Idea: Fewer, bigger systems

[Fossaman]

Gee, that's one of the more interesting derails I've seen on these forums.

So, what if there was simply more variety in system composition and size? Say you had, every now and then, an absolutely enormous system with a really bright star, and intra-system gates linking various portions of it together? And then you had little tiny systems around remnant stars and nothing outside a certain radius except really crazy evil enemies who breathe vacuum, or something.

That kind of variation might be more interesting in the long run than either more, smaller systems, or fewer, bigger systems.

[dvlenk6]

I'm not sure what the limit of system size is, or even if there is a limit.
I had a ternary star system that was so big you could only see one star at a time. 2 double asteroid belts and a single and about 40 orbitting bodies.

I think it worked out well because you had a reason to be there; but I think very large systems without a specific purpose might get tedious.

Incidentally, can you have in-system stargates?
For a really big multi star system it would be cool to have gates to go from one star to another, maybe they would need to be activated to work...

[Fossaman]

I'm almost certain you can. I think you can turn any object into a stargate, also. Not as certain about that.

Look at the 'star system topology' section in the xml; I think if you change the node to one in the same system, you can have gates going from point to point.

Of course, it might also break the game in horrendous new ways.

[dvlenk6]

It would be interesting to try a mod that has the whole game occuring in the same system.
One humungous system with 'territories' for the different enemy sovereigns.

[Fossaman]

How would you work that? Gates between different planets, and have lots of planetary sattelites? That could be interesting. Where would reinforcements be coming from, though?

[FAD]

It would be interesting to try a mod that has the whole game occuring in the same system.
One humungous system with 'territories' for the different enemy sovereigns.

There's a game called Flatspace (and FS II) that does this. It's top down as well and instead of stargates, your ship can be equipped with jumpdrives to get from one sector to another. One huge map as the playing field.

[dvlenk6]

@FAD
Never heard of it.
Is it around for download anywhere?

@Fossaman
I don't know about reinforcements. Maybe just have some of the stations use construction instead. Or they could just come out of the in-system gates...
Not very realistic, I guess, but it could work I think.

[Fossaman]

Hmm...having each section have an actual infrastructure for constructing ships would be cool. You might even be able to work mining, or at least a simulation of it, in there too. I think having them come out of the insystem gates would be kinda stupid.

It's tempting to try and set up a mod of this...until I realize what a massive project it would be.

You would have to account for things like ships with wander orders; what would happen if a ranx wandered into the charon sector? Xenophobes into the commonwealth district? It would be all sorts of hilarious, of course...

[OddBob]

You can still fake a single system though, with each planet having it's own "system", and gates leading to the other planets and points of interest. . I'm doing this for the hard science mod (which is not dead).

[Fossaman]

Yeah, but it'd be really cool if you could spend an hour cruising between planets instead of taking a gate. All sorts of potential for random stuff out there.

[(name here)]

there is no way to fly between systems in normal space in any reasonable amount of time, which is why nearly all scifi has FTL.

[Yugi]

there is no way to fly between systems in normal space in any reasonable amount of time, which is why nearly all scifi has FTL.

No one said anything about travelling to other systems without a gate.

[(name here)]

Fossaman did, although i think he was joking.

[Yugi]

Fossaman did, although i think he was joking.

Where?

[(name here)]

Yeah, but it'd be really cool if you could spend an hour cruising between planets instead of taking a gate. All sorts of potential for random stuff out there.

SEE!?