Maybe There could be randomly generated events like a asteroid rain in a highly populated system. Choose to Help survivors, Raid the survivors ore raid incoming help ships. Or do simply nothing. Maybe a incoming solar flare so a mining colony needs to be evacuated. Help them or block there way to safety? These events could be rare and maybe even 30 systems apart, Your choice to go there yourself or send a squadron of ships or again do nothing Because this game is indeed of freedom.

Maybe it would be cool to hear about these events in the radio scatters or in npc conversations.

Some major conflicts:

-Enemy faction takeover
-solar-flares
-Super nova(very rare)
- Asteroid rain
- Huge asteroid/planet collision
- Planet war

(excuse my English)

Hey, welcome to LT forums. Since LT is completely procedurally generated, events that happen are a natural product of AI thinking and not hard coded into the game. Contracts, for example, are posted because the AI needs someone to solve a problem. So events like faction wars will happen naturally because two factions collided. As for environmental events, that would probably stretch Josh's resources too much(graphics, coding, AI), and is not really an essential or much demanded feature. Since Asteroids(and planets) are static objects in the engine, I don't really know how an asteroid rain would come about. Also, It would require a lot of work to make the AI react to various environmental events.

I like some of the ideas though. A super nova a la Freespace would be cool, but I'm not sure how to pull it off.

Thank you guys for giving your opinion. I Understand The procces of how the AI works, I think those things just could be packed out more and radio broadcasted of some sort. For those nature related events IM not sure it just would look awsome.

What an interesting first post rens282. It would indeed be exciting to see those big events especially the natural ones.

Welcome to the LT forums and thank you for the imagination stirring ideas.

Do the events have to be "random"... or could they simply be baked into the universe as time bombs at the point of creation?

In other words, instead of needing an AI "God" (or "Director", to borrow from Valve), why not have such events generated when the universe is created and then just triggered as an in-game chron-job?

No idea if that's feasible or not, just a thought I had when reading this thread.

mcsven wrote:Do the events have to be "random"... or could they simply be baked into the universe as time bombs at the point of creation?

In other words, instead of needing an AI "God" (or "Director", to borrow from Valve), why not have such events generated when the universe is created and then just triggered as an in-game chron-job?

No idea if that's feasible or not, just a thought I had when reading this thread.

The only issue I have with this idea is, what if you run out of events? What if you're playing within one universe so long that you exhaust the supply of pre-established events and suddenly no more turn up?

IMO, the trouble with "big events" is that they are usually too big.
As the centerpiece of a novel or game, they work fine. Even if it's a supernova.

But how many supernovas can you come across in a day of playing? In a week?

Yep, usually none. Not in a thousand years of playing. =)
If they occur with game compatible frequency, the novelty (and their big-ness) wears off quickly.
But if they occur with a believable frequency, the player may not experience them at all, making it a non-existent feature.

Smaller-scale features can be presented in a believable way more easily.
Like an asteroid closely passing a planet and the government wants it taken out or diverted just in case.
A multi-billion ton asteroid is still serious stuff but that's the kind of story you can put into the game more freely. =)

Gazz wrote:IMO, the trouble with "big events" is that they are usually too big.
As the centerpiece of a novel or game, they work fine. Even if it's a supernova.

But how many supernovas can you come across in a day of playing? In a week?

Yep, usually none. Not in a thousand years of playing. =)
If they occur with game compatible frequency, the novelty (and their big-ness) wears off quickly.
But if they occur with a believable frequency, the player may not experience them at all, making it a non-existent feature.

Smaller-scale features can be presented in a believable way more easily.
Like an asteroid closely passing a planet and the government wants it taken out or diverted just in case.
A multi-billion ton asteroid is still serious stuff but that's the kind of story you can put into the game more freely. =)

I looked into the frequency of supernovae last night but didn't post a comment. But seeing as you're thinking along the same lines as me, I'll point out that the figure I got was 1 supernova / galaxy / century. Assuming that LT is set in a galaxy and that a supernova event would be highly visible from anywhere in the galaxy, the player can expect to see a supernova event happening once every 100 years of playing LT or so if we're using realistic time scales.

The "run out of events" thing is a good point. But why not just make the "future events" bit of code part of the system creation action?

In other words, every time a system is generated, it's future timeline is also generated. This means that new events will always been discovered when new systems are discovered.

I really like the idea of events like this, because it perhaps suggests another area of research: Astrometry. I can imagine a scenario in which you want to start a new faction and build a colony ship... but before settling a planet, you'd want to properly survey the system and review the central star to make sure that the future events are unlikely to be devastating.

mcsven wrote:The "run out of events" thing is a good point. But why not just make the "future events" bit of code part of the system creation action?

What if I'm the kind of player who prefers to stick to a few systems, perhaps to manage an empire or something that I have going on there? Would I find one day that events just completely stopped occurring in my empire?

mcsven wrote:I really quite like the idea of events like this, because it perhaps suggests another area of research: Astrometry. I can imagine a scenario in which you want to start a new faction and build a colony ship... but before settling a planet, you'd want to properly survey the system and review the central star to make sure that the future events are unlikely to be devastating.

That sounds like a pretty awesome idea and you should cross-post this suggestion over to the Fixed Research Nodes thread.

ThymineC wrote:What if I'm the kind of player who prefers to stick to a few systems, perhaps to manage an empire or something that I have going on there? Would I find one day that events just completely stopped occurring in my empire?

Can't this be solved by brute force? Just plan a 25-year real-life timeline. As great as LT will undoubtedly be, I can't see anyone still playing it in 25-years. Or maybe I'm going about this all wrong, and it's just the case that every single in-game year the chances of a novae, or other big event for each system, is re-evaluated.

Another interesting aspect to this is that each "Big" event would need an action that would prevent the action. This is probably where it becomes too tricky to implement, or maybe just too prescriptive for Josh's taste. For instance, the supernova event would have a "fire missile into the star" action that prevents the nova.

Or maybe there is nothing to be done? We are talking about rather large energies here. There's not much we can do about tornadoes - perhaps it's the same.

It is just awsome how you guys sugest things and work ideas out. Maybe change them to solar flares(more frequently).

Happy new year guys. Its atleast 0.20 for me

rens282 wrote:It is just awsome how you guys sugest things and work ideas out. Maybe change them to solar flares(more frequently).

Happy new year guys. Its atleast 0.20 for me

Haha, it's pretty much the only thing I have to do for fun. Literally.

I'm more on-board with solar flares than supernovae.

mcsven wrote:As great as LT will undoubtedly be, I can't see anyone still playing it in 25-years.

With that said, I just have to link this reddit: 10-year Civilization 2 game

And that ain't stopping me from playing Wing Commander 2 again this year...17 years after I first played it. I definitely see myself playing it again in the future just like how we watch old-but-gold movies. I don't think it's going to be any different for LT.

Now, as to whether I'll be playing it long enough to notice the 100-year supernova...does the clock have to start counting down at 100 years when I begin the game? I kinda thought that the universe is generated with its history in tow so the clock for supernovas would have been counting ever since the big bang of the universe. As an example, if I decided to jump into the game when the universe is 100,000,000,099 years old I'd be able to see a supernova the next year (assuming linear distribution of 100-year supernova.