The ultimate Base

[geoschmo]

A weak black hole eh? That's an interesting idea. Of course some of our physicist types on this forum might not like it...

"You say it still pulls light in, just not as fast?"

[Suicide Junkie]

If it was a real black hole, then it would only pull as hard as a normal star. (ie. zero movement towards center)

For example: If we somehow accidentally crushed the entire planet earth into a black hole, the event horizon would be the size of a marble (~1 cm) Satellites in orbit would remain in orbit, since the mass of earth hasn't changed (and hence the force of gravity)

Since a star's gravity has no effect on ships, a black hole's gravity should have no effect on ships (unless it is truly massive like 1000x the mass of the sun).

At the center it should do infinite damage (ie. no escape), and do heavy damage at ring 1 to 3 (from the accretion disk plasma & radiation)

Perhaps we should add radiation/heat damage in normal star systems? If you stray too close to the sun for too long you burn up. Say 200 damage per turn in the star's sector.
Only the highest tech armor should be able to take that without being destroyed, but even a handful of armor IIIs will protect your ship for a turn or two.

[geoschmo]

Oh man did Disney get it wrong!

As you can see I know absolutly nothing about real life stellar mechanics.

[Triumvir Emphy]

Don't worry, the experts might not either,... every few years they change their views, i guess we will never know for sure till we can observe one closer.

[Possum]

And the russians call them "frozen stars", because in russian, the phrase "black hole" means exactly what you think it does

[Markavian]

Improvement on the weaker black hole then:

1) Does infinite damage at centre.
2) The nine surrounding squares do 200 damage (maybe for stars as well).
3) The black hole doesn't drag ships in, but also it isn't visible.
4) The system is called a normal system, and maybe some planets might be present on the fringe.
(and noticable players might ntoe the lack of stars at the centre of the map.)

[Suicide Junkie]

Minor suggestions:


1) is good
2) the 8 surounding squares doing 200 damage sounds good, but for a star, you should have the star's square only do the 200 damage, with 50-100 on the 8 squares around it.
3,4)Black holes are really easy to detect when you're close (astronomically). If you're in the system, you'll notice a star's worth of gravity plus a great accretion disk in many cases. If you're plotting a course, you will definitely notice whats happening.

Planets are perfectly OK, as long as they somehow survived the creation of the black hole (likely creation: supermassive star dying)
Maybe asteroid belts that can be formed into planets?