Can this planet even be reached?

[Corvus (OP)]

Hi all.   My very first post here   Somehow only found out about this game about 4 weeks back and have been experimenting a bit.   Kicking off my first proper game and even documenting the progress.

One of the first systems I came across outside of Earth is Sirius, and it is massive.   Ridiculously massive.   So massive that it is unexplorable, even though it has a x2. 0 planet in the system.   The jump point is 9. 6B KM from the primary.   But that is nothing compared to where some of the other bodies orbit.   There is a Terrestrial at 26. 8B KM from the primary, a gas giant at 32B KM, but the prize goes to the tiny dwarf planet at the edge of the system.

It orbits at 575 BILLION KM from the primary, with an orbital period of 141851 years.

Can that even be reached?  At my tech level it would take years and a couple of million liters of fuel to reach.

It is a challenge though and one I hope I can meet.

[MarcAFK]

Hyperdrives have been disabled since the engine overhaul, if they hadn't you would be interested to know that ships travel 10 times faster using hyperdrive, but hyperdrive engines only work in the other system, basically this is the exact reason you might use them, sadly theres no word on when they'll be fixed

[Zed 6]

Please fix hyperdrive. I miss it.

[Vandermeer]

You just have to adjust the engine power factor of your survey craft in order to get there. In my current game I found the Aquarii system whose second sun orbits at much larger radius even:


Zooming out 8 times:


This star is about 2.6 trillion kilometers afar from the central one (even light needs around 100 days from this range), but I was excited about this find as the central planets have been really rich already, and the second star has multiple ones orbiting him too, and even some asteroids. So I special designed an ultra long range survey craft of 30k tons that would be capable of doing the trip in about 17 years total. ...Well, you will have to wait for results, but it is certainly possible, and something special.
Should I really go to mine them though, it will be a trouble to get the resources back, because proven by testing, mass drivers stop working at much closer range already. Freighters with 17 years trip time...

[Kof]

Interesting.

What's the range of mass drivers?

And why would they have a limit? In zero G there should be no limit really unless they pass close by a large body? Sure, it should take a long time for the packet to reach it's destination, but ....

[Vandermeer]

I know no way to test out the exact range of mass drivers, and I am sure that the limit it is just a problem of the program. All I can give are screenshots from one of my last games here:


Zoomed on the packet origin moon:


The distance to the targeted moon was 190b kilometers, so that is too much already, causing the mineral packages to stay on their origin planet forever (and never ever vanish, nor be deletable through SM or designer mode ). There is a slim chance that the error was just caused by that the optimal path between both colonies was actually a much shorter way through a lagrange point, but I highly doubt it. Mineral packages shouldn't even touch the area of calculation that considers such in system jumps, since they would never use them anyway.

[xeryon]

Part of the problem with mass drivers is that the program has to track each one of those packets travelling at 1000km/s.  If you are measuring distance in the billions of km you will have thousands of mineral packets the program has to track and it will bring game speed to a crawl.  Ideally you would want to limit mass drivers to only short hop distances of a few days and even then limit them to only a few or it greatly slows down the game.

In systems with vast distances between the central core and outlying bodies, or even outlying stars with their own orbiting bodies, you need to look for lagrange points.  Otherwise just ignore them as they are inaccessible.  If not being able to reach them tweaks your OCD you can use SM to delete the system and create something new in its place.

[Vandermeer]

Hmm, I have seen mineral packets traveling fast than 1000km/s.

.

I suppose that is only a wrong label though, and true speed is still 1000. The speed changes on last time increment size, so there is something shady.

Anyways, in my current game I have found new horrors of unreachiness.


I've managed to completely survey the system from before, but this here will just be impossible. The farthest object is 'merely' 1500b afar from the center, which is only half of what I saw in the other system, but those here are just all over the place! There is no way to do this automated or in any efficient way + there is also no gain, as asteroids are really lousy mineral sources from start to end game, and definitely unworthy when being so far off. ...I may still try since otherwise this would be the first system that I did not fully survey. I would just hate that, especially since I am going to place one or two mining colonies on the some promising inner bodies there.

[xeryon]

Are these O class stars?  Still looks too small for an O

[NihilRex]

Asteroids are usually poor sources of minerals, true.  However, with a large population in system, they are wonderful sources of wealth.

[Vandermeer]

Asteroids are usually poor sources of minerals, true.  However, with a large population in system, they are wonderful sources of wealth.

That is a really good idea in case of wealth problem. Though, if you are playing a Sol start, I suppose all those myriads of bodies there would already be enough, or not?
Asteroids would be so fun if there was some meaningful automation for miner ships, but they are certainly not worth the hassle in this click-fest state.

Are these O class stars?  Still looks too small for an O

Nope, you are right. It still is an F, just with a really far of asteroid belt (and two super far planets). Like some narrow Oort Cloud.
The one with the mineral packet problem was either A or O. Cannot check anymore. Probably the most awesome system I found so far, because of insane 100m+ riches everywhere and even good accessibility. (only the most important thing, gallicite, was still missing )

[MarcAFK]

If i recall correctly Mineral packets travel slower if you don't have enough mass driver capacity, Civilian mining colonies always have enough mass drivers to move everything at top speed.

[xeryon]

IIRC Packets speed scales with the volume they carry.  Max capacity is at 1000 km/s.  If your driver capacity is greater than the available minerals the packet will go proportionally faster.  I do not recall what the max speed is though.  If your mining operation exceeds outbound capacity it just stockpiles the extra minerals on the colony.

[Vandermeer]

Ohh, thanks for the information. It all makes sense now. ...I wonder if those mass drivers could surpass light speed, which I will test.

[Garfunkel]

No, the max speed is always 1000 km/sec. The number of mass drivers just calculate the total tonnage of mineral packets sent in a single production calculation tick.