Stellar systems have two “levels” of structure. First there is a general structure, common to all stellar systems; this level includes the Oort cloud and the locations of the various “orbits”. The second level is specific to what can be found at a given orbit: life-supporting planet, planetary remains, gas giant, asteroid belt or, well, nothingness.

General structure of stellar systems

As stated in the introduction, all stellar systems, regardless of their actual contents, share a similar structure. The graph below describes this structure:

The blue areas on the graph are empty zones; while it is impossible for a ship to stop in one of these areas, they must still be traveled through when navigating inside the stellar system. When coming from outer space, the first area that ships will enter is called the outskirts; while it is still outer space, it is considered a part of the system as only ships going somewhere inside the systems would enter it. The next area is the Oort cloud, which has a specific sub-structure, and some more empty space. After that, there are 5 areas called “orbit regions”, which contain two layers of empty space surrounding an area which may contain an object such as a planet or asteroid belt (the exception being the innermost orbit region, which only contains one area of empty space, since having an empty area in a direction in which you can’t travel anyway wouldn’t make much sense).

In terms of distances, the Oort cloud as well as empty areas have a “width” of 50 distance units, while an orbit has a total “width” of 20 units. Because of the stellar system’s gravity well, a Hyperspace multiplier applies for all in-system travel; this multiplier ranges from 10 on the outskirts to 145 in the innermost orbit.

The Oort cloud

A system’s Oort cloud is divided into 3 different areas. All of these areas are filled with various debris, albeit in different proportions. Of course, the cloud’s core – the middle area – is both wider and harder to navigate than the two others. Each Oort cloud has a specific density.

The density of the debris is low enough not to cause any additional perturbations on Hyperspace travel. However, normal space multipliers are applied: in the outer areas, this multiplier can be as high as 2, and it can reach 4 in the cloud’s core (the actual value of the multiplier depends on the cloud’s density).

Planetary bodies

Planetary bodies (life-supporting planets, gas giants and planetary remains) share a similar, relatively complex structure. The complexity of this structure is required for the game to handle ships being redirected in the vicinity of a planet. The graph below shows the various areas around a planetary body.

The A, B, A’ and B’ area are used to compute trajectories for ships passing by a planet. A and A’ are “approach vectors” – anything that has to go to the planet or just move by it will fly through these areas. B and B’ are only used for ships passing by. However, if the orbit being considered is the closest to the sun, only A is available as any ship going there is obviously headed for the planetary body’s orbit.

The O1, O2 and O3 regions are positions in orbit around the planetary body; ships can stay at these locations. However, the O2 and O3 areas are only available on actual planets; planetary remains and gas giants only have an O1 area.

Because it is possible for a fleet to change trajectory, it is possible to go from any of the A, B, A’ or B’ areas to the orbital area. Such transitions are only possible between areas. In addition, the “width” of these areas have been computed so that the path to O1 that passes through B or B’ is always longer than the direct path.

Depending on the type of planetary body, different modifiers apply; actual planets and planetary remains will not affect travel in normal space, and gas giants will actually give a 300% speed boost. In the case of Hyperspace travel, the planetary body’s gravity well will cause additional trouble, depending on the size of the planet.

Asteroid belts

The structure of asteroid belts is very similar to the one used for Oort clouds. An asteroid belt is composed of three areas: two outer areas of lower density, and the belt’s core, a smaller area with a much higher density (this area is where minerals are mined from).

The density of asteroid belts is too low to have an effect on Hyperspace travel. It does however impact normal space travel greatly, as the multiplier grows exponentially depending on the belt’s density.

Next time, on the LWB6 blog…

We’re going to talk about the structure of space near nebulae and supergates, which is both as important and as boring as this was…

It isn’t very realistic and we have always been attached to have a universe which would be as close to reality as possible or which could function in a logical way.

Indeed, having planets which are all equivalent to each other, having stellar systems which always have the same number of planets and are so regularly organised in the universe or having a universe which is only a plane and not a 3D structure isn’t realistic.

Moreover, travel times to go from one side to another are getting enormous when the universe gets bigger. For now it is still manageable since the player base remains small. But what if we manage to attract more players?

Therefore we definitively had to rethink the shape of the universe to have it solve these various issues.

This implied including various types of planets, be it on the size or environment point of view. Stellar systems had to include a random number of planets. The shape of the whole universe had to be less regular and had to include a notion of volume and not only plane. We also needed means to go faster from farther locations.

While we were at it, we could also include concepts we had thought of for Beta 5 but didn’t include at the time, such as stellar objects other than just planets, nebulae and planetary remains, for example asteroid belts.

This lead us to design a Beta 6 universe divided into layers. A layer is a roughly circular area containing a set of objects such as star systems, nebulae or black holes. Each layer has a Z coordinate, which indicates where to place the layer on the map. The only normal way to go from a layer to another is through a supergate. A graphical representation of an example layer is presented below (click the picture to get more explanations).

Various types of stellar objects can be found in each layer. Star systems are basically composed of a star which can be orbited by a varying (but limited) number of planets, planetary remains or asteroid belts. Nebulae are dense clouds of gas floating in space.

Black holes are singularities in the structure of space-time. They can occur naturally, which is fortunately rare, and can appear because of the use of devices related to a very advanced technology.

Finally, supergates allow fleets to fly from a layer to another. Supergates cannot be built; they are leftovers of an ancient civilization, which connect layers in the universe. They occupy whole systems, a bit like nebulae, and are indestructible.

What do you think of this new shape of the universe?

Is it too complex to apprehend?

What do you think of the list of considered objects? Would you add something else (along nebulae, black holes, supergates, stellar systems including planets, asteroid belts and planetary remains)?

Considering supergates can be “controlled” by alliances, what kind of features would you associate with this supergate control?