Gas Giants In Empyrion

[derek.ward]

Is there currently any way in the playfield data to generate a gas giant...a surface-less planet with atmosphere only? I'm no playfield expert so I thought I would ask if anyone has any ideas with regards to these bodies.

[ravien_ff]

You can't create an actual gas giant, but you can create planets that don't let you enter that look like gas giants. There are some in my scenario. They aren't perfect but they look pretty cool.

[derek.ward]

Hmm forgot about the entry variables! I'll have a go with that. Thanks! BTW - need to make you aware of something along the lines of project eden if you get a second.

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by derek.ward:

Hmm forgot about the entry variables! I'll have a go with that. Thanks! BTW - need to make you aware of something along the lines of project eden if you get a second.

Sure! I accepted your invite.

[Tryst49]

This would be a great idea to add to the game. Especially if you could harvest the gasses with a SV or CV based gas harvester for various purposes.

Hydrogen and Oxygen already have uses, other gasses like Argon could be used to make high end laser based weapons, Nitrogen for cooling systems to reduce radiated heat from thruster housings and such as a T2 or T3 variant of the thruster.

This would allow players to have space stations that could be topped up with Oxygen and produce Hydrogen for Fusion Cells without having to land on any planets to harvest water. We've asked for ice asteroids for this purpose, this is another alternative.

[piddlefoot]

Well we used to have gravity that sucked you down to the planet but it caused to many headaches in MP with players separated from ships falling into planet playfield etc, so in theory we could probably do it.

Have a specific planet hard coded by devs, so the gravity increases incrementally the further you drop, to the point of total destruction, no matter how big the ship is, to crate those game rules, a solid cube at the size of the total grids limit, so a solid borg cube, should crush / ir / be destroyed as it falls to the centre of mass, if a solid cube cannot survive it, no other ship in Empyrion can possibly survive it, so thats how we could create the law / game rule to work.

Now whats needed is a form of spherical gas layers to be rendered, in a way where we can change the colour of the gasses from top to bottom of gas planet, we need density to increase the further down you go, also hard coded, but the colour yaml controlled, next we need some form of gas recourse inserted into the game for use in some machine or device.

Then we need a way to attach gas ore to a set level in the gas layers from top of atmosphere to centre of planet.

So it is complicated but I dont think its beyond possible or anything, just very time consuming to do it all, but pretty much everyone on the closed test team wants it, been a large calling for gas planets from day one really.

Cross them there fingers !

[Tryst49]

There is an alternative of course.

You cannot land on gas giants so skimming the upper layers for the gasses would be the only option.

Safety systems would prevent you entering the atmosphere so far that it causes destruction, so you would "bounce" off it. In essence, the safety systems cut in and keep you away from the border, beyond which is total destruction. We already have this in place with planets that disallow CV's to land on them or even enter the atmosphere.

I would also suggest an Extractor as a type of weapon and also a crafting tool that allows you to refine certain elemental gasses from the mixture of gasses you collect, similar to a constructor but for gas instead of ores.

This would allow us to extract Oxygen and Hydrogen from gas giants instead of only from water as well as other gasses that could be used for other, much higher level, recipes.

Edit: Danger comes from what gasses are collected.
Hydrogen would be the most common, it is lightest and would therefore be more prevalent in the upper atmosphere.

But Hydrogen mixed with Chlorine, could create HCl (hydrochloric acid) that could cause damage to systems and even the extractor itself.

Similarly Hydrogen mixed with Nitrogen and Oxygen, creating HNO3 (Nitric acid) which could cause more damage a lot quicker than HCl does.

[rphillips1986]

Originally posted by Tryst49:

There is an alternative of course.

You cannot land on gas giants so skimming the upper layers for the gasses would be the only option.

Safety systems would prevent you entering the atmosphere so far that it causes destruction, so you would "bounce" off it. In essence, the safety systems cut in and keep you away from the border, beyond which is total destruction. We already have this in place with planets that disallow CV's to land on them or even enter the atmosphere.

I would also suggest an Extractor as a type of weapon and also a crafting tool that allows you to refine certain elemental gasses from the mixture of gasses you collect, similar to a constructor but for gas instead of ores.

This would allow us to extract Oxygen and Hydrogen from gas giants instead of only from water as well as other gasses that could be used for other, much higher level, recipes.

Edit: Danger comes from what gasses are collected.
Hydrogen would be the most common, it is lightest and would therefore be more prevalent in the upper atmosphere.

But Hydrogen mixed with Chlorine, could create HCl (hydrochloric acid) that could cause damage to systems and even the extractor itself.

Similarly Hydrogen mixed with Nitrogen and Oxygen, creating HNO3 (Nitric acid) which could cause more damage a lot quicker than HCl does.

I've been hoping to see where hostile atmosphere could actually cause damage over time to a ship. It could lead to an actual use for Xeno steel in game. As well as come very interesting planet designs. High risk = high reward.

[piddlefoot]

I like the Xeno Steel idea.
Special heat panel production !
And damage over time in an atmosphere should be pretty doable.

Would need a few new 3d texture models for damage states on the hull etc, but doable.

+1 !

[Tryst49]

With certain gasses, we could also have addons for weapons and other devices.

Nitrogen for cooling high energy weapons resulting in faster rate of fire.
Argon for high frequency laser production resulting in more DPS.
Neon for lighting resulting in less power consumption.
Helium for medical equipment resulting in faster heal times.
Freon for the aircon to reduce power consumption for cooling systems on hot planets.

[Skotty]

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

You can't create an actual gas giant, but you can create planets that don't let you enter that look like gas giants. There are some in my scenario. They aren't perfect but they look pretty cool.

I'm playing in your Project Eden scenario now. It's awesome. When I discovered your Gas Giant planet and its moons it blew my mind. Even though the gas giant itself isnt really explorable (I did take my sv and have a look) the fact that it was there is really cool. And those custom planets are amazing.

[ravien_ff]

Originally posted by Skotty:

Originally posted by ravien_ff:

You can't create an actual gas giant, but you can create planets that don't let you enter that look like gas giants. There are some in my scenario. They aren't perfect but they look pretty cool.

I'm playing in your Project Eden scenario now. It's awesome. When I discovered your Gas Giant planet and its moons it blew my mind. Even though the gas giant itself isnt really explorable (I did take my sv and have a look) the fact that it was there is really cool. And those custom planets are amazing.

Thank you! I didn't make those gas giants, just tweaked them a bit. The guy who does a lot of the work on the official planets for the game posted them up for people to use. I think they might have plans for actual gas giant planets in the future and that's why they aren't using them yet in the main game.

[piddlefoot]

Yea Eleon should give you a job as there custom map builder !

[VulcanTourist]

Originally posted by derek.ward:

Is there currently any way in the playfield data to generate a gas giant...a surface-less planet with atmosphere only? I'm no playfield expert so I thought I would ask if anyone has any ideas with regards to these bodies.

Picking a nit, there is no such thing as a gas giant with atmosphere only. Every gas giant must begin with a super-earth rocky or "metal" core in order to create enough gravity to begin accumulating gas from the stellar cloud. You're interpreting the phrase too literally. A gas giant is just a failed star (for lack of sufficient gas in the disk) that couldn't even achieve brown-dwarf status. If there is an excess of gas in the disk, you might get a binary star system instead of a single star with gas giant(s). Every star I believe begins that way as well, but once fusion begins the original super-earth core disintegrates under all the convection.

[derek.ward]

Picking nits is correct...You are picking a point in time in the genesis...not the point of stability for a gas giant following its creation. The best guess for Jupiter atm is a super hot fluid core, something like liquid metallic hydrogen perhaps, but no one knows for certain what the core is comprised of. You will never get deep enough to surmise whats down there for sure so whats the point of your statement? Hopefully that is a little more to your liking. Or you can simply use the dictionary definitions:

n. A large planet having a thick gaseous atmosphere but no solid surface due to a low abundance of rock or other solid material. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are gas giants.

Note: No surface in the conventional survivable sense.

When science can sort out what really IS at the core of say Jupiter please let me know...for now its mostly guess work based on gravitational and density analysis.

[piddlefoot]

There are little green men living down there !