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Star system effects

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Star system effects

from Sins Forums
Hi guys, im not sure if this has been touched upon before but the star systems to me, dont really feel like, well a star system

when you view the system you dont get a sense that these planets and other bodies are in a system, they just seem to be random objects.

I got some suggestions I have come up with so far.

- Make the star on average bigger! much bigger, otherwise it just looks like a funky coloured planet - you want it to stand out as the middle of the system. maybe add a bigger gravity well and push the planets further away from it... as its a star! its holding all the planets in orbit! - I think this in itself will got along way with helping you identify the planets are in a system.

- solar flares? not just fancy effects from star, but what about random huge flares (one an hour?) which errupt from the star and slowly move out across the system (slowly) im sure there are lots of things you can guys can come up with so it can effect gameplay... (lose phase lanes?) sheilds reduced in the storm? planets effected when it hits them. This is a bit like that plasma storm effect you got in B3, but its just feels a bit randomly placed.

- Add some sort of star system wide effect like an asteroid belt that incirlces a couple of the planets nearest to the star on a different axis etc, like the ring effects you can get on the planets... this could be a mineable resource or have pockets of it which are, or just as an effect, that helps you visualise you are inside a system.

Here are some quick pics i found on the internets, note the size of our sun? and the system wide asterioid belt...



another one:



Now look at this bad boy. This is what I want to see in the middle of the system... also why do i get green stars? you cant have green, think white, orange to deep red. no other colours please



Sorry if this has already been mentioned. I think the game is great so far but for just atmopshere I think the game needs more visual indicators to tell the player that they are inside a star system, and are not fighting over planets lost in the void of space...

I hope you understand what im trying to say, just a way to visual link / group the system around the star, mainly because the planets appear static in their orbits for reasons already explained and with phase lines between the planets, it to me; breaks up the illusion they are in a system together.

ps.
sorry this post is a bit rushed
11,154 views 46 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
oh and the original thing i was gonna get on here to say... but got totally sidetract

the tactical grid in different sized systems have different size squares... im guessing this is to make every grav well have the same amount of boxes. while i can see the initial logic in this it leads us very stray in how we perseave the grav well size. i think it would be beter to have the boxes the same size for every well, that way the sun would obviously look biger with a much finer grid then a dead astroid would. any one else agree? i tryed playin with the tactical grid on yesterday to see if it helped ease my size perseption dellema... and it only worsened it   
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
It needs some refinment. The stars could be bigger and scale needs to be adjusted and effects and more gameplay elements need to be added. I hope the devs know how to do that. If they do we're good.

Also greens stars are real I think.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
If my memory serves me well, green stars are real, but are extremely poor for supporting life. The conditions are very unlikely.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
yeah whatever... i like the asthetics of the green and purple stars. as unlikely as they maybe (and i honestly dont know the stats) i still like the way they look, they make the game less symetrical... same with the sky boxes, they are HUGELY unrealistic. but for a game i dont mind them tooo much   
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
Sci-Fi
Keep it that way, thats what made Star Wars , Star Trek and all those space movies cool because the developers did not make a movie based on known physics and limitations.

Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple I say bring them on and
whatever other ideas the developers can conjure up to add
different elements to the game.

Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
hehe think about it this way, the TEC are humanoid, not nesesscarily human, so they may percive colors differently, and find conditions under stars more favorable or unfavorable.

which would be and awesome addition (even though already the devs have designed a kick-butt game) at some point a dead system, star that could go supernova, go red giant and swallow the first couple of planets ect.

so to them red could be yellow and green could be orange

FYI i read somewhere that originally the devs were going to make it a functional solar system with rotating/ orbiting planets, but it was a major mehcanical nightmare....
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top

It was a major boredom nightmare

Sci-Fi
Keep it that way, thats what made Star Wars , Star Trek and all those space movies cool because the developers did not make a movie based on known physics and limitations.

Very true - We wouldn't hear all those cool lasers and see all those explosions in space!

 

Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
Green stars are just very old stars. They started life as a yellow star... yellow like cheese... but like cheese, with age they start to mold and turn green. So there you have it: green stars aren't ridiculous.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
Very true - We wouldn't hear all those cool lasers and see all those explosions in space!


My favorite is still a scene from Wing Commander: "Quiet! Shh! If they can't see or hear us they won't find us", as the ship is hiding in the shadow of a crater on a moon/planet. Naval warfare mechanics in space ftw

But all in all, the more unique atmosphere the game has the more pleasing it'll be. It would be boring if the only skybox you'd ever see is your typical pitch black with stars, just like it'd be boring if there were only 2-3 star colors. It's cool to see different colored nebulae and gas clouds in the background, it adds to the atmosphere nicely even if it isn't 'realistic'.

But along those lines, have the devs ever considered random events that do have an impact? Solar flares and comets are great aesthetics, but they don't impact the game world. Wouldn't it completely freak you out if you were playing and all of a sudden you get a message from your science academy on the capital that the star is going supernova and you have some amount of time to colonize planets in another system before everything in this one is destroyed? Or have a meteor shower hit your orbital structures/planet, or even an asteroid on a collision course that would inflict massive infrastructure damage unless you had a planetary shield in place? All of these would be toggleable naturally, and be rare otherwise it would be annoying, but if done right it could be quite enjoyable for a lot of people I imagine.
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
TBH I haven't seen the devs to be very "astronomy 101 savvy."


How so? Most of what we've talked about (orbits, for example) were in game, but weren't very fun so got removed.
However even if the devs dont go with solar storms. I want to see the star itself become 5x bigger, its pretty much the same size of planets!


Go look again, its much larger!

While its true that solar flares dont pose that much of a threat to us here on the ground they deffinitly DO pose a threat to any sattalite that is not in low earth orbit.


True -- but most of the building in a system are probably in a fairly tight orbit. I'd think so, anyway (though the scale being so far off makes it hard to tell...).

FYI i read somewhere that originally the devs were going to make it a functional solar system with rotating/ orbiting planets, but it was a major mehcanical nightmare....


Gameplay nightmare, you mean

Wouldn't it completely freak you out if you were playing and all of a sudden you get a message from your science academy on the capital that the star is going supernova and you have some amount of time to colonize planets in another system before everything in this one is destroyed?


It'd make me quit the game -- thats way to big of a random event. Empire-ending events (and on anything but a huge map, thats exactly what that would be) = bad ideas.
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
= bad ideas.


not bad ideas... just not a very well thought out idea. but i thank you for having it because it is interesting and may spark other much beter ideas.  
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
Well okay, if people want coloured stars then fine. I'm just sick of having a green star every time I 'try' to play

Also shouldn't the system be in the same colour as the star?.. Pink star, all ships are illuminated in pink.. I am sure its always some sort of blue hue I see.
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
its not a bad idea it just doesn't appeal to you! That would be great as long as its toggable so we can maintain a basic 'fair game'... some of us enjoy a bit of un-balance from time to time though, it breaks up the match and a loser who gets his entire fleet out becomes the winner because everyone else only got a few frigates and colony ships out!

Massive sudden turn around = challenge = fun for many of us.

Allot of the the complaining I see on this board recently has been from people who SEEM to simply not enjoy an honest to god challenge and thats... disconcerting.
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
I'm with Gauntlet, and that's why I made sure to mention that it'd be toggleable, and very rare. And, obviously, it would only happen on huge maps with multiple solar systems. Since something like a supernova would be a huge change and potentially empire ending, something like a 3-5% chance per *game* may be good, or lower. More basic random events could be in the 20% area. I don't want it to be like other games (I remember the old SimCity) where random events would be almost constant somewhere. That'd get tiring very quick.

In my book, some degree of randomness can be a welcome change, if it's done right.
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
i think having realistic solar systems as a map maby you could have a map like our solar system that would be ace.
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top

I'm with Gauntlet, and that's why I made sure to mention that it'd be toggleable, and very rare. And, obviously, it would only happen on huge maps with multiple solar systems. Since something like a supernova would be a huge change and potentially empire ending, something like a 3-5% chance per *game* may be good, or lower. More basic random events could be in the 20% area. I don't want it to be like other games (I remember the old SimCity) where random events would be almost constant somewhere. That'd get tiring very quick.

In my book, some degree of randomness can be a welcome change, if it's done right.


the problem is if it affects different people in a different way for no reason but chance.

this supernova affects one star system where two players started. these are at a gross disadvantage compared to the rest of them, as a lot of their (most developped) colonies will simply be gone. no matter how well they play, no matter how many ships they evacuate, they will not win the game anymore with possibly 80% of their territory gone.

don't get me wrong, I do favour random events, even big ones if the chances are low enough, but they should have equal impact.

how would you feel if the random event was a huge pirate attack at the beginning that destroys you (or at least cripples you) even though you had a very good start and did not really do anything wrong?

losing solely due to chance is frustrating. you probably didn't mean anything this extreme, but that is just what people will hear and think when they read your post. balance it out and we're fine.

(for example, have the supernova this way that you can avoid by doing something, like spending some set money on a research or building some special building or ship. if you succeed you will get some bonus to offset your expenses, like reduces research costs, improved shields or whatever).

edit: oh, one little extra point since it does fit the topic: asteroids and asteroid belts need a lot more asteroids in the visual representation and I not sure but I have seen a lot of circular ones, are they always circular, I would like some more variation. also, if possible, make it swap over the system boundaries or something (nebulas too), because they should be more expansive phenomenon than planets, the picture above of our solar system shows it nicely. I likey the ion cloud btw (I cannot keep them apart, the red one I think)
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
You're quite right in saying that losing solely due to chance is frustrating, unless everyone in the game agrees to take the risk Me, I wouldn't mind. Granted just making it so that your home system becomes vapor without giving you anything in return is harsh and extreme, there are quite a few possible concessions to make to the player(s) who were affected
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
Massive sudden turn around = challenge = fun for many of us.


And not fun for the rest of us? I say we hold a poll.
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
emp, irc?
Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
And not fun for the rest of us? I say we hold a poll.


Considering it's a "maybe this would be kinda cool" thing rather than the devs taking actual input on how to implement it, I'm thinking a poll is jumping the gun quite a bit
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
emp, irc?


I wish I could, sadly its too late and I have crap to finish, tomorrow

Considering it's a "maybe this would be kinda cool" thing rather than the devs taking actual input on how to implement it, I'm thinking a poll is jumping the gun quite a bit


Fine then, we will wait for the devs.

In the mean time..

DIE MILKSHAKE, DIE!!!