Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

First Question: Is it possible to have the stats of a binary star and the appearnce of some other form of star?

Motivation: I find the rule-wise statistics of binary stars much more favourable (high power output with less gas cost; albeit with less orbits), but from an esthetic perspective I would rather not have a binary star.
I would be much happier with with six er seven even smaller stars in complex orbit around each other. (Interesting patterns can be found at http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/orbits.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_star for more information.)

This proposal is of a purely aesthetical nature. It would however be in line with other gasseous weirdness in the Smi-Halek system, as it is situated in a nebular object and contains no gas giants. I envision the system as a bubble of cleared-out emptiness inside a larger nebula, the bubble being cleared by the creation of six anomalously small stars that (quite by accident) formed a stable complex orbital pattern around each other.


I would also be happy with just a single star that's just a very small yellow star; but the first idea is much more awesome.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Second Question: Can I swap out my free Tertiary Zone for extra population? I'd rather have .1 billion population than a useless zone. This would amount to swapping out 2000 tax for for 1 bio; which sounds nicer that it is imho.

Motivation: The zone is completely unlogical. It will never be effective on my homeworld; and I think it ridiculous to place it on an empty world. (Nobody in his right mind builds a boost-zone without something to boost.) And the only places a tertiary zone is actually efficient on Medium Planets or larger orbital bodies.

PS. More population is better; but even .1 billion would be really appreciated.

[Mercury]

First Question: Very small stars that have a low mass are called brown dwarves or jovian planets, due to the fact that they are too light to sustain nuclear fission. As they gain more mass (enough to have fission) they become bigger by the interior energy generated. This prevents very small stars from forming at the lows mass end of the spectrum.

Very massive stars may also be small but this is generally after a super-nova, which results in a neutron star or a black hole - those are really tiny, but not stars by the common definition. They also have their own problems as you can imagine.

This poses a problem with having several small stars - either they'd be too small to burn or too heavy to work.

Multiple star systems are certainly possible (we already have a player with a trinary system, for one), and in fact you can make a septary star system with current rules (using the trinary system five times). However these systems always concern actual, real sized stars.

When two stars orbit eachother closely, they begin a gravitational dance where they twirl around one another, tidal forces slowing them down more and more until they eventually merge into one bigger star. This is likely dangerous to the system, but the actual merger may not occur for millions of years which means you're good for a while.

Suppose your binary stars are actively exchanging materials - this would give them the appearance of having several components or of a single stellar heap.

If you have a special, this might be a good place to use it. Such cosmic events as the merger of two stars is bound to have some exotic effects on the region - perhaps the stars are losing some of their gassious mass in the tug-o-war?

[Mercury]

Second Question:

We'd rather not exchange zones for bio-products. It is difficult to determine a fair ratio and it does not really fit either.

Your tertiary zone is always effective, as it give free additional production. Worst case it gives you +15 on only 1 product, which is still a free 15 extra product.

If you do not feel your tertiary zone is effective, I would suggest filling up an empty space on a planet somewhere for now (this costs nothing but gains 15 of something) and later building on top of this zone when you have found a more effective use for it.

Note that if your tertiary zone is not very useful to you, you are likely spread out over too many different materials.