Black Holes in v5.50

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I have added black holes to Aurora for v5.50. These are only available in Real Stars games for the moment but I may expand that to random games as well, depending on how well they work out. Obviously there are no known black holes close to Sol so some artistic licence is involved. I am just assuming we haven't spotted them yet . Or I guess the technobabble could be that the high gravity of distant black holes causes long-range jump points to form. I have considered black holes (and other stellar phenomena) for a while but I couldn't come up with a simple mechanic, especially as gravity doesn't really play a part in Aurora at the moment. Hopefully the following will be fun and straightforward and capture the basic scariness of black holes.

Each black hole is rated from Class I to Class X. The pull of the black hole is equal to 1000 km/s multiplied by the class, so a class IV black hole has a pull of 4000 km/s. If a fleet has a speed greater than the pull of the black hole then its speed is reduced by that pull but it can otherwise function normally. So a scout ship capable of 4500 km/s moving through a system with a class III black hole would move at 1500 km/s instead. If a fleet has a speed less then the black hole, then any orders are ignored (although not cancelled) and it is pulled straight toward the black hole at a speed equal to black hole pull minus fleet speed. So a fleet with a speed of 3200 km/s in a system with a class VI black hole would be pulled toward the black hole at 2800 km/s. On the system map, this pull speed is shown as a negative, so the aforementioned fleet would be shown as travelling at -2800 km/s.

When a fleet enters a black hole, all the ships in the fleet are instantly destroyed and leave no wreckage or life pods. A battle fought in a black hole system is going to be interesting because damaged ships are likely to get dragged away from the battle as they slow down. I haven't coded it yet but wrecks and lifepods will be pulled toward the black hole as well. As it would be very difficult to salvage a moving wreck I am also considering just not having any wreckage in black hole systems, although I would still have life pods.

A black hole system can be surveyed for jump points just like any other system. For purposes of the survey locations a black hole has stellar mass equal to its class, so higher class black hole systems will be harder to survey.

NPRs and civilians are aware of discovered black hole systems and will avoid them unless they have a sufficient speed advantage over the pull of the black hole.

Steve

[Thiosk]

it would be really sexy if moving towards the black hole was the sum of the pull and engine technology but moving away was the difference.

[Erik L]

it would be really sexy if moving towards the black hole was the sum of the pull and engine technology but moving away was the difference.

What about laterally?

[Thiosk]

i can visualize particles only in a one dimensional box.

[Mel Vixen]

Well fights could be fairly interresting. First of all rockets would be a good bit slower which means a bit of lowtech PD should be able to kill them thus ray-weapons have an advantage in those places. On the other hand "bombs" and "mines" get funny like hell. Given that you have a good ping on your enemys (without him seeing you) you could go to the outskirts of the system to release some driveless mines with some thermal sensors. If you get it right these babys should drift right into the enemy. Well actually your ships could do the same. A group of facs drifting towards a enemy fleet could be "invisible" for quite long time - well longer then normaly and early on they could actually be faster by drifting.

Depending on where the Jumppoints are one could also make the trip through the system without fuel or atleast considerable less fuel.

I wonder if Steve will add Pulsars and Magnatars at some point. ^^ I could imagine that these places need shields or your crew gets fried. A very small gravity pull could also be interresting for normal stars.

[Jacob/Lee]

Sounds pretty awesome.  If I may make a suggestion, I think it would be interesting if a ship gets too close without actually falling in the black hole should start tearing random systems off the ship and killing some of the crew without totally wrecking the ship.

[ardem]

interesting thing would be positioning of the fleet, in may respects it like the wind in old sailing vessels, if you position you fleet heading towards the blackhole do you get a speed advantage, also are does you missile run faster?

It could make some interesting tactic if those aspects come into play. It is a pity you cannot target certain components on a ship, say engines

Also if you have a damage ship on tractor beam, does there own engines help the speed overall, or are tractor beams just on main ship engines?

[Dutchling]

Interesting,
Will a ship (that is faster than the black hole strength) also have the option to go towards the black hole and thereby greatly increasing it's speed?

[Hawkeye]

Actually, I am torn in two directions here.

On one hand, black holes sure sound cool and all and some form of "terrain" aside from nebulas will come in handy.

On the ohter hand, I simply can´t forget that a black hole is just mass. A black hole of, say 5 sun-masses, is no different (from a gravitational point of view) than a star of 5 sun-masses, except for the fact you can get closer to a black hole than to the star unless your ship can stand to be _inside_ the star.

There also is no differnce whatsoever if this source is a star or a black hole in terms of movement.
My ship either can generate enough thrust to get away from it or not. If it can, no problem, if not, my ship dies. Again, there realy is no difference, if the ship dies when it is pulled into the star, or when it is ripped apart by the tidal forces approaching the black hole.


Of course, there may by all kinds of things generated by the black hole, radiation peaks, jets, gamma ray burts, you name it.

[James Patten]

This is a place where a Newtonian physics model would come in handy - so that if your ship is slower than the pull of the hole, you could try to slingshot your way out of orbit.  However that doesn't exist now in Aurora, and I doubt it will soon.

As for size, I'm guessing these are major black holes, not tiny ones like a 5-star mass. 

It would be neat if these could generate ghost sensor readings when your active sensors are on, or sensor blackout areas.

[UnLimiTeD]

I think you should use a double hyperlimit to increase the pull the closer you get. Then you could also add gravity to stars, albeit a very low one.
As for fluff, in the center of every stellar black hole resides a Singularity.
That could greatly bork TN drives, thus giving a fluff for why Black holes have an obscene pull on those objects.
On the other hand, that would mean that a conventional engine could corss the system at far lower speeds... tough one.
As James mentioned, it is probably also more likely that a huge black hole generates Jump points after the Nova that likely resulted in the Black hole.
Thus, they will be rather huge.

Sensor failures would also be neat.
Gamma Jets are likely only emitted from the Poles, and given that Aurora is two-Dimensional, with everything sort of happening on the Stats Equatorial axis, this wouldn't concern anyone.

[Hawkeye]

I agree that super-massive black holes (SM-BH) would be scary. But then they would to be very _very_ rare.

Also, as the distance jumppoint - star are somewhat related to the star´s mass, the jumppoints leading to a SM-BH would probably be very far away, migiating its effect on the ship.

If we are talking about "regular" black holes, I used the 5-sun-masses just as an example. It doesn´t matter if the black hole is 5 or 20 or 50 sun-masses. It is still no different from a 5 or 20 or 50 sun-masses star (actually, the system would probably be more dangerous _before_ the star went supernova, as it will have to be a lot larger than 50 sun-masses to create a 50 sun-mass black hole)

yes, this is one of my pet-peeves with movies/books where a black hole is the end of everything.

Now, I am not against black holes, it just taxes my suspension of disbelieve to the limit


The singularity affecting TN-technology is a good thought.

[wilddog5]

given that the main component of an active sensor is grav the should get seriously screwed (all ships readings swallowed by holes grav) so sensors should get a range penalty (10% per BH level maybe)

df weapons
mesions might work as a mession is so low mass it might get someware before being sucked in
rails + Gauss should have a massive decrease in range
particle beams not sure, definitely a reduction, half maybe
lasers should have an increase in range because of blue shift +2/3 range tech levels

all weapons should have a large hit penalty (trying to compensate for grav = bent firing paths)

idf weapons

missiles and plas torps should have a to hit penalty also as they would eather be going to fast, to slow or just plain all over the place when trying to hit the target

[Rastaman]

Meh. A 50 Solar mass black hole at 1 AU distance would exert an acceleration of 0.03 g on an object. Don't do it.

[UnLimiTeD]

Hell, this is perfect.
By only really affecting TN drives, making them accelerate towards the hole like a ship in the bathtub when you pulled the plug (they treat space like water, after all), you could actually keep wrecks in the system, being rather uninterested in the matter and not knowing what all the fuss is about.