Fwurg

[Mercury]

I have finished my idea for the new rules for stars and gas giants and the associated specials (including Chtonian Planet and Extended Heliosheath). I am curious as to everyone's idea's.

Link

[Praetorian Empire]

I am happy with most of the changes. The stars and gas giants look good. The new Chtonian and Heliosheath are not good enough. I was thinking about changing my star and changing a special but if this means i have to accept the new version of the Chtonian i can not change my system. I will not be able to produce the needed for my with the new Chtonian.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

I like them, I think they're a lot more balanced. I'd definitely like to switch to them, but I can't, because I completely rely on the current overpoweredness of the Heliosheath special. Just like everyone else? I'd have to overhaul every turn report since turn 1... which would also effect other players, etc, etc. That, and, there's not really any incentive to switch to a less powerful system.

I don't really see any player switch to this new system (except gerben, I don't think he has either of those specials)

This is kind of why I brought up a reset.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I'm definitely switching; even though I will drop enourmously in gas output which will probably score some 'dislike' points with the Praetorian Empire. I like to use the latest rules because I don't want to freebee along on a broken system. (And it is easier to justify any further changes when the rules rumble again...)

Where did the notion of having to fix all turn reports come from? I don't think it's feasible to require a rule change to keep all turn reports valid -- this is not possible exactly because the rules have changed. Can't we just get our new system approved and use it from then on?

By the way I count two major changes that might influence one's system: the star overhaul (including heliosheath, chtonian and trinary star) and the introduction of Terraformation. Between these two you can probably get away with some extensive remodelling as long as your economic basis stays sort-of the same.

[Mercury]

Its not about keeping turn reports perfectly accurate - rather it should not be the case that you for example use Natural Life to get zones cheap and then remove Natural Life and spend bio on something else when the rules change.

As a rule of thumb try to keep things mostly similar to the old system - that saves everyone a lot of converting work ^_^ Regardless, I will work with those changing to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Oh, btw - obviously if you do not switch you do not get free power or liberalised restrictions on Gas Zones with your Gas Giants.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

I totally missed the implications of the gas giants fix... it's a lot better now. I like it.

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I didn't want to switch for Moar Power. It's more that it seemed to me that switching would break everything and give no real benefit. The reason I was worried about the turn reports being correct is that, if I juggle some things around (say, move gas zones from heliosphere to gas giants), how many zones am I going to get? Even 'an equal amount' is arbitrary. so my tendency was to look at turn reports, and see how you could conceivably have arrived at your current state. When you know how much income you have each turn, you know how much wealth/zones/stuff you could have 17 turns later. Which of course, is horribly convoluted and doesn't work at all.

So yeah, now that things are clearer, I'm interested in moving my gas production from the heliosheath I have now to gas giants. ( which, incidently, leads to a more 'normal' system. ) Also, since it won't fit in a binary system, I'll have to drop the trinary thing... I could move most moons to a gas giant in a goldilocks zone and make it sort of be the same. I'm going to do some puzzling now, and make a new system. I'll post it somewhere when I'm done, and we can get to smoothing out the details.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I'll probably work on my system revamp upcoming sunday.

How should we format our changes for confirmation?

[Iladriel]

I compared the old and the new rules, but I cant upload the excel file, so I will just say my opinion of it.

if you fill every orbit with a brown dwarf, you will still have gas left to spend at 9 of the possible Binary Star combinations.
I find that strange.

everything changed, so I think the balance would be completely different from the old. So allowing people to keep their old system wouldn't be good for the game, I think.

Chtonian Planet are now realy weak, from 7 to 3 zones, 210 production to 185 (235 for an extra 1000 )

Extended Heliosheath are more balanced now, I think, a full new Extended Heliosheath would produce the same amount of gas as an old one with 4,28 zones. But you need 3 rock to build it, instead of 2 a 3 gass for the old one.

But all these changes lower the gas cost for your system while lowering the amount of orbits.
So I think all the systems would still look alike, filled with brown dwarfs with lots of moons and almost no normal planet. Possible with some more volcanic greenhouses to get some more goldilocks planets

i'm still thinking if making the constuction costs on Chtonian planets and Extended Heliosheaths 1000 instead of 2000 would make it more attractive to get them. Special points are special, so the option would need to be special too.

iladriel

[Veolian Commonwealth]

if you fill every orbit with a brown dwarf, you will still have gas left to spend at 9 of the possible Binary Star combinations.
I find that strange.

You are, of course, aware that any unspent gas mass will just be converted into rock mass? So having some gas mass to spare is not really that big of a problem in my opinion.

But all these changes lower the gas cost for your system while lowering the amount of orbits.
So I think all the systems would still look alike, filled with brown dwarfs with lots of moons and almost no normal planet. Possible with some more volcanic greenhouses to get some more goldilocks planets

Only under the assumption that you keep a binary star system. For example, a Red-Orange binary in the old rules is roughly equal to a Orange Giant in the new rules.

[Iladriel]

I also thought that I read somewhere, that the orbit types would become more balanced, so that not everyone wants everything in goldilocks

[Sundarian Federation]

Im happy with the changes, they seem a bit more balanced and provide for more choice and difference in systems. However i do dare to take a guess that the Orange Yellow Binary star will probably overtake the lead position, which is now held by the Red Orange Binary.

[Patrick]

I like the changes to the stars, especially those to the giants, because I was under the impression that a giant star was something like a dying star (same mass but gets bigger, some orbits get "swallowed" by the sun, sun produces less energy but is significantly closer, thus increasing the temperature of the orbits still left).

I also like the changes to the chtonian giant, however the decrease in zones is pretty nasty (it used to be 7ish so there goes easy buffer for metal production ).

I'm less keen about the changes to the heliosheath rules, because I was hoping to have a gas giant free system for estetic reasons, however I do need the gass for production purposes... and I personally liked that you could claim as many zones as you wanted or needed in the heliosheath (if you had enough gas, that is).

I like the changes to the trinary system rules. It was a bit wierd to have a third star and no extra power whatsoever...

Finally, just out of curiosity, how come gas giants produce power (in character), is it because of gas flows or chemical reactions? Again, just curious.

Edit: I will probably update my system when these rules will be incorperated.

[Mercury]

Beyond the balance reasons of the power supplied by Gas Giants, there is actually some interesting scientific data supporting the output of very large amounts of power by Gas Giants.

The latest research from the WISE data indicates some Y-class brown dwarves may have temperatures cooler than room temperature (less than 25 C) [1]. This would suggest energy output is minimal. However, these are the weakest known Brown Dwarves. The lowest level T-class brown dwarves have temperatures between 500 and 1300 K and there are two classes, L (1300-2000K) and M above that, with the latter being a regular level for red main sequence stars. [2]

I would say that brown dwarves as we use them are probably not in the M class. That's much closer to a star than a gas giant. Though debated the cutoff for brown dwarves is placed somewhere around 13 jupiter masses (brown dwarves are not much bigger than it is, just heavier), which is about the temperature where they can fuse deuterium. [3] Massive Brown Dwarves even fuse lithium. Obviously this would produce energy.

Obviously brown dwarves do not produce nearly as much energy as a star. Hence why their energy output is only 60, while the energy output of even the weakest star is many times that.

Looking at lower mass gas giants, ice giants and jovians like Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter all give off more heat than they produce (not by fusion but by gravitational collapse. Additionally, they give off large amounts of radiation, have very strong magnetic fields and they exert a lot of gravitational force.

In the case of Europa, one of Jupiters moons, the tidal forces alone may be enough to heat the ice on the planet into a liquid, underground ocean. [4] Stronger, another of Jupiters moons, Io, experiences tidal bulges in its rocky surface of as much as 100 meters (!) during a single orbit. The friction caused by this causes enough heat to melt the moons mantle and core and is up to 200 times greater than what the core would have produced from radioactive decay (the main source of heat in the earths core. [5] As a result of this, Io is one most volcanically active worlds in the solar system.

Even if such power could not be tapped directly, geothermal power plants could easily harvest energy from tidal force produced vulcanic energy sources (as part of the normal collecting of energy). Thus to answer the original question, it is because of the massive size of the planet and the effects this has, from generating internal heat by gravitational collapse or even internal deuterium fusion, to enormous magnetic fields caused by metalic hydrogen at the core to tidal effects on surrounding objects.

[1] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... deststars/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_class
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_dwarf
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_%28 ... face_ocean
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_%28moon ... al_heating

Regarding the balance between hot, cold and goldilocks orbits, which many feel currently heavily favours the goldilocks orbits.

I am not sure I agree on this. Particularly, it is not fair to compare a fully terraformed and incorporated planet with a planet of similar size with no enhancements whatsoever. Terraformation is an expensive process that takes time and resources to accomplish. Those resources have an opportunity cost and if you pay them while the opportunity cost is still too high, you lose out.

For example, the cost of adding a Type IV atmosphere to a medium planet are 750 + 1425 . At 5 each, that's a total price of 7875 , not including the cost of the technology. It delivers a total bonus of +190 production, provided you already work all zones.

By contrast, building four zones on a hot planet will net you a +400 production bonus for 8000 . More if its metal zones. You could also upgrade 8 zones for the same price and get the same bonus. That's double the profit. The only exception is organics production, which you cannot do in a hot orbit, but by contrast metal production gets you another +40 resources.

Is a goldilocks orbit better in the long run? Sure - with all terraformation completed, and corporations purchased, and after specialising the actual zones, eventually, the production of a goldilocks planet will always be higher than a hot orbit planet. Those bonuses add up very quickly.

But in the short run, that 8000 buys you more production on a hot planet than it does terraforming a goldilocks one. And that extra 200 production continues to be generated every turn. And if you invest the profits wisely, you can have that additional income generate more income for you, putting you ahead on the curve.

I wouldn't be so fast to dismiss the usefulness of hot and cold orbits, just because the goldilocks ones are better given long periods of time and large quantities of resources. Cause chances are, you won't have those resources for a while yet.

[Mercury]

The price of the Gas Giants was calculated by adding the value of the zones options to the value of the gas zones to the value of the power provided

1 cold orbit costs 2 gas. It offers 22 zone options (19 for a medium planet and 3 for its associated moon). That means 1 zone option in cold orbit is worth 2/22nd gas. Hot orbit zone options are worth 3/22nd and Goldilocks options are worth 12/22nd.

Since the default value of an orbit is 22 zone options, this number was subtracted from the maximum number of zones that the lunar orbits could produce (without specials). With 4 lunar orbits, the Ice Giant can produce 14 (-8) zones. Likewise, the Jovian Giant can produce 21 zones (-1) and the Brown Dwarf van produce 28 zones (+6).

This means the Ice Giant actually loses 8 zone options (worth 12/22 gas each), which gives it (so far) a value of -4,36. Based on zone options alone, you should be paid to take an Ice Giant in Goldilocks orbit.

Gas zones on the Gas Giant are worth that + 1 since they are already actual zones (as opposed to zone options for which you still need to buy rock). Thus, in case of the Ice Giant, the actual Gas zones are worth (1 + 12/22)*3 = 4.63. That brings the combined value (with zoning options) to 0.27 gas.

Power was calculated compared to the cost of putting down a power planet in a zone. Since that uses up 1 zone and delivers 100 power (actually possibly more, but 100 for simplicity - the power factor is not all that big in the deal anyway), the total value of the power is the actual power provided / 100 multiplied by the price of a zone option + 1 (as you save an actual zone, not a zone option).

In case of our Ice Giant in goldilocks orbit, the value would be 20 / 100 * (1 + 12/22) = 0.31. That brings the final value up to 0.58, which is rounded up to 1 (all prices here are rounded up).

As a sanity check, I then calculated the average values per zone for small, medium and large planets in cold, hot and goldilocks orbits, with their lunar orbits filled (i.e. 1 rock per zone + 2/3/12 gas for the orbit itself divided by the number of zones), comparing the same values calculated for the three Gas Giants. All are neatly within this range - that is to be expected but it doesn't hurt to double-check the sanity of your calculations.

You might say that the Gas Giants would thus be higher value than regular planets since they also deliver power. However, all gas giant prices are rounded up, the actual value of the power is slightly lower than calculated (since a power zone is likely to deliver slightly more than 100 ) and you a higher ratio of gas to rock, with gas being slightly more valuable than rock as you have less and can convert gas to rock but not rock to gas. Finally, though more versatile than an Asteroid Belt, Gas zones are more restrictive than regular zones. Given that the power bonus is never more than 1 rock mass, all in all, I think the slight advantage produced by the power provided is justified.

I do not feel that Gas Giants are particularly more powerful than regular planets.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Are these changes final? If so, they should be moved to the correct wiki page, as not to confuse new players ^_^

[Fred]

Are this the only rules that change or are there more changes?

[Veolian Commonwealth]

As far as I know this is it at the moment.

[Mercury]

That's correct - at this time there are no rules planned for change or review regarding the building of new star systems. The rules for Jedi characters however are currently being play-tested and may change in the future still.