Star quality: All star/emissions/light related foolishness goes here.

Okay, first off, we have star types. There’s a lot, and it’s not just the color – we should scale this lot for color/emissions to reflect size, and have a separate function for ancient/remnant stars.
Brightness Scale: (Yes, this is mostly table-splicing. It’s not finished, though.)

Spoiler:

Overall, it’s a bit hard to categorize. Will be doing equations for all star/chlorophyll color/sky color, per the request of sciocont, but it’s going to take me a while to get any maths in there. But soon.
My best bet is that we should categorize this lot by radius and make the rest of the mess functions of that. Emissions are important only in their interaction with atmosphere here, as we haven’t the science to tell how it would interfere with the space age strategy stuff.

My references:

Spoiler:

*stickied by ~sciocont

Excellent work, It's good to have this as a reference on the forum.

Actually, instead of a function, we need a table for star type and chlorophyll. We can just cross check the type to determine what color the plants will be.

Color = function of size, as represented most simply by radius, and life stage, which I have yet to work on.
Chlorophyll table will come sooner or later.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Color = function of size, as represented most simply by radius, and life stage, which I have yet to work on.
Chlorophyll table will come sooner or later.

Stars can basically be arbitrary. We just need to know how different types work.

What about Binary star systems, Trinarys and every other star grouping up to 8?

caekdaemon wrote:

What about Binary star systems, Trinarys and every other star grouping up to 8?

What about them?

Each of the stars involved would fall under a category here. I haven't heard of above 3 in one solar system, though. I imagine the gravity/distance calculations would be a pain in the belgium. Actually, binary and up math
will be a pain in the belgium.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

I haven't heard of above 3 in one solar system, though.

Well, there's at least one known quaternary star system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Capricorni

Xenopologist wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

I haven't heard of above 3 in one solar system, though.

Well, there's at least one known quaternary star system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Capricorni

Okay then, to safeguard ourselves, we'll go to four.

Is there any research on what the goldilocks zone of a quaternary system would look like? Gut instinct tells me it'd be unstable, and unfit for much more than microbial, intermittently dormant, life. I personally think it's an interesting dynamic to mention, but not worth breaking our brains over. If it turns out to be exceedingly complicated, ditch it for a later revision. Binary systems provide more than enough weirdness, mathematically, for our poor programmer (s) at this point.

Redstar wrote:

Is there any research on what the goldilocks zone of a quaternary system would look like? Gut instinct tells me it'd be unstable, and unfit for much more than microbial, intermittently dormant, life. I personally think it's an interesting dynamic to mention, but not worth breaking our brains over. If it turns out to be exceedingly complicated, ditch it for a later revision. Binary systems provide more than enough weirdness, mathematically, for our poor programmer (s) at this point.

Yeah. Hey can we find a program that lets us test out orbits in these systems? I've seen lots of gravity games like that before, but I haven't sen them be adjustable. Start searching everyone.
Here's a flash app for creating stable orbits
here
In this one, you can add stars.
here
Okay that second one is really excellent. I've identified three types of stable orbits for a binary system using it, and one possibly stable orbit.
Binary system orbits:
A- elliptical- this orbit isn't actually an ellipse, but it's close. Basically, the planet orbits around both stars in an oval or crushed egg shape.
B- figure eight- pretty self explanatory. The planet moves in an"8" shape around thes stars
C- fleur de lis- this one is quite interesting, and a bit hard to explain. The orbit is like a figure eight, except with a line through the middle. You kind of have to see it in motion to appreciate it.

Possible orbits-
rocker- the planet moves back and forth on a line between the stars

the most probable for life is, i think, the ellipse, since it stays more or less equidistant throughout its orbit. howver, the 8 and fleur orbits could harbor life if the stars are far enough apart. This simulation is in no way "to scale"

Now for a trinary system
the only orbit that has worked for very long is the elliptical, however, with trinary systems there are many different possibilities for placements of stars- I've only explored a scalene triangle and a line. However, I've gotten some highly erratic orbits to last a long time in the simulation. There's little shance of these harboring life, I think- they make extremely close passes and then stray very far away. Within a trinary system, you could hypothetically have binary and mononary(sp?) orbits. Also, you could get a three leaf clover orbit, which I think would allow for life.

More orbits for trinary (equilateral)system
A- trihyperbolic- the planet follows a path of three hyperbolas, opening towards the star
B- clover- like a triangle with a loop ant each of its points
C- fleur de lis (3) like the binary fleur, but with three stars.

Osmos had some nice orbit simulation on the attractor stages.

Anyway on to star color, we can't be -totally- arbitrary about it. There are no purple or green stars in reality, all of them follow the red-orange-white-blue gradient of kelvin color temperature.

Djohaal wrote:

Osmos had some nice orbit simulation on the attractor stages.

Anyway on to star color, we can't be -totally- arbitrary about it. There are no purple or green stars in reality, all of them follow the red-orange-white-blue gradient of kelvin color temperature.

well, yes of course, but we can be arbitrary about what stars we place where. We'll have to use the general types, though.

The figure 8 orbit is not stable - the sun is 99 + % of the solar system's mass, whereas the earth doesn't even rate a percentage. Two massive stars would naturally be drawn so near each other that there would be very little room for a planet to orbit between, and even if it did, the immense gravitational well would either stop it dead in its orbit or tear it to pieces.
Remember, the massive stars will always be much closer together than any planet can feasibly get to them.

Okay, I know it's been awhile since anything's been posted here, but I feel like there are a few things that should be said...

~sciocont wrote:

Djohaal wrote:

Osmos had some nice orbit simulation on the attractor stages.

Anyway on to star color, we can't be -totally- arbitrary about it. There are no purple or green stars in reality, all of them follow the red-orange-white-blue gradient of kelvin color temperature.

well, yes of course, but we can be arbitrary about what stars we place where. We'll have to use the general types, though.

We can't be totally arbitrary about that, either. A life-bearing system - especially one with multicellular life - shouldn't be too close to a very large star, as large stars are more prone to giving off lots of high-energy particles (gamma rays and such), which are usually dangerous for any life-forms living there. Which brings me to another point - a life-bearing star shouldn't be put around any star larger than an F-class star - and even that is pushing it - simply because the evolution of the star would outpace the evolution of life. A star's lifetime is highly dependent on its size, and bigger stars tend to have much shorter lifetimes than smaller stars. For example, a planet around an O-class star has less than 10 million years to survive - far too little time to evolve even multicellular life, nevermind sentience or sapience. Of course, this mostly applies to whatever we put in place to pick a planet at the beginning of the game for our organisms to evolve on - once players reach the late space stage and have the tools to do so, they can put life on whatever planet they want.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

The figure 8 orbit is not stable - the sun is 99 + % of the solar system's mass, whereas the earth doesn't even rate a percentage. Two massive stars would naturally be drawn so near each other that there would be very little room for a planet to orbit between, and even if it did, the immense gravitational well would either stop it dead in its orbit or tear it to pieces.
Remember, the massive stars will always be much closer together than any planet can feasibly get to them.

If by "massive stars" you mean "incredibly large stars," then yes, this may be true. However, if by "massive stars" you mean "massive compared to planets," then no, this isn't true. Most binary stars orbit each other from quite a distance - definitely enough for not one, but several planets. Take Alpha Centauri, for example - the closest that the two main stars get to each other is about 11 AU (Astronomical Units - the distance between the Earth and the Sun), or about the distance between the Sun and Saturn. This is more than enough room for small planets to form around one or both stars, and not be significantly affected by the other star's gravity for quite a large amount of time.

These are a few thoughts I had upon reading this topic. Sorry for the long post, there was a lot that I wanted to be known

Djohaal wrote:

Osmos had some nice orbit simulation on the attractor stages.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing when multistar systems were brought up.

Not a problem R. Sometimes old things need to be revived.

@ R136 ~ *kowtows to science.*
I am not entirely certain what size star we were discussing there, except that it was large. Bigger than the sun. As far as correcting me - good job! I am literally poking at this with the help of bits and pieces of physics and wikipedia, since I wasn't able to take astronomy...
Back on topic, I think we should put you in charge of astrophysics.
Also, I'm not entirely certain I'd consider two objects which have satellites that aren't affected by their partner to be in orbit with each other... It brings into question how, if the satelites are not feeling any gravitational tug, the star, which is bigger and therefore (to my reasoning) less able to be budged, can be being influenced by the other star. Then again, Newton's probably already skunked me on that.
Longposts win.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Also, I'm not entirely certain I'd consider two objects which have satellites that aren't affected by their partner to be in orbit with each other... It brings into question how, if the satelites are not feeling any gravitational tug, the star, which is bigger and therefore (to my reasoning) less able to be budged, can be being influenced by the other star. Then again, Newton's probably already skunked me on that.

It's not that the planets don't feel anything from the other star - they do - its that the planets are close enough to the star they're orbiting and far enough away from the other star that the gravity from the star they're orbiting overpowers that of the other star. The orbits would be stable for at least a few million years, probably more.

I'm basing most of my assumptions off of any hypothetical planets around Alpha Centauri A or B - For a more complicated but in-depth explaination, look here.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

Back on topic, I think we should put you in charge of astrophysics.

Really? I didn't think I was THAT knowledgeable on this stuff - I probably couldn't do any of the math associated with figuring out this stuff at this point in time, and I got most of my info off of Wikipedia.

You have the background knowlege. I do not. I'm not seeing any other takers...
As evidenced by the fact that I was under the assumption that an orbit was either stable or not, not stable for x millions of years.

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

@ R136 ~ *kowtows to science.*
I am not entirely certain what size star we were discussing there, except that it was large. Bigger than the sun. As far as correcting me - good job! I am literally poking at this with the help of bits and pieces of physics and wikipedia, since I wasn't able to take astronomy...
Back on topic, I think we should put you in charge of astrophysics.
Also, I'm not entirely certain I'd consider two objects which have satellites that aren't affected by their partner to be in orbit with each other... It brings into question how, if the satelites are not feeling any gravitational tug, the star, which is bigger and therefore (to my reasoning) less able to be budged, can be being influenced by the other star. Then again, Newton's probably already skunked me on that.
Longposts win.

Why bigger than the Sun?

So could I have my dream star system of a class A star with a broad ring of debris around it, then 2 planets, Suniv Sol (the life one) and then a blue-gray gas giant?


PS: Can you make your solar system BEFORE you start playing on a world? Or do you have to have a randomly generated one?

I'm pretty sure the player starts in God Mode, modelling and shaping their galaxy, and then once they are satisfied they become a microbe on a selected world and begin the evolutionary process. It's what it says in our ModDB description.

Quote :

Thrive's goal is to encapsulate the player in the wonders of the universe, and to allow them to manipulate the virtual world around them in any way they please. Our game will contain multiple editors where players can create and modify technology, culture, organisms, and entire solar systems. When a player tires of creation, or wishes to test what they have made, they can move on to actually playing the game, and experience the evolutionary progression of a species from a eukaryotic single cell to a thriving civilization. At any point in the game, a player can play as a single organism and experience the world through their senses. Later, as organisms group together, the player can move into an RTS-style play where they command several units at once- from a few footsoldiers to fleets of starhips.

NickTheNick wrote:

I'm pretty sure the player starts in God Mode, modelling and shaping their galaxy, and then once they are satisfied they become a microbe on a selected world and begin the evolutionary process. It's what it says in our ModDB description.

Quote :

Thrive's goal is to encapsulate the player in the wonders of the universe, and to allow them to manipulate the virtual world around them in any way they please. Our game will contain multiple editors where players can create and modify technology, culture, organisms, and entire solar systems. When a player tires of creation, or wishes to test what they have made, they can move on to actually playing the game, and experience the evolutionary progression of a species from a eukaryotic single cell to a thriving civilization. At any point in the game, a player can play as a single organism and experience the world through their senses. Later, as organisms group together, the player can move into an RTS-style play where they command several units at once- from a few footsoldiers to fleets of starhips.

AWESOME!


I can make the Paniv Sol system, the Primestar system, all of my favorite systems along with their species!

YAAAAAYYYY!!!!!

Deathbite42 wrote:

Mysterious_Calligrapher wrote:

@ R136 ~ *kowtows to science.*
I am not entirely certain what size star we were discussing there, except that it was large. Bigger than the sun. As far as correcting me - good job! I am literally poking at this with the help of bits and pieces of physics and wikipedia, since I wasn't able to take astronomy...
Back on topic, I think we should put you in charge of astrophysics.
Also, I'm not entirely certain I'd consider two objects which have satellites that aren't affected by their partner to be in orbit with each other... It brings into question how, if the satelites are not feeling any gravitational tug, the star, which is bigger and therefore (to my reasoning) less able to be budged, can be being influenced by the other star. Then again, Newton's probably already skunked me on that.
Longposts win.

Why bigger than the Sun?

I believe that this was due to the fact that, several posts and a long time back, we were discussing stars large enough to have attracted another, smaller star (such as a white dwarf) into a binary orbit with them. To my knowledge at the time, the sun was not large enough to keep a white dwarf in their system. I have learned better since. (40 Eriadni is fun. And, as a dwarf of spectral type K, is smaller than the sun, yet has two secondary stars.)

Who wants to earn cookies by reading up on all the different types of stars, classifications, and relative density?

You can check wikipedia under 'stellar classification.' Or do you want us to make a chart or something?