Empire Generation: This is all very theoretical stuff, perhaps beyond the scope of AstroSynthesis, but I'd like to suggest it anyway because it sounds cool. to subfactions - so this would allow us to simulate any sort of multi-level political affiliation - capitalist conglomerate factions with subfaction megacorporations (think the Caldari State in EVE Online), a Federation with individual member states (EVE Online's Gallente Federation, the Galactic Republic in Star Wars, the Union in Gundam 00, the United States of America), an Imperial faction with Great House Subfactions (EVE Online's Amarr Empire, the Imperium in the Dune series) or whatever - or one could simply use it to delineate various different organisations - corporations, paramilitaries, navies, private individuals, government agencies - that generally operate under one specific sovereignty. Subfactions: I'd like the ability to assign ownership of planets, surface features, space stations, etc. Going very pie-in-the-sky here, delineated territories on planets (owned by different nations, megacorporations, private individuals, etc.) would be damn cool. Surface Features: I'd like planetside features like cities, launch facilities, space elevators, resource deposits (generated according to the type of planet, surface composition, etc.) and extractors. If you make it really clever, it could refuse to allow certain types of slanted recalc if the planet's in a region of space where it simply can't be recalculated that way. and AS would fiddle around with values and do recalcs until the planet looks the way you want it to. Slanted Recalculation: Stemming from the above, I'd like to be able to have something that let me recalculate a planet into a different condition - for instance, I could right-click on a planet and hit "recalculate to Habitable", "recalculate to Hospitable", "recalculate to Hothouse", "recalculate to Barren", etc. If your system's really detailed and robust, recalcing an entire systems with recently changed planet sizes or surface gravities could affect orbits of other things in the system. Maybe have separate options that allow cascading recalcs up to a certain number of iterations, uncapped cascading recalcs stopped after a certain number of iterations in which no database values have been changed, etc. I can forsee some instances where recalculating would in some cases require additional subsequent recalcs to get everything accurate if recalcs don't cascade up tiers or across to other members of the same tier - in the case of the a planet with several moons which has been altered in such a way that its gravity changes, causing changes to the moons' orbits, for instance, it might take several recalcs to get the way the moons interact with each other sorted out if the recalc process doesn't cascade the changes across or back up to the planet. Perhaps if you moved a small moon too close to a planet it could turn into a ring! Also, it could renumber planets/satellites if their orbits got switched around. Would be nice if I generated a moon close to a planet it would automatically tidal lock, for instance. and would also recalculate surface temperature for all its moons. It would all depend on how complex and interconnected your planetary generation engine is, but the way I envision this feature is that if, for instance, you move a planet's orbit closer or further away from its primary star, you can order a recalculation, which would change the planet's temperature, atmospheric composition, etc. I envision this as a right-click menu option for a planet, moon or star, with dynamic recalculation cascading to an object's children (so dynamically recalculating an entire star system would affect all the planets, all their moons, and anything orbiting all the moons). I'd like you to be able to tell AstroSynthesis: "look at this, and change things if they're not realistic". Dynamic Recalculation: Out of all my suggestions, if I could only pick one, this is definitely the one I'd like to see the most. Habitable Zone Calculation: I'd like an option to have AstroSynthesis calculate and show me the circumstellar habitable zone for a given system, and at least throw up a caution icon if a planet way outside of it is habitable or hospitable. I've thought of a lot of things that I'd love to see in AstroSynthesis 3.0 - some of them may be easy, some of them might not be, if you do work on them a lot of them probably won't turn up immediately, but certainly I would find all of these useful: This certainly motivates me to buy more of your stuff in future. Ed, first let me say I'm absolutely ecstatic to see you're a developer who listens to the people who use his work, rather than one of the depressingly large number who just doesn't care.
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