Huge problem: Galactic habitable zone
- Thread starter margustoo
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And cold fusion. Which would really wind me up if I didn't have the capacity to recognise that this is a science fiction computer game.
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My personal selling point is Tachyon Lances. I remember Freelancer's "Tachyon weapons are good vs Molecular Shield and bad vs Positron Shields"
???
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Wait, all I heard was Life Size Blorg Plushie... And I demand it to be true!
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The biggest number of systems is afaik set to 1000. With that kind of necessary downscaling, even when ignoring gameplay arguments, having the arms sprawl with life might not seem that odd.
The problem with those "scientific" (btw I'm a physicist myself) definitions of habitability - be it on galactic or star system level - is that they are almost always based on life as we know. In itself this is not too bad. It still is the only thing we can do more about than guess. But having met no other life than what we encounter on planet earth doesn't mean it is the only form of life possible. And this is where Stellaris being a video game comes in. It is based on imagination. Life could be mind bogglingly different from what we know so far, even from a scientific point of view.
In science, you cannot prove a theory, you can only falsify it. So, there is a fundamental difference between habitability zones based on our currently best estimates and having actually ruled out the possibility (or even probability) of life outside of that zone. There might be forms of space fungi that thrive on high radiation and thus be more likely to find closer to the galactic core (looking at the Blorg that seems entirely plausible to me...). Maybe this is not the carbon based life we are familiar with. But it would be unscientific to rule it out based on what we know so far.
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The light from the Astrophysics Signal has only just reached me (I assume it was sent in the distant past).
I hope everyone's having a good day! I'm in the pub waiting for kickoff time for the protest against Mr Piggy Bank.
Everything here seems to be in hand, but there's a few comments that I think I would like to make.
This is not true. In fact, it is the opposite of true: stars are denser in the core and sparser in the spiral arms. This is especially true for large stars which may cause problems like supernovae or gamma ray pulses.
This doesn't mean that it's a bad thing that you wrote this post. People get their science wrong and get corrected all the time. In every one of the astroknowledge threads I've posted, someone has corrected my science. I'm glad they did: I would not have wanted to continue in my wrongness. There is no dishonour in being corrected.
I don't think the devs are selling it as the most scientifically accurate Space 4X out there. This is not a claim that they have made.
It is, however, a claim I think they could fairly make. This is not because Stellaris is especially hard-science but because the competition is far, far worse. Many Space 4X games don't even have a realistic galaxy shape or classify stars according to the OBAFGKM main sequence system. Being slightly less wrong than other games is not exactly a high bar to clear.
It doesn't matter, of course. Realism is not necessary. Being an astrophysicist is rewarding, but not nearly as fun as watching spaceships fire pew-pew lasers at one another.
This is true but I think Oscot has misunderstood a little: The halo stars are principally either in the "dark" area beyond the outside of the spiral, or else are above and below the galactic disc. Pretty much everything on the lit-up portions of the disc - that is, the two-dimensional Stellaris map - may have enough metals to have rocky planets. The "metals peasant" factor is what means that Stellaris doesn't have to represent systems which are significantly above and below the disc, and so aren't on the map. Metallicity does increase towards the core, but not as much as we thought decades ago.
This is very convenient, although I doubt Hendrik et al knew it when they drew their map.
There is a theory which states that too much metallicity will increase the chances of gas giants dominating star systems rather than rocky planets, which will make star systems less likely to be habitable by rocky-planet dwellers like us. This is another reason why the metal-rich bulge may be a bad place to be.
I agree that he's been maligned, and disagree that being locked in a room with Dr Tyson is a bad thing. (It might be for Dr Tyson though, the dude has work to do and doesn't need me fanboying all over him.
Also, nothing is ever "just" a videogame. Videogames are art, and art is commentary upon the universe. This one more directly than many, perhaps.
I hope everyone's having a good day! I'm in the pub waiting for kickoff time for the protest against Mr Piggy Bank.
Everything here seems to be in hand, but there's a few comments that I think I would like to make.
This is not true. In fact, it is the opposite of true: stars are denser in the core and sparser in the spiral arms. This is especially true for large stars which may cause problems like supernovae or gamma ray pulses.
This doesn't mean that it's a bad thing that you wrote this post. People get their science wrong and get corrected all the time. In every one of the astroknowledge threads I've posted, someone has corrected my science. I'm glad they did: I would not have wanted to continue in my wrongness. There is no dishonour in being corrected.
I don't think the devs are selling it as the most scientifically accurate Space 4X out there. This is not a claim that they have made.
It is, however, a claim I think they could fairly make. This is not because Stellaris is especially hard-science but because the competition is far, far worse. Many Space 4X games don't even have a realistic galaxy shape or classify stars according to the OBAFGKM main sequence system. Being slightly less wrong than other games is not exactly a high bar to clear.
It doesn't matter, of course. Realism is not necessary. Being an astrophysicist is rewarding, but not nearly as fun as watching spaceships fire pew-pew lasers at one another.
This is true but I think Oscot has misunderstood a little: The halo stars are principally either in the "dark" area beyond the outside of the spiral, or else are above and below the galactic disc. Pretty much everything on the lit-up portions of the disc - that is, the two-dimensional Stellaris map - may have enough metals to have rocky planets. The "metals peasant" factor is what means that Stellaris doesn't have to represent systems which are significantly above and below the disc, and so aren't on the map. Metallicity does increase towards the core, but not as much as we thought decades ago.
This is very convenient, although I doubt Hendrik et al knew it when they drew their map.
There is a theory which states that too much metallicity will increase the chances of gas giants dominating star systems rather than rocky planets, which will make star systems less likely to be habitable by rocky-planet dwellers like us. This is another reason why the metal-rich bulge may be a bad place to be.
I agree that he's been maligned, and disagree that being locked in a room with Dr Tyson is a bad thing. (It might be for Dr Tyson though, the dude has work to do and doesn't need me fanboying all over him.
Also, nothing is ever "just" a videogame. Videogames are art, and art is commentary upon the universe. This one more directly than many, perhaps.
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There was just a slight scientific inaccuracy in your image there. But I fixed it for you.My personal selling point is Tachyon Lances. I remember Freelancer's "Tachyon weapons are good vs Molecular Shield and bad vs Positron Shields"
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Wait - LIFESIZE BLORG PLUSHIE!?!?!? IWANTIWANTIWA- oh wait you just stuffed some cushions into three bin bags and taped them all together.
Never mind.
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While I sympathize with the desire for scientific accuracy, the game takes much more sweeping liberties with current scientific theory than what you described. And while it does have objective scientific inaccuracies put in for the sake of playability, it still remains one of the more scientifically accurate space 4x games. Or, to be more precise, the least inaccurate.
I regret that I have but one vote to give for this superb post.
I regret that I have but one vote to give for this superb post.
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I don't know why you guys are all talking about stellaris being scientific correct, since we all know that everything in stellaris is based on a conspiracy of the government and the earth is obviously flat.
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WAIT A SECOND! As a dev you can't simply talk about Blorg plushies without being legally obligated to add them to your store!
Make it so!
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To the op they the devs have never said that this game would be scientifically correct and you saying that they did is wrong and secondly this is a video game and doesn't matter one bit if it is scientifically correct or not
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As faar as I've seen the game, the galactic center isn't accessible and few civilizations live on the outside. And: Habitable planets grew fewer on the outside. Given the condition, that a normal galaxy has billions of stars, the "relevant" star count keeps at 1000 I think its pretty scientific. Obviously the game has a starting condition, that 0.0003% of the Stars in a galaxy are relevant for "Galactic Politics and Warfare", so every thought about a "scientific accuracy" about habitable zones and everything are out of order anyway. Just have fun and play.
In their defense, they might mean "in the spiral arms" more in the sense of "inside one of the spiral arms (where the bones in the arm are)" than in the sense of "inside the general region of the arms".
Which seems likely, given that extrapolating from the exo planets we found in our galactic neighborhood, our star system seems to be a rare outlier. Almost all system we have observed so far had massive gas giants and heavy planets closer than mercury and the small planets on the outsides of the systems. Granted, we can't really measure planets smaller than earth's size at the moment, but it's like that in the majority of systems in our neighborhood.
so does this mean that's a maybe on the plushie
also are you not closing this thread purely so you can just make jokes about people demanding a sci-fi game to be more realistics 
It's a game. I get that some places are more habitable than others, for example in EU4 you can't go into the Arctic or Antarctic, but if you're going to portray a galaxy, you just have to spread the stars out all over the map.
^^also this.
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