Dyson Sphere resource collection

I'd like to pitch an economy unit tech tree.

As with TA, SupCom, Zero-K, and CnC energy is very important. You can never have enough. Being that PA will have a comic scale I thought it appropriate to mention Dyson Spheres. For those that don't know, a Dyson Sphere is a shell around a star harvesting all the energy being thrown off (Heat, light, etc). Obviously this would make a humongous amount of power... though we have a galactic war to fund.

It would make sense, IMO, to have solar collection stations orbit the sun. Those stations could then be upgraded with a few asteroids' worth of materials (instead of using them as a weapon the player would have to make a choice). Each lump of materials would cover only so much of the star's surface, creating limited (but large) amounts of power. A fully encased star would generate a bonus amount of energy.

I think this would be a great galactic wars addition, as well as an interesting skirmish objective. A whole tech tree could be developed around this kind of structure, but I'd like to hear what the devs have to say about it before getting to flush with ideas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECLvFLkvY7Y
A little star trek for you all

Wouldn't the theoretical problem with this be the transference of all the power from the sun to the planets? I'm guessing the robots need local power on the planets to power production.
Sure, maybe the commander takes a detour past the star to recharge before attacking the next planet but I don't really see the necessary use for it in the game.

I don't think you'll get the time to build something as big as a dyson sphere over the course of a single game. You'd need all the matter of an entire solar system, maybe more than one, to build such a device.

Keep in mind that PA does not have a realistic scale, because then stars would ridiculously large. So I think that building a dyson sphere, or a least a dyson swarm would be possible. If that is still too large, we could go build a jupiter brain but I think that's what the metal planet is.

Technically we could build a Dyson swarm (A more realistic version of the Dyson sphere) by putting a bunch of solar satellites around the sun.

In regular terms the amount of energy a Dyson Sphere could give the player would be so vast that you would probably be able to use up around 1,000,000,000 of it.
To put in in perspective a single Dyson Sphere could supply around a billion times the amount of energy that THE WHOLE OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION uses.
Not to mention the amount of energy and mass (scientists have said that to build a Dyson Sphere you would need to deconstruct a mass the size of Mercury) needed to build it.
Even if that demand was then factored down massively it would be much easier to spend it on tanks and planes rather than something that would only give you vast amounts of energy, not even mass.
Would be VERY cool though, or a Dyson Swarm as mentioned above would be much better.

1. Tone down the energy to more realistic, or makit it act like the old Aeon paragon for the system.

2. The game needs this, why? BECAUSE IT IS SUCH A BIG AND INVITING TARGET YOU JUST HAVE TO SMASH IT AND WATCH IT COLLAPSE INTO THE SUN WITH A HUGE BOOM.

Interestingly, the original Sphere that Dyson talked about was actually composed of independently-orbiting collector - what we call now a Dyson Swarm. Because the StarTrek-like Dyson Shell is kind of impossible to build in practice : it would have to support its own weight (good luck finding a material withstanding that kind of forces), and the Sphere and the star wouldn't be gravitationally bound (being inside the sphere, the star would be equally attracted by all directions, so any push on the sphere would have to be corrected, or it would drift and eventually collide with the star).
You can also point out that any Dyson Sphere would heavily radiate in black-body radiations (the star's energy has to eventually go out, it's the gradient between the star and space that can be used for useful things, not simply the energy itself) so the Enterprise crew should definitely buy a few hand-held thermal cameras in a nearby shop and strap them on the hull. And the Shell seems to have a companion star, also.

There is another kind of Dyson Sphere that is theoretically doable, apart from the Swarm : a light membrane that uses the star wind/radiation pressure to counter its own weight as well as to not drift around the star. A Dyson Bubble (or Balloon), if you want.


Now, gameplay-wise.
A Dyson Sphere could make for an interesting Metal Planet-like feature, with many/super-powerful energy generators and a few superweapons. But building one? It would be even worse than building planets, so no.

Personally I hope that the metal planets are a little more interesting then core prime or a death star in their features between each one.

As a hull that covers a spacial anomaly of infinite power (Fringe level science) it could be cool.

Well actually you could contain the star in a speparte gravitational feild ie halo forunners sheild worlds and that would prevent the sphere from hitting the star since the star is gravatationally held in place (also theese are robots with perfect tech so i think they would have the ability to make one) and also add a cointainment field to block radiation

Neutronium!

You comment reminded me of a mod I had for Sins of a Solar Empire called Maelstorm. The devs added several interesting planet types, one of which included a Dyson Sphere (though technically speaking it was a Jupiter Brain due to its small size.) I can't remember what they all looked like, but I looked at their list of added planets, and I would think that some of them would be interesting additions to PA. One was a "fractured" planet, where it had suffered some great catastrophe and all that was left was the majority of its crust, and its core floated lifelessly in the middle.
http://www.moddb.com/mods/maelstrom/images/fractured-planet#imagebox
While completely unrealistic, I think this would be an interesting planet type.

However, I thought that this planet type would be a very intresting alternative if we could not have a similar metal-like planet as you suggested. Not to mention it's loaded with awesome.

The problem with a dyson sphere is that it appears people have no sense of size. I myself can barely comprehend just how big it is. A dyson sphere would output so much energy that it makes energy within a system obsolete.

Also, once complete, i don't really understand how it affects gameplay in an interesting matter, as all it will be then is a really big planet.

Because hurp derp lets all suggest SCIENCE(TM) FICTION.

I agree with you, Dyson Sphere's are so astronomically different in scale to Commanders, asteroids, and even planets that it makes absolutely no sense to have build them.

Did anybody even read the post above

We did. It didn't make any sense, so we ignored it for the most part.

The point is that the star would be gravitationally held in place like the forerunners did in their shield worlds i.e. requiem. And there would be a containment field to prevent too much radiation and heat from getting in. So it could move and harvest energy without risk

Your point on radiation still makes no sense. We're not protecting the sun from radiation.


Sill, read;

the only way i can really see it fitting into the way the game plays is by having it as a preexisting structure. and who's to say there aren't compressed stars (or black hole or quasar or singularity or something) or something on the inside of metal worlds.

No the containment fails us around the sun to block the equipment from radiation also remember these robots have perfect technology they could make one

Then you're not collecting any energy from the star you've just enclosed. What's the point of a Dyson sphere if you're not doing that?