature 4X title, as opposed to a hilariously corny 4X title.
Couldn't disagree more. First, not sure of your basis for suggesting that GC2 was not a mature 4x title, especially compared to comparable games at the time. It has a sense of humor, but I found the game-play to be very mature. Second, I disagree with your implication that more macro is better (or more mature). This is a game, so some of the more boring aspects of "realism" are abstracted so the player can concentrate on the more fun aspects of running a civ. When I am thinking about the things that are important and fun for a galactic leader to manage, refueling and reloading are not anywhere near that list.
I really like Reply [MichaelCoenen] #45's ideas and would love to see something along those lines implemented because late-game always becomes somewhat boring just churning out stuff, this is true of all games. The only thing I would Query is the idea of making Black Holes to live in; as I understand the science, they're just exponentially strong Gravity Wells where everything just turns to energy that can't escape, I've always thought of them as holding all the "Dark Matter/Energy" that the Astrophysicists can't seem to realise that there is where it is, if it exists at all.
I also agree with Reply #48 [Peregrine23] - realism is so boring ! After-all it's why we play Computer Games, to avoid the boredom of reality as well as getting a mental buzz during voluntary sedentiarism.
As the info on Dead Planets stands at the moment, and I know I'm probably not fully informed, they just seem like a complete Game-Killer.
Regarding civilizations living inside black holes, you have to remember that it's not a civilization as we know it.
No physical bodies on the macro scale, but rather intelligent matter on the planck scale.
Humanity is already miniaturizing towards the nanoscale, but it doesn't stop there. Nanoscale is the first step, there's plenty of steps to miniaturize from the nanoscale downwards.
I really suggest you read the following hypothesis, it's mindblowing.
http://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html
quote from the article:
"How might we accomplish such a crazy feat as entering a black hole without destroying ourselves? By rebuilding ourselves into very, very small structures, probably below the atom in size. You may not know this, but there are 25 orders of magnitude in size between atoms and the Planck scale. This is almost as large a size range as the 30 orders of magnitude presently inhabited by life on Earth. If you’ve heard of nanotechnology, you know that life’s leading edge today, humanity, is doing everything it can to move our complexity and computation down the smallest scales we can."
I do agree with you on the endgame for most empire-building games being rather boring. Hopefully Stardock can figure out a way to keep it interesting
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