Stargem wrote:
Arguing that artificial planets are impossible in an setting that features all-purpose nanites (dust), faster-than-light travel, wormhole travel, lava-to-jungle terraforming, and many other advanced technologies that we can't possibly engineer right now is just plain weird.

lol, true

Now you've got me wanting to fire up Space Empires IV again and build some Dyson Spheres!

Ever play Space Empires 5?



All the choice in the world......Ow god at the choices....

Igncom1 wrote:
Ever play Space Empires 5?



All the choice in the world......Ow god at the choices....

I stopped at 4, heard too many bad things about 5. But yes, the sheer amount of weird stuff you could do was staggering. I had a friend who would play by turtling up in a corner of the galaxy and stealing entire planets and making a fortress out of them. I do appreciate the fact that Endless Space has a more hard and realistic take on things. I think making entire planets would be a bit too over the top, but stations would certainly be a plus.

Is actually kinda alright, the AI is broken, and you should play with "http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Balance_Mod_%28SEV%29" this mod to make it an enjoyable experiance.



But if you have a few hours with a friend, you end up with some really fun games that would make any Si-Fi fan squee with enjoyment.

Dyson spheres we could do without, even though they are awesome, but there should definitely be a possibility near endgame to build ringworlds. I would say it should consume all planets in the system and replace them with a massive ring around its sun which would be excellent at producing industry, commerce/dust, and food and house an enormous population. this should necessarily be expensive and relatively time consuming, but perhaps count as a wonder, and require most of all tech trees to be researched to do this.

There needs to be some sort of "wow" factor at end game technologically speaking.



The ability to build Dyson spheres/swarms/rings, Matrioshka brains, globus casus, etc. would be a nice addition I think.



Unrealistic, yes--but we're talking about a game with reactionless drives and things such as black hole mining.

Stargem wrote:
Arguing that artificial planets are impossible in an setting that features all-purpose nanites (dust), faster-than-light travel, wormhole travel, lava-to-jungle terraforming, and many other advanced technologies that we can't possibly engineer right now is just plain weird.

Not really because almost all of those are grounded in some form of physical theory, some of which I have studied at university. I admit some are far fetched but not unbelievably so. Planet building is just ridiculous. Do you have any idea just how much matter there is in even the smallest planet? Where would it all come from since it's typically "mined"? Asteroids probably wouldn't cut it due the need of some form of molten core driven by nuclear fission, which requires (relatively speak) fairly rare fissile materials. And naturally forming a planet takes millions of years. What about the gravitational effect of this new planet on the otherwise stable system? There's just too many variables that make it more or less unviable to this physicist.

FreshyFresh wrote:
There needs to be some sort of "wow" factor at end game technologically speaking.



The ability to build Dyson spheres/swarms/rings, Matrioshka brains, globus casus, etc. would be a nice addition I think.



Unrealistic, yes--but we're talking about a game with reactionless drives and things such as black hole mining.

I'm all for endgame tech, sure, but I do think it should at least have some basis in something that is theoretically possible.

bwfcnut wrote:
Not really because almost all of those are grounded in some form of physical theory, some of which I have studied at university. I admit some are far fetched but not unbelievably so. Planet building is just ridiculous. Do you have any idea just how much matter there is in even the smallest planet? Where would it all come from since it's typically "mined"? Asteroids probably wouldn't cut it due the need of some form of molten core driven by nuclear fission, which requires (relatively speak) fairly rare fissile materials. And naturally forming a planet takes millions of years. What about the gravitational effect of this new planet on the otherwise stable system? There's just too many variables that make it more or less unviable to this physicist.

Actually as far as scientific base is considered, you probably could build a planet with some far fetched exploits, all you need is a reverse E = mc^2, which would be m= E/c^2 so theoretically you could create the mass of the planet from Energy, and as terraforming is possible I don't see any reason why not, the concept is just a tiny bit stretched more, it's all about where you draw the line, it's actually pretty funny that most people point out that building a planet is impossible. All you would need is some bizarre tech exploit, you know something like when particles move at the speed of light the actual distance gets shorter kind of exploit. And as scifi goes the devs could just decide that there is an exploit that allows this.



I won't even go into the gravitational effects because it's the least of your worries in here.



trust me, I'm a physics major.

A option that is absolutely missing in this game. Something I really miss: the ability to build at least 1 spacestation in a system. A weapons- or trading platform by preference. It would be very cool when an invasion on the system starts with an attack on a spacestation, such in the same manner as a battle between fleets occur.

The space stations idea is definitely a nice one. When you end up with a system which has only one tiny, hostile planet, being able to actually make something useful of it would be excellent.



One big issue would probably be though, how restricted should this be? It seems like a late-game, expensive tech, particularly because simply being able to add "planets" up to the limit of 6 kind of takes away from the diversity of the galaxy. Might as well just have six planets in every system otherwise.

VitunSuoPaska wrote:
Actually as far as scientific base is considered, you probably could build a planet with some far fetched exploits, all you need is a reverse E = mc^2, which would be m= E/c^2 so theoretically you could create the mass of the planet from Energy, and as terraforming is possible I don't see any reason why not, the concept is just a tiny bit stretched more, it's all about where you draw the line, it's actually pretty funny that most people point out that building a planet is impossible. All you would need is some bizarre tech exploit, you know something like when particles move at the speed of light the actual distance gets shorter kind of exploit. And as scifi goes the devs could just decide that there is an exploit that allows this.



I won't even go into the gravitational effects because it's the least of your worries in here.



trust me, I'm a physics major.

So am I, 4th year astrophysicist. Nice to meet a fellow physicist.



For starters e=mc^2 isn't entirely correct, as relativity shows us. And, yes matter and energy can be interchangable but, how on Earth are you proposing changing pure energy into matter? The only current way I can think of is on a particle level, such as in accelerators or high energy cosmic ray collisions. Even then it is currently isn't viable or possible to collect and assemble them into what we interact with daily as "matter". That's ignoring the VAST amounts of energy it takes to create just a few hundred/thousand particle interactions. To do it on a planetary scale is just incomprehensible. Even then, all of this ignoring conservation laws which dictate what matter can be created out of energy (normally matter-antimatter pairs).



The main reason I don't support this idea is because I don't think we should include some idea or tech using a "fudge factor" or saying that it might be possible at some point in the distant future. Everything in the game is grounded in something that is already theoretically viable, such as Blackhole "mining" using hawking radiation. There's mathematics behind it. I have never EVER seen anything about planetary construction in all of my university or postgrad astrophysics, or cosmology, courses and this is getting into really theoretical stuff now as a masters student.



And how are you saying gravitational effects are negligible!? If you add, or for that matter, remove a planet from a planetary system it would cause absolute havoc!

bwfcnut wrote:
So am I, 4th year astrophysicist. For starters e=mc^2 isn't entirely correct, as relativity shows us. Anyway, yes matter and energy can be interchangable but, how on Earth are you proposing changing pure energy into matter? The only current way I can think of is on a particle level, such as in accelerators or high energy cosmic ray collisions. Even then it is currently isn't viable or possible to collect and assemble them into what we interact with daily as "matter". That's ignoring the VAST amounts of energy it takes to create just a few hundred/thousand particle interactions. To do it on a planetary scale is just incomprehensible.



And how are you saying gravitational effects are negligible!? If you add, or for that matter, remove a planet from a planetary system it would cause absolute havoc!

That awkward moment when you can only nod and hope you nod at the right moment.

Cadoras wrote:
That awkward moment when you can only nod and hope you nod at the right moment.

Hahaha! Just nod and pretend, it's what my friends tend to do when I talk to fellow physicists

bwfcnut wrote:
Hahaha! Just nod and pretend, it's what my friends tend to do when I talk to fellow physicists

Well, I believe Nosferatiel is a PhD student in experimental particle physics...

Steph'nie wrote:
Well, I believe Nosferatiel is a PhD student in experimental particle physics...

Oh awesome, maybe he can shed some more light on the matter. Pun actually unintended.

bwfcnut wrote:
Oh awesome, maybe he can shed some more light on the matter. Pun actually unintended.

For the conversion of energy into matter:

You can of course convert energy, like photons, into matter via pair production, as long as you have an external field applied that breaks up the particle-/antiparticle-feynman loop.

While photons do only indirectly interact with gravity (due to gravitational distortion of space), the particles and antiparticles will directly couple to gravitational force. And there's one problem: We don't know anything about that coupling, about any gravitational force carrier or even of the gauge group gravity lives in, on an elementary scale.



Leaving gravity aside for now and assuming you would produce high energy photons, e.g. by accelerating electrons and ramming them into some fixed target, then let the photons do pair production in some external electromagnetic field and divide matter from antimatter, this process would be unimagineably inefficient. You would lose energy during the electron acceleration due to heat, lose energy due to multiple scattering in the target material, you would lose energy for separating electrons from positrons and then you'd need lots of energy again to contain the positrons and evict them from the planets gravitational field, so you don't end up with an unnecessary huge explosion and the same amount of photons, again, you originally started with.



And that would only be the relatively easy solution for leptons. Creating protons from energy, that's a wholly different story. Protons are composite coloured particles. Even if you can create quarks and antiquarks from photons, you get a bound state, namely a meson, e.g. a pion, not something easily divisible. Not sure how you'd go about creating protons from noncoloured particles as a startoff, especially since it's hard to be sure what the hell you produced in the first place and whatever you produce has to be neutral in total due to charge conservation.



I've got to get back to work, hope those little "anecdotes" from particle physics help the other physicists at least a bit. PM me if you need further in detail information.

Nosferatiel wrote:
For the conversion of energy into matter:

You can of course convert energy, like photons, into matter via pair production, as long as you have an external field applied that breaks up the particle-/antiparticle-feynman loop.

While photons do only indirectly interact with gravity (due to gravitational distortion of space), the particles and antiparticles will directly couple to gravitational force. And there's one problem: We don't know anything about that coupling, about any gravitational force carrier or even of the gauge group gravity lives in, on an elementary scale.

I take it you're talking about the hypothetical graviton in QFT with respect to the last sentence?

Nosferatiel wrote:
Leaving gravity aside for now and assuming you would produce high energy photons, e.g. by accelerating electrons and ramming them into some fixed target, then let the photons do pair production in some external electromagnetic field and divide matter from antimatter, this process would be unimagineably inefficient. You would lose energy during the electron acceleration due to heat, lose energy due to multiple scattering in the target material, you would lose energy for separating electrons from positrons and then you'd need lots of energy again to contain the positrons and evict them from the planets gravitational field, so you don't end up with an unnecessary huge explosion and the same amount of photons, again, you originally started with.

Yeah, I believe this is the same principle that goes on in a particle accelerator; requiring vast amounts of energy to create only a few thousand(?) interactions from accelerating some particle at another particle beam. Either way, this just furthers my belief and argument that planetary building from pure energy, specifically those from particle/photon interactions, is just not feasible in the slightest in the (near) future. Besides, how would these individual particles be captured for the process of "construction" as Vitun suggested? I can't see it being feasible to use a magnetic or electric field due to the almost uncountable particles needed to form the material to even consider building a planet.

Nosferatiel wrote:
And that would only be the relatively easy solution for leptons. Creating protons from energy, that's a wholly different story. Protons are composite coloured particles. Even if you can create quarks and antiquarks from photons, you get a bound state, namely a meson, e.g. a pion, not something easily divisible. Not sure how you'd go about creating protons from noncoloured particles as a startoff, especially since it's hard to be sure what the hell you produced in the first place and whatever you produce has to be neutral in total due to charge conservation.

This is starting to sound like Quantum Chromodynamics, something I've got limited education and experience with.



Well thanks for a bit of further insight Nosferatiel, it's helped out. I stand by my belief that planet building just isn't feasible and shouldn't be in the game. However, as I mentioned a few pages back, I could get on board with spacestations and the like.

bwfcnut wrote:
I take it you're talking about the hypothetical graviton in QFT with respect to the last sentence?

Indeed. Elementary particle physics is a bad place to learn anything about gravity, so far.

bwfcnut wrote:
Yeah, I believe this is the same principle that goes on in a particle accelerator; requiring vast amounts of energy to create only a few thousand(?) interactions from accelerating some particle at another particle beam. Either way, this just furthers my belief and argument that planetary building from pure energy, specifically those from particle/photon interactions, is just not feasible in the slightest in the (near) future. Besides, how would these individual particles be captured for the process of "construction" as Vitun suggested? I can't see it being feasible to use a magnetic or electric field due to the almost uncountable particles needed to form the material to even consider building a planet.

Redirecting the positrons into a containment synchrotron and just dumping the electrons into a proton gas should suffice for making hydrogen and getting rid of anything unnecessary.

Then you would of course have to produce heavier elements by use of fusion, which is only feasible until you hit the iron barrier. That would be the second order problem.

bwfcnut wrote:
This is starting to sound like Quantum Chromodynamics, something I've got limited education and experience with.

Indeed, it is QCD and although there was a very successfull proton-antiproton-collider on earth, already, they got the antiprotons by wasting lots of protons. Just google the Tevatron Antiproton source, if you're interested.

bwfcnut wrote:
Well thanks for a bit of further insight Nosferatiel, it's helped out. I stand by my belief that planet building just isn't feasible and shouldn't be in the game. However, as I mentioned a few pages back, I could get on board with spacestations and the like.

It could be feasible if conducted by transporting matter from something like an Oort cloud, but definitely not by direct production.

Nosferatiel wrote:
Redirecting the positrons into a containment synchrotron and just dumping the electrons into a proton gas should suffice for making hydrogen and getting rid of anything unnecessary.

Then you would of course have to produce heavier elements by use of fusion, which is only feasible until you hit the iron barrier. That would be the second order problem.

Ah I hadn't thought of a synchrotron, although wouldn't that generate significant amounts of synchrotron radiation? And true, with fusion, but then we're getting into the realms of constructing a star and waiting for it to go supernova for heavier than Iron elements, or manually inducing it in a process similar to type Ia, but that would require an object of a calibre of a white dwarf again something that would have to be built. It just doesn't seem feasible to me to build a planet out of energy due to the ridiculous amounts of energy required to make the required material, and the almost impossibility of capturing and storing material and constructing it in the first place.

Nosferatiel wrote:
It could be feasible if conducted by transporting matter from something like an Oort cloud, but definitely not by direct production.

Yeah, I think I said a few pages back in my initial post that this was the only way I could think of constructing a planet, but then we come to a multitude more problems such as collecting the objects together and waiting for them to gravitate towards one another, merge and settle as a stable planet. This normally takes millions of years in system formation. Plus you'd possibly have to discriminate about what elements are present in the object to actually have a molten core to help generate heat for the planet by fission, akin to Earth's core.