Black holes

Black holes are indeed special because of the fact that no ship can fly through a black hole. Not content with being obstacles on the map, black holes also influence space around them, causing very high multipliers to be applied to both normal space travel and Hyperspace travel within a radius of 4 (we’re talking about Euclidian distance here, see the picture below).

The multiplier generated by black holes applies to interstellar travel, of course, but it also applies to travel within the affected systems or nebulae. In order to avoid extremely high multipliers, black holes are not allowed to be less than 8 units away from each other; it is also impossible for a black hole to be located less than 4 units away from a supergate. These rules affect both the universe generator and the use of the space-time drilling ability.

Nebulae

Nebulae are possibly the simplest type of special objects.

First, they affect interstellar travel by causing a multiplier to be applied to all ships flying through the area, whether in normal space or in Hyperspace; this multiplier depends solely on a nebula’s opacity.

Second, nebulae have an internal structure; this structure is very simple, as it consists in only two areas where ships can be “parked”, the border and the core. These two zones are separated by empty areas. In both the nebula’s core and the empty area that is adjacent to the core, the nebula multiplier is doubled, as the density is much higher.

Supergates

The third type of special objects which can be found in all of the universe’s layers is the supergate. Space around supergates is divided into 5 areas, as indicated by the schema below:

The G area is the gate itself. Once the gate has been reached, fleets cannot be re-routed and have to reach the specified destination (or another destination if the gate screws up). The C area is just in front of the gate; ships leaving through the supergate will stop there before “jumping”, and ships arriving through the supergate will arrive in this area. The B, B’ and B” zones are “buffer” areas; an alliance controlling the gate can build gate bases at these locations. The A zone is the approach location for the supergate, with an additional “empty” area (the blue rectangle on the schema) separating it from outer space.

A ship cannot use Hyperspace travel in the direct vicinity of the supergate; therefore, ships coming from outer space will have to drop out of Hyperspace in the A zone, and ships arriving from the gate will only be able to enter Hyperspace past this zone. The reason behind this is that supergates should be strategic control points, where an alliance can block incoming hostile forces, or prevent them from moving on to another alliance-controlled layer.

The distance between the areas identified by letters is very small, and no multipliers apply. The area of empty space that lies at the exit point is much wider, but it can be traveled through in Hyperspace.

Next time, on the LWB6 blog…

The fourth and almost last chapter in this series of posts will examine interstellar travel, which is not as easy as it sounds…

Resources are extracted from mines on a planet’s surface, or using mining stations, which are specific space station modules equipped with mining ships; however, to ease the process, the empire never manages these mining ships directly. They are considered a part of the station.

Different types of minerals can be found on both planets and asteroids. To find minerals on a planet, owning it is enough; special agents can also obtain this information from planets owned by other empires, and probes sent to investigate a planet may be able to discover it as well. Minerals in asteroid belts can be located using probes or a mining station’s scouting abilities. Note that, to spot minerals other than titanium and copper, some technologies may be required. Some resources can be extracted faster than others due to their nature.

All of the game’s planets and asteroid belts feature some of these resources. However, the less common an element is, the smaller the amount of it which can be found and the lower its regeneration rate.

Gases can only be found in nebulae; in order to first discover a source of some gas, a player has to first send ships or probes to that location, or use a mining station’s scouting abilities. None of the gases are visible by default, they require at least one of the nebulae extraction technologies.

All types of gases are present in a nebula, but the less common a gas is, the smaller the amount. The rate of regeneration depends on the nebula’s class – class 8 nebulae will regenerate more than class 1 nebulae. This is balanced in the end as, the higher the class, the less common the nebula type is.

The final type of resource is dark matter. Dark matter can be obtained from the Oort cloud of systems neighbouring a black hole, provided the player has the appropriate technologies. Dark matter can be detected either by probes or by the mining stations’ scouting ability.

The amounts of dark matter available are relatively high around natural black holes, and much smaller around black holes created through the space-time drilling technology. In both cases, the regeneration rate is low.

Do you think there are enough resources? Too many of them? What do you think of the few details included about extracting resources?