I rembered that in the hard sci-fi comic Schlock Mercenary there was the idea about using a Gas Giant (and it's moons) as a sort of Slower Then Light colony ship: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030803.html It was also a story about the most stupid Artifical intelligences ever. Because they piloted it. And really, really failed. (But then again they failed with the following solar sail ship too). So what are the chances of replicating this in PA? You need a system with a gas giant as center. A very small "sun" above or below the gas giant (also at the center). And a bunch of moosn orbiting the gas giant. The trickiest part will propably be that the Gas Giant and "sun" overlap in the 3D space. Plus maybe having a visulatiosn for the Candle sticking out of the north pole or south pole of the giant.
This looks fun! Actually you *might* be able to implement this fairly easily by a mod: the 'candle' structure would just move the gas giant as, well, a 'halley for gas giants', and its exhaust would basically shoot in some way like and annihilaser. The only problem is that PA only models its systems in a single plane of motion, so any moons would just get burnt up by the exhaust... or the giant would have to move outside the plane of the rest of the system. This seems like something you could work around, I'm sure, but it's still a hiccup in the path to moddy goodness. A more important question is: where would it go? Where would you send a gas giant in PA? Into someone else' game...?
I was thinking about the game play on "the system in transit". This is at STL movement, so naturally it takes it's sweet time to get anywhere (plus the whole thing about not flying too fast). It could have been sent off all the way before time dezignation zero. As reasons it could be making a phase drive bypass. As I understand it the drive is bound to masses to jump between. So mooving something as massive as the gas giant might be the equivalent of a long term road building project. It just kinda survived the civilisation that started it. And even while in transit it might still be a viable target for phase jumps for intervalls, making it a intersting strategic asset for the Awakening War. About using the whole thing as a buildable gast giant superweapon/haley: Would be an option. But the main idea is about providing a odd map without conventional sun.
....I got to the weird part of the forums. I'm not sure you're going to be willing to hand 'em over, but would you please give me back those ten seconds of my life?
