Use this forum to ask for new features or suggest changes to the game.
Previously: Science! Now it's about space stations
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Hutton Posts: 276
4/24/2017
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Some ideas about making the game more sciencey. Please feel free to add your own.
Doc Dread has recently been describing an intention to introduce MegaStructures that exist in orbit around a planet. The first thing that jumped to my mind was space elevators. Space elevators are a means of cheaply transporting material out of a planets gravity well.
The more basic version of a space elevator is a satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the earth's equator attached to some point on the equator by a tether. The speed at which the satellite is moving is actually too high to stay in orbit without the thether and would fly into space if the thether was broken. (This also means the satellite has its own gravity from the Coriolanus force of rotating around the earth, in which up is towards earth and down is interplanetary space). Crawler vehicles climb up and down the tether to move cargo between the satellite and the surface. This is cheaper than launching spacecraft into orbit under their own power.
A cheaper, and weirder alternative to the traditional space elevator is to build an unattached tether in orbit around earth and then set it spinning so the ends dip into the atmosphere as they point down at the planet. The spacecraft flies up into the upper atmosphere like a conventional aircraft using aerodynamic lift, (or is carried that high by an aircraft if it is not built to use the atmosphere for lift), and grabs the end of the tether as it swings into the atmosphere. As the tether spins, it pulls the spacecraft up out of the atmosphere. The spacecraft releases the tether when pointed at the angle closest to its desired destination and is flinged off into space.
A simpler alternative is to build a railgun on the surface that shoots cargo into space like a bullet.
As the game works now these structures wouldn't serve any practical purpose, because all spacecraft have a flat maintenance fee. It costs the same to launch them into space as it does to keep them parked in orbit, so there is no gameplay benefit to a structure that moves cargo into space.
But I throw these out, Dr. Dread, in case you are planning to drop some major updates a year are so from now to mix up the gameplay and give us some new balance issues to contend with. Like making ships cheap to park, fly through interplanetary space or land on a planet; and expensive to engage in combat, fly through interseller space and launch from a planet.
edited by Hutton on 4/25/2017
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