Black Hole RFI

[ussugu (OP)]

Can someone give me a quick rundown on black holes?  I have a Class II right next to Sol and have lots of nice systems beyond it.   My scout ships are able to navigate easily through the system, but I have lost a couple of troop transports.   I guess there is some sort of speed requirement based on the class of the black hole as in an earlier game, I lost a scout ship to a Class IV.

Side note, is there anyway to use SM to turn a black hole into a star?  I would delete the system, but I don't know how to connect the systems behind the black hole back to my main Sol system.

Thanks!

[Steve Walmsley]

Can someone give me a quick rundown on black holes?  I have a Class II right next to Sol and have lots of nice systems beyond it.   My scout ships are able to navigate easily through the system, but I have lost a couple of troop transports.   I guess there is some sort of speed requirement based on the class of the black hole as in an earlier game, I lost a scout ship to a Class IV.

Side note, is there anyway to use SM to turn a black hole into a star?  I would delete the system, but I don't know how to connect the systems behind the black hole back to my main Sol system.

Thanks!

The Black hole speed requirement is 1000 km/s x class, so a class II is 2000 km/s. There is no way to turn the black hole into a star. If you were to delete the system and add a new one, you can create jump points and link them to existing jump points using the Jump Points tab of the F9 System View while in SM mode. This allows you to link to jump points that the races in the game may not know about if they haven't surveyed the systems involved, so it will take away some of the 'fog of war'. Before trying anything involving deleting systems, I recommend you save a copy of your game by backing up the Stevefire.mdb file. Also a good idea to make sure there aren't any ships in the system at the time

Steve

[ussugu (OP)]

Thank you Steve.  :-)

[xeryon]

This brings up a question I have been meaning to ask:  What is the frequency of Black holes occurring?  I am relatively new to Aurora but have probably explored on the order of 500 or so systems in various games and have not found a black hole yet on 5.54.

Next question is if any future versions might take into account that black hole "systems" have been found to have close orbiting stars (and I would assume the stars own orbiting bodies).  On a universal time scale they are being sucked in and torn apart, but on Human scales they aren't going anywhere soon.  I thought this would present an extremely interesting system generation if a tri or quadrinary system generated with a black hole as the primary.  The major bodies wouldn't be pulled out of their semi-stable orbits but smaller built craft would be subject to the pull of the hole.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Well the first question there is, are you playing on real stars? Don't see many black holes or nebula systems on real stars ^^

[wedgebert]

Given that, gravitationally speaking, black holes are not any different than stars (until you cross the event horizon at least), are there any plans to change them in the future?

I'd love to see a binary system, with a small black hole orbiting a star and creating an accretion disc that was hazardous to ships. Thus instead of being a sudden (yet agonizingly slow for the crew) death for early scout ships, you'd still have a navigational hazard that increased travel time by requring you to plot an avoidance course. However if you were well protected enough, maybe it would be worth to risk to take a shortcut near the disc in order to shake off pursuit or reinforce a nearby system.

[xeryon]

Well the first question there is, are you playing on real stars? Don't see many black holes or nebula systems on real stars ^^

Generally not.  Probably 3/4 of my systems explored were with real stars turned off.

[Garfunkel]

Well the first question there is, are you playing on real stars? Don't see many black holes or nebula systems on real stars ^^

I always play with Real Stars and I've encountered Black Holes. Either I have Alzheimer's or Steve changed things around.

[wedgebert]

I've recently turned Real Stars off, but even with them on, I'll have games where I've got a Class II or III black hole next to Sol and then have games with no black holes to be seen (I like those games). I played a long time without seeing a nebula and a recent game had almost 10% of my explored system with nebulae.