I didn't take it personally - I was just explaining that for Aurora, gameplay is more important than 'realism', within the confines of internally consistent rules. Terraforming is a gross simplification, as is movement, mineral extraction, shipyards, weapon mechanics, etc.. Each one is a very complex subject that has been distilled down to something that has the same 'flavour', but with mechanics that allow interesting gameplay decisions.
The difference with all these are just that they are literally just simplifications. The industry related things don't actually break anything, and for the Terraforming you provided a proper scifi reason.(I think it was "summoning/translating gases out of the fluid space")
That is the thing that separates good and bad scifi. Under the pretense of extra-dimensions existing, -which, they might, although the leads have been getting worse and worse for years-, you can justify a lot of fantasy elements, like summoning the gases. It was good enough for me, and so was the fluid-mechanics movement through space justified by it.
I have done this often in the fiction I logged here. Whether it is constructor theory probability control, push-forward tunneling effect superluminosity(which actually exists), space expansion being lightspeed when looking closely, or the transnewtonian elements being exotic matter that grant anti-gravity, - the technique is to just have some new root principle discovery or invention by which the board of known science can be legally flipped over.
(as long as you apply it)
That is one of the things I consider very good about Aurora, it is all on the good scifi site, and there is also effort to have some good data around, like all the detail lists on orbiting bodies.
Insisting that the average supernova is a deadly threat would as far as I can see become the first hard break, because this is simply untrue. It is not inventing something from the mist of the unknown, or suggesting that we might find ways to do things that we obviously don't know of yet (like reflecting gamma-lasers). It is 'very' falsely representing a natural phenomenon and thus revising known reality.
..At least as it is, but here is the thing; -just like with the fluid-mechanics movement-, you could for example simply cite the fiction that you legally created in the realms of the unknown (which is fluid space extra dimensions here), and use those to justify 1.why it is so deadly, and even 2.why it happens right here right now despite being so rare. All you have to do to justify all this is attach an explanation from the root of the legal scifi, which can be an alien race using fluid space technology to make the explosion like Mike2R suggested, or perhaps something like Star Trek did with the "our Warp travel destabilizes the subspace which causes rifts" thing, or maybe a star was primed as a fluid-space bomb in ancient times, etcetc. . As long as you make clear that these are no ordinary Supernovae, all hard science breaks could be avoided no problem.
You chose the example of the laser in your reply, but no one really thinks that Aurora lasers reflect reality - they just have the right flavour to represent them. You could call them something else and it would still fit the game and be internally consistent. The proposed supernova mechanics are the same. They create the impression of what everyone thinks of when they hear 'supernova' but with mechanics that work within the game. I am sure that for most Aurora mechanics there will be some players who find it hard to accept the simplifications, probably dependent on their own areas of expertise.
I have had no issue accepting everything so far btw., and I am literally a physics graduate with a quarter of my specialization in astrophysics. Quite frankly, the higher scifi root standard actually drew me to Aurora; next to the immense sandbox factor of course.
Again, the 'supernova' only sticks out because there isn't a scifi justifier to it like with everything else. If it was an 'artificial supernova' or 'fluid bomb supernova' (maybe some better name could be found), or at least some justification existed in the background, there would again be no problem.
The laser thing by the way was not aimed at Aurora. I was just trying to give an example of a hard science break that isn't acceptable in the boundary of 'good scifi', and an old show came to mind where they insisted they could store laser light in a mirrorbox, and then release it later to melt walls and stuff. That is just dumb, and stuff like this is usually done by directors who now neither of science nor fiction. I could never watch Andromeda for similar reasons for example, even as a kid.
