Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: Barkhorn on October 27, 2017, 11:02:43 PM
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I've been binge-watching a lot of Isaac Arthur videos on youtube recently, and he brings up a cool thing advanced civilizations could do: Starlifting.
Essentially it's like mining stars. There's a few methods, most of which involve heating part of a star, which will expand away from the rest of the star and can be scooped up or directed away. This has a few uses:
1: Collecting material like hydrogen or heavier elements (maybe TN elements in our case).
2: Whatever you call the stellar version of terraforming. You can remove mass from a bright star to cool it down, which may be useful on our timescale. Doing so would move the habitable zone inward.
I'm ignoring all the uses involving the star's lifespan because that's not an issue on the timescale our game involves.
Mostly I suggest this because I'm a bit underwhelmed by the scale of things we can build. If I remember correctly, the biggest thing I've seen anyone build on this forum is 10 million tons. Which you'd think would be child's play for an interstellar empire. For reference, the Hoover Dam weighs ~6.6 million tons.
I believe this game is sorely lacking gigantic things to build.
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The actual tonnage limit is closer to 8 billion tons due to an overfloe related to armour. But you're right, generally you don't see anyone commonly using ships in the millions of tons. Not counting exceptions like towed habitats or whatever.