Dyson Spheres?

Since metal planets are going to be in the game, maybe we can have Dyson Spheres that encapsulate a star and contain all of its energy. I think it would introduce an interesting dynamic and would certainly give people something to fight over in solar systems. Also, unnecessary note here, but with Dyson Spheres can we have sun ramming?

while Dyson Spheres are an interesting scifi element, I think people underestimate how big the surface of them would be.

if I didn't miscalculate too badly, a sphere in a toasty distance of 1km from our little sun would have a surface area of roughly 10.000x of earth.
If you want a sphere in a habitable area of our solar system you can add a few magnitudes to that. (I think the original concept assumed a radius of 1AU roughly the mean earth-sun distance)

even if not using realistic relative sizes of stars and their planets, the playable area becomes really big really fast.

Better, I think, would be BulletMagnet's mod idea:

It would be fresh and novel, and otherwise you're just playing on a really big metal world with no sun.
I also think that playing on a ringworld or in an O'Neill cylinder would be sweet. Might be easier to code that than a complete sphere, to boot.

Yeah , its a little to bit of an unrealistic device to try an simulate properly.

Of course, metal worlds could theoretically be a Dyson sphere, with you just being on the out side.

They said that "Dyson spheres" are not in the inital release but they think about that idea.
Would be fun to look at the face´s of people who see a dyson sphere for the first time.

The trouble with dyson spheres is: are you fighting on the inside or the outside?

Either way you're talking about a single world large enough to qualify as its own game type. Might be cool if you aren't a fan of the space-y stuff.

A Dyson sphere at 1AU would have approximately 550 million times the surface area of the earth. Good luck finding your opponent. One scaled down to match the small planet we've seen so far might 'only' have 550 million times its surface area. Still not exactly practical. Hell, even Niven's ringworld is about 3 million times the size of earth - and that's just a tiny slice out of a Dyson sphere.

Yes, you could make one even smaller, but really the scale is vastly off for an RTS. The defining feature of these sort of megastructures is their unimaginable size. If you shrink them down so far that they'd actually be playable what's the point?

Culture style Orbitals on the other hand could actually work. They might be a pain to do though depending on the approach Uber is taking to planet generation and rendering.

I think it would be interesting to have the remnants of a Dyson sphere if not a whole Dyson sphere (for the size issues mentioned above). Like a Dyson sphere that was never finished, or bits of a smashed dyson sphere, remnants of a past battle. The metal planets imply are examples already of past mass engineering, it would be cool to see some other ones if only as aesthetic items (Space junk!)

It would certainly lend a bit of visual interest. Alternatively there could be rings (complete or incomplete) going in close around the star in the system (planets could be inside or outside of the ring)

Since terrain destruction is a significant element, maybe you could fight on the surface of a DS, but combat erodes and collapses the surface over time. Large battles could cause whole sections to cave in (or blow out in this case) revealing the star inside.
Other unique aspects of a Dyson Sphere, for gameplay purposes:

• no atmosphere, so flying units won't work
• no ocean, so naval units won't work
• near the orbital distance, with relatively low "surface" gravity, so land units could probably fire on orbital units.

Sounds like a Dyson Sphere would be the ultimate "land only" battlefield.

i could see artifical ringworlds ala halo, but dyson spheres are just way too large for the game i would think, unless its used as a border for the map edge (and nothing else)

If we're going to go with a Dyson sphere, why not go all out? They need not be build-able (only found from ancient civs), and only small patches of them might be inhabitable. As you begin to develop the base, you might be able to discover more inhabitable sections, weaponry and so on, but the resources would be limited to what you can find in nearby planets; if you start using the sphere for anything other than power and renewable habitat it might become unstable.

Another option is to have something rather strange (and a little ridiculous - but what the heck): planet sized robots. Normally you would view a planet sized robot as a world eater, something you make as a planet destroying device. Which it still would be. But on a Dyson sphere, they would be relatively normal sized, and so you have a factory planet that builds war planets. On the surface, or beneath, whichever looks cooler when you launch your galactic blitzkrieg. This might sound overpowered, but if you're gonna be wandering around the galaxy with superweapons, why not? If someone manages to create a black hole in it, it's all gone (with a chance of recovering one or two that manage to escape before being torn apart).

I think that is probably stepping a long way outside of the goals for PA. Most discussions have confirmed that most people do not want experimental units, and would rather have all unit types remain relevant at most stages in the course of the match. Having planet eater machines stands directly against that, as it renders planetary combat irrelevant.

Also it has been confirmed that there is to be no space combat outside of transporting units from planet to planet and possibly fighting in orbit (certainly there is an orbital layer).
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/15/planetary-annihilation-interview/

Additionally the Galactic war stretch goal is not going to be a real time aspect of gameplay. It has been describe as more akin to Boneyards in Total Annihilation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boneyards

I think if Dyson spheres are going to be featured in any way it should feature as an aspect of terrain (like planets) or simply as an aesthetic aspect to the game in the distance. As pointed out there are issues with the sheer surface area, but if the game is going to be as modifiable as expected, then I feel that a mod including full Dyson spheres could be quite likely.

THIS. And we have Galactic War too, so a nearly-galaxy-sized one would be cool as well.

my first thought was this:


as bit experimental perhaps.

Someone should make a Gurren Lagann RTS mod...

were theses ever confirmed, i know it was talked about

Nope, never confirmed. Even denied for the first release.
They might be released later, according to neutrino.

that's no moon

Why not have a "Dyson sphere" that instead of being played on, is an end game energy collector needing multiple solar systems worth of resources and giving a suns worth of energy. Or maybe a "Dyson swarm" that's collecting energy.

that's everything a Moon can do too.


The only remotely interesting aspect i can think of, is one on the inside of a dyson sphere. Energy is free, as the sphere itself produces energy (which is sorta the point of a dyson sphere). The only problem is metal, and that reduces the dyson sphere integrity...