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Sector Ideas...

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Jul 23, 2003 Phaserlight link
Some random brainstorms from a brain at 2:40 AM but...
What if we had;

A sector with black obsidian-glass asteroids that you could only see when the sun reflected off of them (like in that god-awful movie "space truckers")

A sector with translucent ice roids; you can partially see through them. There would be a frozen station in one of the larger ice roids, you could see it but to get to it you would have to find your way through a large translucent ice maze.

A sector with a few fiery purple/orange radioactive roids that would slowly sap your armor if you got too close.

A "space city" sector that was just one huge station with dozens of lanes, tunnels, alleyways cutting through it and plenty of neon lights.

A sector in the heart of a nebula; radar range would be cut by 1/4 and objects further than 500m would be clouded from view.

A sector near a quasar; radiation would interfere with instruments causing radar to give false information and causing homers to go haywire.

A sector in which a constant battle between two warring alien factions was taking place >:D

A sector on the outskirts of a black hole; just an opportunity for some really cool artwork and perhaps a view odd gravitic anomalies ;).
Jul 23, 2003 HumpyThePenguin link
mmmmmm...../me imagines what it would look like in the chat box
"Shadow of the Last has been sucked into a black hole!"
CARP! I hate that friggin thing ):|

Jul 23, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
I wanna revive my void idea, big inky black sector, semi abandoned space station with only 1 working docking bay, evil monsters, and the black market.
Jul 23, 2003 Phaserlight link
Heh, from the depths of the Archives comes a shot from a1k0n:

"Oh yeah, another thing. Nebulae span very, very vast distances. The gas in them isn't dense, at least as far as I know. So my opinion is that if you were inside a nebula, you'd only know because there is background radiation of visible light. It's not like the fog would be thick enough to reduce visibility of anything closer than a few million km."

Ohhhh.... there goes my nebula idea! Shot down by the devs. It would still make for some very cool skybox artwork though.

Also, I'm not suggesting that there actually be a black hole *inside* a sector (black holes are huge) but I also think that this would make some very cool skybox artwork.

However I do think having translucent ice roids and black obsidian-glass roids would be 1337. After a while carbonaceous chondrites start all looking the same ;).
Jul 23, 2003 Phaserlight link
oops, double post :P
I think SL's inky black void also sounds cool :). You could call it the "armpit of the universe" or the "space squid" sector.
Jan 10, 2006 LeberMac link
/me commands this thread in his best Emperor Palpatine Voice...

RIIIISE!

More cool sector ideas from Phaserlight, except of course the nebulae one which will be shot down quickly.
Jan 10, 2006 Lord Q link
"Also, I'm not suggesting that there actually be a black hole *inside* a sector (black holes are huge) but I also think that this would make some very cool skybox artwork."

actualy black holes ate tiny, just realy, realy heavy. but here's a thought about black hole artwork:
"see the thing about black holes, i mean the main distinguishing feature of them is they are black. and the ting about space, i mean the main color of it, is black. so how are you supposed to see a black hole to avoid it?"
-Paraphraised from Red Dwarf (i think)

however, physics aside i like all of the original ideas. especialy the obsidian 'roids. I'd also like to add:

A ship graveyard, wher the "terain" is almost exclusevly derelect starships with a junk station at the center.

a top secret reserch facility, whith a small station built into a 'roid, and a fleet of mysterious and deadly ships constantly patroling the sector and attacking anyone who enters (those ships will the persue anyone who flees relentlesly untill they loose track of their target, or untill the enteir sector in which the target is killes is cleared)

an empty sector with a strange high detail object about the size of a cargo box. the object should be covered in strange pictograms or other mrkings.
Jan 10, 2006 johnhawl218 link
could definitely have a sector that had almost no background at all, would just be close to a galactic edge, or between arms on a galaxy where there is little star formation. Also you could have smaller black holes, what you are thinking of are "supermassive blackholes" which only reside in galactic cores. Small ones are recorded at 10km across with an event horizon of 50km accross. Still probably too big for a sector but maybe not. Would have to agree with a1k0n regarding nebulas, besides most sectors ARE in nebulas, where do you think all those colored backgrounds are coming from, which is not true to real space anyway, as most images of space are done using false color representation anyway. I like the ideas for super city sturcture for a sector, would be a perfect redue for the Dau Capitals sectors, or any capital for that matter. As we have no true aliens atm, a battling alien sector is probably out too, but maybe once we have the "exploration expansion". And as for roids that sap your armor, why not simply beef up the ion storms, ions can't be good for your hull, so any prolonged exposure would lower your armor %, which has been mentions a lot in prior posts.
Jan 10, 2006 jascha link
And the very sweet voice says:'OOOOOOOOHHHHHH Dr Lector! The Void will see you now.'
Jamay Cheers
Jan 10, 2006 ArAsH link
A sector with translucent ice roids; you can partially see through them. There would be a frozen station in one of the larger ice roids, you could see it but to get to it you would have to find your way through a large translucent ice maze.

I would love to see something like this, wow!
Allso the large space city would rock, I can imagine me cutting into heavy traffic, flashing my neuts at some slower pilots, trying to find a way into a docking pattern :)
Jan 10, 2006 mellowvision link
I think a sector with just one giant black monolith, like in 2001 space odessy, that you could bring cargo to as an offering... it would absorb cargo near it and maybe it gives you something in return, like replenished standings or more sheild points or something
Jan 11, 2006 Shapenaji link
um, black holes aren't tiny at all, the event horizon for a black hole (which is generally considered to be its size), is often as large as a sphere with radius the size of earth orbit.
Jan 11, 2006 johnhawl218 link
Shape, They come in all sizes, there are even micro black holes the size of grains of sand.
Jan 11, 2006 LeberMac link
Wait. technically the singularity point does not exist as a part of this universe, so the area where you cannot escape the black hole's pull (event horizon) can be considered to be the "size" of the black hole.

Right?

(/me waits for softy to jump in and correct me)
Jan 11, 2006 Lord Q link
Shapenaji,
well, for one i was refering to the actual object generating the event horison, but given what you jst said then 93,000,000 miles is penuts in space.

but as johnhawl218, pointed out singularities come in a varaiety of sises, and because their event horizon is a result of their gravity a balck hole with the same mass as a star will have the same gravitational effects on nearby objects as that star would, more or less (in the case of most stars the singularity fomed from an equal amout of mass would be realy tiny not just "93,000,000 miles is tiny" tiny)
Jan 11, 2006 zamzx zik link
meh, we can make it the size of the station, and the event horizion (depending on ship) around 2000m. of course, some extremely rare ore 'roids will be in that 2000m...get a valk, with mining beams...

its a game, it'd make it more fun =D

oh, and a1k0n can do the see-through maze, easily, kinda like the hamster tubes. just have luis draw em' up....
Jan 11, 2006 vIsitor link
All good stuff, but isn't this thread like...2 1/2 years old?
Jan 12, 2006 andreas link
Most black holes are indeed rather small. An object of the size of our sun would have to be compressed until it has a radius of 5km or so to turn it into a black hole. Hawking argued that tiny black holes (ballpark: mass of all buildings in New York City) existed during the initial stages of the formation of the Universe. Since black holes slowly bleed out energy (so-called Hawking Radiation), small black holes likely evaporated a long time ago. All we are left with are the super-massive black holes (that have enough stars to feed on for a long long time).
Jan 12, 2006 Shapenaji link
Its not clear what the layout of Matter is inside the black hole.

the "actual size" of a black hole is pointless. No information travels outside of the event horizon. Its true that if you took the collapse, and continued linearly, you'd have a very small object. But, one COULD make an argument that as soon as the object develops an event horizon , the matter ceases to interact gravitationally or with any force, since no information can transfer back and forth inside the point where the escape velocity = c

Miniature black holes, while plausible in certain cosmological models, are completely infeasible at this point in time. The ones likely to be encountered are those resulting from normal stellar evolution.

For those who shout out and say "Wait! what about black hole evaporation", nobody knows exactly how black holes evaporate when they start getting below the size of our sun (AKA still REALLY big compared to the scales of VO). So a black hole evaporating to a small size today is, well, lacking evidence. That's all theory, and theory which has given rise to some interesting bets between Kip Thorne and Hawking.

The only ones we would likely see are those at around 8-9 solar masses and above. Of which the smaller ones would have event horizons on the scale of AU(READ: BY THE TIME YOU GET TO THIS POINT, YOU"RE A PIECE OF STRING)
Jan 12, 2006 LeberMac link
I keep waiting for someone to bring up that "Do Black Holes Have Hair?" Then I launch into my Blackhole Goldclaw joke...