solar sail ideas

Mmm? No weren't Solar Sails there to catch Solar Winds, not light itself? Of course, it's not "wind" in the conventional sense on Earth - it's a flow of particles, not light though.

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Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Aren't those "winds" though generated by the star in the Solar System, thus Solar Winds?

That is true - the basic idea itself is a valid one. Was just nitpicking on a small physics detail.

Now whether this idea can be implemented... that's another question and it's beyond my knowledge but I would guess "no". Or at least, we might be able to do "if ship starts in a system with more stars, gets more bonus movement from Solar Sail" but what's written above is more elaborate than that.

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Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

To be accurate (which is sounds like is your intent) then you would have to take into concideration how long the ship was traveling in that system as well. If a ship with solar sails started from Earth orbit, by the time it reached, say, Pluto's orbit it would be travelling extremely fast. It's less an issue of where the ship is (inner or outer solar system) than where the ship started that would determine it's speed.

And that, I would have no idea how to implement.

Nick (bearclaw)

"You don't know the Power of the Dark Side. I must obey my Master"

yeah.... basically this would require the game to treat the speed boost as a variable. I don't think you can do that without hardcoding. either way, it doesn't sound like a good idea. Too confusing.

Enh. I came up with something more easy and more fun. give solar sails more tech levels and make the game add a % of one movement for each level over 1.

I think the best way to use this idea of Solar Sail is with the alternate engine system (like those in BM), assigning a thrust value to the Solar Sail, that increase with level (level 5 Solar Sail can catch and use Solar Wind better).

I don't know if this is possible, but adding a control that let the Solar Sail thrust's be connected with the number of star in the system...

An example:

Solar Sail generates 150 unit of thrust, with each frigate needing 15 unit of thrust to move 1 exe. In a system with one star, my frigate could move al 10 exe/turn, with 2 star, the movement became 20 exe/turn, with 3 star it will be 30 exe/turn (!!!), but without any star, it will be simply 0... or maybe 1 or 2.

If it were to work like that, then its most likely that there will be engines on board as well, that'll allow the ship to move about 45 squares, for frigates and destroyers at least, per turn. Quite a long distance that. Are the solar sails going to have a small hull size?

Mine was only an example! Logically, one must think about balancing it!!!

lol i know, but i hadn't seen any mention to the size of the component. But say it was made to be quite large, too large to have engines on board as well and say the ship did move into a system without a sun, namely a black hole. If your proposal for the ships to only be able to move 1-2 spaces with the solar sails they would either be sucked into the blackhole or be unable to escape the system, unless they warped out of there the instant they moved into it. Even if there was no warpgate present, it would take maybe 10-15 turns to reach the other side of the system, which when you think about it is a fairly long time.

The idea will be exactly this. Solar Sail don't use Supply. Engine do. So, using solar sail let you move at full movement even if you are without fuel...

It's a big deal, no?

But, I've see that don't exist a function that control the number of star in a System...

And, BTW, I'm letting to set a maximum number of engine/solar sail per ship, sol you can't put all engine/solar sail to let your ship move 100 exe per turn...

Ah ok. I've never had a ship run out of fuel i don't think, i usually put two quantum reactors on them. A few have got close to running out of supplies but they are ships that close warpholes or create planets etc... But they generate 1000 supplies per turn so all is still good
But this idea of solar sails does sound interesting. If you can get it to work i'd start creating more suns in my systems!

Interesting Ideas

Groovy Baby Yeah!