Orbital Colonies

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Puke:
the problem with having asteroid colonies as a standard size, is that you might create a regular planet out of them, instead of an asteroid colony.

I don't see this as a problem. I like the idea of them being regular asteroids than can be made into planets later once you develop the stellar manip tech. I see the asteroid colony as a new tech comparable to the colony techs needed for colonizing different atmospheres. But it gives you a component that you can use to turn a standard asteroid filed into a colonizable asteroid field. As far as the game is concerned this colonizable asteroid field will just be another planet. But it will have the image of an asteroid field and be colonizable, or destroyable and turned back into uncolonizable asteroids.

The random placement of this new type of colonizable asteroid planet is a problem. But can be easily bypassed by making the maps before the game. You can make a random map, not look at it, save it and load it into your mod game when you set it up. Not hard at all.

Geoschmo

[ December 12, 2002, 20:25: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Captain Kwok]

Here are the results of my test:

The special ability number does not affect the map generator from placing a planet.

Setting constructed to "true" restricts the planet from being place by the map generator. If you set the sphereworld/ringworld to false, it will place them on the map.

So, it should be easy to create a component that converts asteroids into the specified size.

[Captain Kwok]

Continuing:

Create a new entry for planetsize.txt (not the position # of the entry) and set constructed to TRUE. The map generator will not place it. Create an entry in sectype.txt that corresponds to the new size with a pic.

Create a new component that generates planet with the ability set to the position # of entry. This should create the "new planet".

[geoschmo]

Kwok, you missed my previous point I think. THe created=true planets have to be made from stars. They cannot be made from asteroids.

[Captain Kwok]

It might be Place Constructed Planet that specifies it needs a star.

However, I did some in game testing. Not successful. The Create Planet must conflict with Constructed=True setting, because it reverts to the next viable entry and counts that as the position # corresponding to the value for Create Planet ability.

[ December 12, 2002, 20:45: Message edited by: Captain Kwok ]

[Puke]

hmm.. other problems with LaGrange points:

as mentioned, space colonies will be able to be created on top of a star. not so bad, except that means the star goes away. also, as space colonies are constructed, solar supply available in a system goes down, because the number of stars drops.

if regular stellar manip is enabled, then sphereworlds can be constructed at lagrange points. grr.

[Puke]

new idea: LG points can be asteroids instead of stars. this makes since, since clutter tends to gather up at these points, and most of them have their own little asteroid fields. they can be beyond huge asteroids, to differentiate them from normal asteroids. then space colonies can be created on that special extra-big size (as long as their facility numbers are kept low)

or, they can be asteroids that are marked as constructed worlds. or, they can be constructed worlds that are planets but look like asteroids. or look like nothing, if thats possible. then you would just need some way to do something with them that would not involve randomly placed space colonies during map creation.

or, it can be a 2 part construction process, where its a constructed world that you need to blow into asteroids, that you need to turn into a planet. naw, thats just silly.