I had a quick search and couldn't find anything on these but if there was then apologies for reposting the ideas.

1. PCG histories for universes before you populated them. These could include galactic wars, civilisations that have become extinct, legendary NPC characters. You could also come across huge debris fields from said galactic battles. A brilliant example is dwarf fortress.

2. Colonisation - If you found an empty planet/system could you colonise it yourself, install facilities on planets, build stations in orbit. Maybe these could give you income over time and provide you with missions as raiders attack your installations.

3. Will there be things like black holes, binary star systems and other interesting features to see and visit?

Go to Here. You'll find topics discussing all your suggestions.

Jenga wrote:I had a quick search and couldn't find anything on these but if there was then apologies for reposting the ideas.

1. PCG histories for universes before you populated them. These could include galactic wars, civilisations that have become extinct, legendary NPC characters. You could also come across huge debris fields from said galactic battles. A brilliant example is dwarf fortress.

2. Colonisation - If you found an empty planet/system could you colonise it yourself, install facilities on planets, build stations in orbit. Maybe these could give you income over time and provide you with missions as raiders attack your installations.

3. Will there be things like black holes, binary star systems and other interesting features to see and visit?

Hey Jenga,

1. Not a confirmed game feature, but I would indeed like to do a PCG background for each universe that you create.

2. Colonization is also not confirmed, but if it makes it, that'd come with the "Planetary ownership" post-release update.

3. Black holes probably not, binary star systems more likely. Overall, I am not interested in developing a whole lot of these unique features, even though they would be awesome, simply because it's not an efficient use of time (since, by definition, they're rare and unique, you will not get to enjoy them nearly as much as other, more prominent features that I could be working on).

Jenga wrote:3. Will there be things like black holes, binary star systems and other interesting features to see and visit?

What exactly would be interesting about them?
Some invisible thing you cannot get near? Two suns instead of one?
What kind of gameplay features would you suggest for those?

Gazz wrote:What kind of gameplay features would you suggest for those?

Watching the unwary get too close and fall in! Could be a popular spectator event...

JabbleWok wrote:Could be a popular spectator event...

Not to mention the gambling opportunities.

Zero Gravitas wrote:Not to mention the gambling opportunities.

LMAO!

I can see it now, The Casino at the End of Spacetime...

"I'll put everything on black!" <F/X flushing sound>

Gazz wrote:

Jenga wrote:3. Will there be things like black holes, binary star systems and other interesting features to see and visit?

What exactly would be interesting about them?
Some invisible thing you cannot get near? Two suns instead of one?
What kind of gameplay features would you suggest for those?

Adding these these might help create more interesting environments.

Maybe you discover a wormhole to a black hole system like he suggests.
The rip in time and space(and other such star trek babble) could create numerous other wormholes, opening up new star systems or creating short-cuts to old ones.

Large asteroid fields and nebulae could represent stellar debris along the event horizon. These could be exploited for mining.

A trade-off could be that travel through the system takes longer and your ships could blow up.

I got nothing for binary stars other than they might make ya stop and say 'Oh hey. Two stars....that's neat'.

Little things like cosmetic variation in environment can make the experience more enjoyable.

The only way I could see black holes being an interesting aspect of the game is if you see it actively affecting something else.

• Asteroids/planets orbiting or revolving around something invisible
• Light distortions when you look at it kind of like this
• You see a black hole actively gobbling up a star like this

Either way, these could be put in, but it really does depend on Josh. If it's either the second or third one, I can see them added easily without needing to go into physics behind it. But then again, you'd also need gravity and there's already a post for that.

DWMagus wrote:The only way I could see black holes being an interesting aspect of the game is if you see it actively affecting something else.

1.I don't think you would need to see it actively affecting asteroids or planets to give the right illusion.
We can assume they are moving at incredible speeds as we must in every other star system.
The increased density of materials floating around in the system would indicate something was going on.

2. Would we even notice light distortions when so close?

3. The system would be the part of accretion disc, filled with stellar debris.

In the centre of the system, you could replace the usual star with a representation of Polar Jets shooting gases away from the black hole.

Putting a limit on how close you can get to the centre of the system, without blowing up, would reduce the amount of visual detail required to create the illusion.

Maybe...I don't know.

How hard would it be to create a random timeline for factions? How far would you have to go back?
I don't think it would be specially hard to make a timeline with war and peace match, and have random events and clues matched to those timelines (eg a derelect from the war of 20103 between a & b in sector y). But would it make sense? The player is an outsider, and should only know his own history and that of his people. He shouldn't know about a war fought in a distant past between factions he's never heard about. He could find a datapad in a derelict which mentions a war. The player could piece together the history of his universe himself by collecting these bits of information.