Black holes as a 'sudden death' mechanic?

Only five posts have made references to black holes. But none using it in this sense.

Essentially, if a star is collapsed into a black hole (however that might occur in the game), it will indubitably be heavier than the star that preceded it, as such, all the planets would slowly begin drawing themselves closer to the black hole.

An alternative idea is to have a new black hole formed with some sort of 'black hole creator'.

But once this occurs, the game gets a time limit before all is gone, and whoever is last wins or it results in a draw.

I am not entirely sure if a 'sudden death' mechanic (taking the name from Worms) is in the spirit of a Total Annihilation successor, but I wanted to suggest it nonetheless.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're proposing a star suddenly increasing in mass out of nowhere, and as a physicist I just cannot say I'm OK with that. Violating mass/energy conservation is a pet peeve of mine. And if on the other hand a star were to suddenly become a black hole without increasing in mass, then the orbits would remain essentially unchanged.

That said, they have proposed a way in which games can be forced to come to a head: asteroids wiping out planets means you start running out of places to hide from each other.

I know there are plenty of planetary systems that have black holes at the centre, even binary systems can have a star and a black hole. 'Heavier' was obviously the wrong word, but surely the disturbance of collapsing might alter orbital paths? (I am honestly asking, because I am not sure.)

That I understand, but that is player induced. You could still keep the game going for quite long, if players just avoid ruining planets. (And if you can land on a lava planet (stretch goal #3), can't you land on a broken world after its initial ... collapse?)

My idea is that a time limit comes in play, that effectively alter strategy to something that either have you escaping to the farthest planets or blow up your opponent in his run.

Uh... wrong... just wrong...

Nope. The black hole is what is left after the star blew up. Which means that the black hole is actually lighter than the star, as much of the star is dispersed (and create nice-looking nebulae).

Please, whatever you do, don't make black holes Space Devourers of Doom!!! They're not. This is one of the most annoying clichés in SF, and it's anything but awesome.
Black holes are nothing much special. Stuff can orbit around them. In fact, planets were found orbiting around neutron stars, who are more or less failed black holes. The only difference between a star and a black hole is that the star will vaporise if you come too close, while the black hole will tear you apart with tidal forces. And devour you only if you hit it right in the face. They are only a few km wide, it would actually be hard to be precise enough to make it absorb you.
(Galactic black holes is the size of the inner solar system, but they are far less common anyway.)

So yeah, having black holes would be cool. As would be having neutron stars, double gas giants (yes, those are possible somehow), or even pre-nova stars that you could manually trigger somehow.
But not black holes as Space Devourers of Doom!!!
Please.

edit: you guys beat me there.

The collapse itself wouldn't change anything. The same mass would be at the same place, so for the planet orbiting around it, it would be the same. But it's not just the collapse itself, it's also the supernova accompanying it.

Uh, what? Mass doesn't come from nowhere. A singularity formed from a star will have at most the same mass as the star, so the orbits of any planets would not change.

Technically, the planets' orbits would actually get bigger since IIRC the normal processes leading up to formation of a singularity would blast enough mass and energy off the star to blow off the atmosphere and melt the surface of orbiting planets. So, there would still be a sudden death mechanic of sorts.

I have already admitted my inaccurate description (what's worse is that I actually know this stuff), but my reflection relies on a black hole creating an unstable condition, and thus creating the conditions for a 'sudden death' mechanic.

I realise it is a science-fiction cliché, and have little actual impact on instability. But if we are to have black holes, then they should at least have a different game mechanic. Seeing as you cannot fly through space (the UI seems to allow you to move from planet to planet, rather than doing it yourself), making it a 'possible death trap' seems unlikely, as players can easily avoid it.

Hmm... that might be a more interesting way to do it. But that lacks the 'predictability' of a regular sudden death mechanic, where it is effectively a time limit. That seems more like blowing stuff up (unless I am misinterpreting you).

No, they should precisely have the same mechanics than stars. The only difference would be how their size, their luminosity for solar panels, and how they destroy something passing too close.
Thus, they would be easier to implement, with a nice-looking gravitational lensing effect and hopefully a nice accretion disc to go with it.

Then they just behave similar, but have dramatically different effects on the environment. A black hole replacing a star would render solar panels useless. And wouldn't the entire system be a lot darker and grittier?

And wouldn't it also be too cold for water worlds? Hmmm... imagine turning a water world to ice.

If we're going to focus on a mucking around with the star in a way that affects the whole system, something like a supernova is in order. But that's basically "rocks fall, everyone dies", which seems pretty pointless for a game.

Anything that significantly affects the star is going to affect the whole system. What kind of effects are even worth exploring? Maybe temporarily interrupting solar power (make the star go dark for a while)? Or even permanently? That might be interesting, as it would hurt a player who focused on solar panels.

All of this is pretty out-there as far as game mechanics go, since we're talking about significant game-global effects from one player's actions. Maybe you could get this variety just from having maps with different star characteristics, rather than having a way for the players to essentially change basic map parameters with a special structure.

This is also why I avoided proposing a supernova. Because I did not like the concept of something effectively ending the game in a draw, instantly.

But then there should be equal ways to disrupt a player who has focused on other resources. Or solar panels should have some sort of bonus to make up for the possibility of another player 'blocking the sun'.

I realise this, it was more of a game mechanic proposal than certainly a 'realistic' aspect. But perhaps it shouldn't necessarily be the cause of one player's action, but it could be a map that starts out with a sudden death scenario.

Well it would be a cool way to have a timed gamemode. Imagine haveing a farely big solar system with a planet for each player to start on. The batte would get more and more intense because as the planets gets closer to the star (or blackhole) it would require less time to transport troops etc. to enemy planets. Maybe there could be like a part of an ancient interstellar escape craft on each planet so that you would have to to wipe out a couple of enemies in order to build the spacecraft and escape the planetary annihilation, (see what i did there? ), or maybe it could just be the one that have killed the most other commanders (in a large game) or the one who had the best units build to units lost to units killed( for smaller games), and ofcourse you would just win if you where the last robot standing. I also think that it could be implemented to Galactic War as some sort of arena.


Ps: sorry for the rambling

This is what I had in mind when he posted this (actually, I was considering making a post about this). Having a game where you start out with a black hole, and every planet body is slowly getting sucked into it. Sounds like it could be fun

This is NOT physics.

We have red microwave lasers in SupCom. That alone violates the laws of nature as we know them. Same goes for around 95% of the weapons featured in TA and all of it's offshoots.

I can accept the red microwave lasers because of AWESOME, and because you can always explain that there is rule of perception, it burns the air, it doesn't send only microwave, the laser is "painted" so the Cybrans actually see where they're pointing it...

But black holes slowly sucking planets are not awesome. They are lame. They are a cliché. They are wrong. They are what Hollywood can do worse in SF. They are misinforming.
And they need more work, as you have to program them to violate the laws of gravity that any other celestial body would have, however abstracted, for orbits and interplanetary travels to be possible.

If you want a timed destruction game, make it around a pre-nova star. Make the star having been destabilized (because if not, you will have to wait many, many years for it to explode, even with the compressed space and time scales used here).
That's awesome. A freaking star blowing up. And we're responsible for it. Add to that devices to fasten or slow it, and you have an "armageddon counter" mode.

But no all-sucking black holes. Please.

The earth gets eat by a micro black hole over the course of 10 years (read the Hyperion Cantos)...

the moon is completly unaffected, the satelites are affected.. cause there orbit would STABALIZE!!!

anyways, i wouldnt mind user generated black holes as a doomsday wep, aka "this is in my base, if my ACU OR my base gets nucked, it gets loose.. and now the planet has 10 minutes to live

"I can accept one impossibility. But another one? NO WAY THIS DOESN'T WORK IN REAL LIFE OMG DONT MAKE IT LIKE THAT"

I've been wondering about people shooting down the supernova part, but wouldn't it still be a race against time even during a supernova? At absolute best, due to Earth's current distance to Sol, it would be hit by the shockwave of a spontaneous supernova about 8 min 30 sec after it happened.

If you start out in a system about to go supernova, any planets left (due to the expanding star) and usable would probably be hit in the same amount of time or even longer, due to being further away or just game mechanics. Instead of slowly getting sucked into a black hole, the supernova shockwave expands out and slowly destroys the planets. In normal RTS terms, I guess this would be like that one Starcraft 2 campaign map where you have to keep moving due to the encroaching wall of death.

Perhaps a black hole could be left over behind the shockwave, eating up pieces of the planets that are left over from the shockwave destroying them? Remember, it doesn't have to be realistic, just awesome.

Also a Physicist. Gonna let you know that pretty much everything you said is garbage.

However, Awesome over realism. I don't know if I would like this feature, but just because it makes no sense doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.

It should make sense gameplay wise. That's all that matters.