Star that damage all ships in certain range

Wonder how your ideas on stellar phenomena differ from what I've come up with for FQM.

If the Sector Range scope doesn't actually work, you could make the stellar object occupy a larger hex radius. Something like this in StellarObjectTypes.txt:

Hex Size := 6
Blocked Hex Radius := 2

The model should end up rendered at the same size it is now, but the star "object" will exist further out into space, bringing its abilities with it. Unfortunately, you would then have to deal with the object being "present" in the same sector as nearby planets.. May or may not be worth it.

Another possibility is to create a bunch of invisible "storm" objects with the abilities. You'll want to change storm sizes for all regular storms to a specific size instead of Any (they are all Medium in stock) in all System Types. Then, create your new invisible storm objects with a size of, say, Tiny. This will thus prevent any random regular storms from using the invisible storm object, and it will prevent any "star-extension" storms from using regular graphics.

For an example of this, look at the "Nebulae 1" type storms versus the "Storm 1" type storms in FQM. Nebulae storms can only appear in Nebulae systems, as they are Huge sized. All entries for regular sector-level storms in the SystemTypes file use a size of Medium.

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Hmm... Um, I don't think that works either. Your venus fly traps only damage ships that fly through the center, even though they occupy 7 sectors, the six sectors on the outside just take up space. YEah it looks like you'd need to make the storm objects and not give them graphics.

This sounds like an interesting one. I'm always up for trying out anything that will make the game feel a bit more realistic. I remember when I first started playing the game setting paths to avoid getting too close to stars in fear of my ship being vaporized. Once I realized that no damage would occur no matter what proximity, I was bummed. If any of you can figure out how to make this work I would recommend it.

Another thing that would be neat to see is maybe changing the size of neutron stars so they appear perhaps smaller than a tiny planet in the FQM. From what I’ve read there radius is only about 20 kilometers.

IE a rapidly rotating glowy speck? there is a similar object that takes up about the same screen space as a large planet. Then again, modeling an object that's only 20 Mi across is kinda hard to do "to scale".

I dunno... Here is a neutron at a size scale of 1.5. 1 did not work, because the glow bitmap seems to vanish if its effect size is less than ~15.. For reference, tiny planets have a scale of 2. The star is not very impressive at all.

http://fqm5.spaceempires.net/img/new/neutron_tiny_1.jpg

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Maybe add a shiny effect that extends outward? Kinda like the sterotypical sunbeams, but with only 2 of them? and have them rotate around it rapidly?

I like the pic Fyron, that’s perfect imo. I know that it takes a bit of the artistic side away, but that small little 1.5 speck does the trick (at least for me). You’ll never get it perfectly into proportion, but you work with what you’ve got. Looks neat.

Is there a way to manually change the scale Fyron??

I’m a newb at this kind of stuff, would using the Devnull editor work?

I'd recommend against using a GUI editor; you learn a lot more with a simple text editor.

XFileClasses_Stellar.txt, find the appropriate entry (Star Neutron in this case), change the 3 Starting Scale values. Then, you need to set the Star Glow bitmap effect size to 10 times the scale value. In this case, the neutron star's scale value is 8, so the appropriate glow size is 80.

Name                                                 := Star Neutron
XFile                                                := Planet1000.x
Override Texture Filename                            := FQM\star_white.bmp
Base Model Radius                                    := 2.0
Starting Rotate X                                    := 50
Starting Rotate Y                                    := 0
Starting Rotate Z                                    := 25
Starting Scale X                                     := 8
Starting Scale Y                                     := 8
Starting Scale Z                                     := 8
...
Number of Bitmap Effects                             := 1
Effect 1 Name                                        := Star Glow
Effect 1 Size                                        := 80

For ease of reference, planets have the following scale value by size:

gas giants: {'Tiny': '5', 'Small': '6', 'Medium': '7', 'Large': '8', 'Huge': '9'}
ice/rock: {'Tiny': '2', 'Small': '3', 'Medium': '4', 'Large': '5', 'Huge': '6'}

The more I look at it, the more I abhor the tiny version of the star.

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