Solar Research Station

I wish something would happen around the sun, I once suggested a Antimatter harvesting station, with lots of SOLAR panels, and they would take antimatter back to shipyards and so forth. Similar to how trade stations work.

Tons of things could go around the sun, power stations, factories, tanning salons, defence systems, communication arrays etc. But I suppose the issue is, in a system with multiple empires, who gets the star?

whoever fights for it...just an idea but how about said structures around un being sorta like control points, eg when someone takes over they are not destroyed, just start to work for new owners. if that isnt complicated enough have them upgradable and say 50% of upgrades destroyed on takeover.

just a thought

what about having new weapons based on solar research items like how to reproduce the solar power like in spiderman 2 the movie. And then a kind of comando unit that can hack left over buildings instead of having them destroyed for you to rebuild then again.

Such 'take over' will cost some money of course, but at least it will be less than rebuilding the unit itself and less time too.

The sun is the greatest strategical asset to a game. Imo it represents an ocean - a way of attacking another player and all adjacent systems are like ports. You control all the ports and you have the advantage in strategy. In games i play, all my fleets use the Sun for movement. I move to the sun, then hit an enemy planet connected to the sun. Taking out this planet almost feels like a d-day landing. the fact that you need to travel through the sun taking longer then the enemy who probably has adjacent planets shows how that planet almost symbolises the beachfront port of that enemies territory

I personally dont want suns to belong to anyone. I also believe gas giants should be included too

Its called fusion power -- solar power is utilizing the radiant energy of a star, in Spiderman 2 they wanted to to harness the actual atomic process that the sun uses to produce that radiation. And while I'm not 100% sure, I'd be quite willing to bet that antimatter power is much more powerful than fusion power.



Someone has played way to much generals.

I totally agree that the sun needs to have *something* around it. Currently I just station a fleet near the enemy's warp-in points.

Ron Lugge: Your right about anti-matter. I'm not a physicist but according to Wikipedia anti-matter has a perfect mass to energy conversion (E=mc^2). The only problem with anti-matter is that it is hard to find/store but it appears that in the Sins universe anti-matter is a every day tool (almost every ship has some). But still, everyone wants more power.

The thing about anti-matter is that if you had the technology to "harvest" any substantial amount, it would have the destructive power to put an end to any and everything. You would not only be able to destroy the surface of a planet, but completely destroy the planet itself. No need for fleets, armies, or any of that good stuff. I have a hard time thinking of a Universe at war with anti-matter being plentiful. It would make a good "very rare" hard to build and expensive bomb. Only in enough in quantity to destroy a planets surface. An epic weapon?

The sun with solar energy stations would not work to well... where would the energy be stored? really efficient batteries? The suns radiation causes a large "black out zone" all around it where communication becomes impossible due to interference. This might make for good use of a secret base? An almost cloaked research center or just an area where your fleet could travel unseen. You may be able to use the zone as a strategic staging point for ambushes or to just hide your numbers to provoke attack.

Just a thought. I have not played beta yet

"Beam" it to a local planet. Or rather, to a relay station closer to the planet that isn't as likely to suddenly "loose track" of its target and scorch the planetary surface (preferably the station would also split the energy stream into multiple "beams" so that if a beam did loose track, the devastation would be minimized).

Well... In reality (because I like scfi to take reality into account as much as possible) Current solar panel technology has only about 12% efficiency. You could imagine that by the time this game is to take place efficiency should be at 100% or better!

There would be no need for a space station orbiting the sun with the task of harvesting solar power when you could build a complex on a planet for a fraction of the cost. No doubt solar panels would be common place on rooftops or at large complexes. If anyone has not noticed "energy" has become the single largest issue in the world today. Iran, N. Korea, The whole mid-east, Alaska, the worlds depletion of usable oil fields. I could write a book on energy efficiency in the world today and our direction for the future. We are looking to alternative fuels and refining our current technologies to get as much energy out of our current resources as possible. You could argue against that, but you would be wrong on the overall.

With all that said, you must consider where we are today and where we will be tomorrow in order to create a believable universe. I always feel much better about a game if I believe "it could happen".

point: solar energy orbital stations orbiting the sun are inefficient, solar stations based in earth orbit connected hard line to the surface using an "elevator" made from carbon tubes more likely... as wild as that sounds.

Once you hit 100% efficiency, there's no where else to go but down



Except earth orbit limits the amount of solar energy you can harvest -- in closer to the sun, not only will a given surface area get more energy, but there's a lot less area to cover to manage a given % of solar energy being redirected to "our" purposes...

Actually, placing solar panels near the sun is far more efficient because of the greater concentration of solar radiation. Take a look at Dyson Spheres.

Perhaps players should be able to create some kind of "solar outpost?" Maybe it could be an upgradeable structure that allowed for trade or research bonuses? Late game it could even be used as a hyperspace inhibitor for the sun.

Each player should only be able to build one, but the sun itself should remain neutral, forcing players to fight each other over control of the sun.

You can't be sure! possibly some sort of enhancement could boost the power output to 110%. A photon accelerator? Who knows!



Yes, I understand that, but a hard line connection to the surface would be most effective. A solar station "beaming" energy back would have a loss of efficiency due to interference in the beam caused by the suns massive radiation output.

Not to mention that a "beam" of that magnitude would really cause havok for things like satellites and XM radio

I can.

If you can get 110% efficiency, you hardly need those solar panels. You're creating energy out of nothing

First Law of Thermodynamics: You can neither create nor destroy energy.

Once your getting 100% of the power the sun is putting out, you've got 100% of the power the sun is putting out. End of story. You can manage more than 100% of nominal efficiency on a given system, but not 100% of theoretical (perfect) efficiency. (Exception would be quantum mechanical phenomena of certain kinds, but even there they zero out very quickly, IIRC)

I like your suggestion. It is really nice and good idea. Hope all members here can understand this idea. I'm really interested in your suggestion.  I will post here after getting sufficient knowledge regarding to your suggestion.

 

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Necro post from HELLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

No kidding, I noticed this earlier, but I didn't want say anything about. This has got to be one of the oldest necro posts, because I suspect posts can't get much older than 2007.

It was a bot.