Megastructures

[Victuz (OP)]

I'm probably not the first to suggest this (I have searched but I've failed to find it on the forum) but how about some ancient mega structures?

Whenever I think about wonders of engineering that could be achieved by some absurdly powerful space faring race I always get back to them constructing mega structures simply because eventually it's "easier" to deal with than to just constantly spread across space.
By that I mean ringworlds, dyson spheres, rosettas, bringing in planets from another systems, moving around the planets INSIDE the systems for positioning artificial suns and the like.

If somebody asked me to program a light switch I would probably fail thus I have no idea how difficoult that would be to implement into Aurora.

But have such things ever crossed your mind Steve? We have SPOILER ruins already how about going a step further and having them leave behind a ringworld somewhere. It would probably have to be a ridiculously rare event. But finding such object would certainly be fascinating.

[andrea69]

Yes, I thought about something like that, too. It would be wonderful to have a chance to find something more "exotic" than ruins and wrecks.

[Steve Walmsley]

I have thought about some things along those lines. It's just having the time to code them up.

Steve

[Victuz (OP)]

I have thought about some things along those lines. It's just having the time to code them up.

Steve

I imagined as much. Nice to hear you've thought about it though .

Well the forum might as well think up on how it would/should work. One thing I'm thinking about is how to make aurora accept a ringworld. Correct me if I'm wrong but all the objects no matter their mass or density basically occupy a tiny point in space, apart from environmental effects like nebulas or black holes I haven't really seen anything similar to mega-constructions.
That leads me to believe that every object needs a single point in space to exist properly, but than again a ringworld occupies a whole orbit how would you dock on the damn thing? How would the game see it? I think the easiest solution would just be to cut it into "slices" and place docking bays in the places where the slices meet. Than just create a graphical effect for the system view and it would still be an object in space just slightly different.

But maybe I just completely misunderstood how the whole system works.

[Steve Walmsley]

I imagined as much. Nice to hear you've thought about it though .

Well the forum might as well think up on how it would/should work. One thing I'm thinking about is how to make aurora accept a ringworld. Correct me if I'm wrong but all the objects no matter their mass or density basically occupy a tiny point in space, apart from environmental effects like nebulas or black holes I haven't really seen anything similar to mega-constructions.
That leads me to believe that every object needs a single point in space to exist properly, but than again a ringworld occupies a whole orbit how would you dock on the damn thing? How would the game see it? I think the easiest solution would just be to cut it into "slices" and place docking bays in the places where the slices meet. Than just create a graphical effect for the system view and it would still be an object in space just slightly different.

But maybe I just completely misunderstood how the whole system works.

Some views of Dyson spheres and ring worlds are not that they would be a solid construction but rather a large number of objects in a similar orbit (achieved by changing the orbits of existing bodies). So one version of a ring world might be to have a lot of habitable planets all spaced around the same orbit.

Steve

[Victuz (OP)]

Yup that kind of "rosette" way of building it would definitely make more sense from the perspective of materials necessary, if just in terms of the required strength of such material, a ringworld would have to keep spinning to generate "gravity" by inertia and that would put astonishing pressure on the construction.

[Gyrfalcon]

However, is it realistic that a player empire could stand up against any currently-existing alien race capable of any of the megastructure achievements? If you have enough technology and power to string worlds in orbits or build a solid Dyson Sphere, you can probably annihilate a few systems full of savages.

[Victuz (OP)]

Well it's possibly explainable.

The way it was explained in ringworld (spoilers to everyone who didn't read the books):
the alien race responsible for creating the ringworld never achieved hiperengine technology that's why they were forced into the construction. Afterwards their civilization existed on the ringworld but eventually callapsed for some reason.
Mind you I have not finished the book yet and it might just be that there is some more valid explanation.

So it might be that the Ringworlds in aurora could just be a much more "exotic" ruin. Abandoned but still impressive.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, if interstellar travel is possible, there's not much sense in creating such things.
If it's not, and for some reason one system holds enough resources to build those preposterous projects, they still wouldn't be solid objects.
The original idea of a Dyson Sphere wasn't about encasing an entire star in a solid object.
If you can do that, you might as well transfer your consciousness into a nebula and go visit the stars a whole new way.

[PTTG]

Still, smaller Halo-style habitables might be reasonable. Much lower energy levels, and maybe that's just the most efficient way for someone who really knows what they're doing to go about terraforming?

[Conscript Gary]

The system might also have no active jump points, and only be accessible from the outside through dormant jps.

[ollobrains]

a new class of jps only findable with advanced technology.  Has some potential but dunno steve might have another idea

[Thiosk]

An interesting structure would be a ring on a gas giant.  Woo! The important thing is really to figure out how such structures fit in the game.  Just funny shaped planets?  Do they have built in shipyards?  How do you bomb them?  Can you mine a construction?

Opens the door for neat mechanics..

[ollobrains]

An interesting structure would be a ring on a gas giant.  Woo! The important thing is really to figure out how such structures fit in the game.  Just funny shaped planets?  Do they have built in shipyards?  How do you bomb them?  Can you mine a construction?

Opens the door for neat mechanics..

which material was the ring built out of.  Sorium super fuel depot.  Can they have a built in tech 10 fuel refinery x 200 or some specific.  Bombing im guess a regular bomb might work.

[Thiosk]

which material was the ring built out of.  Sorium super fuel depot.  Can they have a built in tech 10 fuel refinery x 200 or some specific.  Bombing im guess a regular bomb might work.

Regular bombs would work but no object is really larger than one point in aurora.  Megastructures by definition would be extended over thousands to millions of miles.  Is a colony considered uniform over the ring, or does bombing one side leave the other untouched?  I feel like such structures should be more interesting than refinery x 200 because I can already put that on a planet or ship if I feel so inclined...

Megastructures would let me tow and process planets and asteroids.

I could tap a star for energy to build a wormhole.

Hell, slave a star to a structure and close off 90 %~ self sufficient fusion propulsion.