Restricting Dyson Spheres to White Dwarfs?

[Cynoid]

The Dyson Sphere have long been a bit of an odd duck in Stellaris. Even if the idea is extremely cool, the utterly massive discrepancy between the idea (enclosing a whole star!) and the gameplay effect (I now generate with it... about 33% of the power of my 10 planets empire?) means that it does break a bit immersion in the game.

On the other hand, Dyson Sphere makes energy-specialized Ringworlds just bad.

So what about doing the same treatment to Dyson Spheres as to Matter Decompressors and limiting them to a single type of star?

Since White Dwarves are notably smaller than main sequence stars and without fusion, that could justify limited power output, provide a interesting gameplay opportunity (I have to suitable star, let's go conquer one!), and marginally improve the utility of late-game energy builds.

And lore-wise, you could always say that material restrictions prevent construction over full-size stars.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Even with a white dwarf the scale of the power production for a dyson sphere is very much on the low side.
Unfortunately, if we had a "proper" scale for it, it would effectively be "as much power as you can ever need", even around the smaller, weaker stars.

W.R.T. it generating around 33% of the power you get from 10 planets, are you *really* generating 3000 power on 10 planets? What else are they doing?

 

[DukeLeto42]

W.R.T. it generating around 33% of the power you get from 10 planets, are you *really* generating 3000 power on 10 planets? What else are they doing?

And this is really worth noting. The dyson sphere costs no pops, takes up no building slots, and generates no sprawl. Although the energy production is far below the reality, so too is the resource cost: project scale ratio of the entire project.

 

[Aed]

Things like Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds are really hard to do justice in Stellaris as their scales are orders of magnitude beyond everything else. A single ringworld should give you more living space than every habitable planet in the galaxy combined. Similarly a Dyson Sphere should collect more energy in second than your civilisation has used in its entire preceding history.

Personally I'd make their effects unique like the Sentry Array, rather than just a lump of raw resources. For example:

• A Dyson sphere removes all energy upkeep in your empire.
• Ringworlds are a single planet with no district limit, and have access to farms, generators and two special districts, a "City" distinct proving research, amenities and trade jobs and a "Manufactory" district proving consumer goods and alloy jobs*
• Matter Decompressors reduce all mineral consumption in your empire by 20%, having 5 removes all consumption.**

*I'm sure people will think that's OP, but then I think ringworlds should be OP, they take a lot of investment and take ages to pay off. They are endgame projects, we should be allowed to go a bit silly. Plus you will still need to find minerals to feed your ringworld.

** Also OP I'm sure, but again late game silliness is more fun given you have already won by the point you make one of these. Plus if you did ever achieve this, someone could still ruin your day by capturing your decompressors and screwing your entire economy if you failed to build in some redundancy.

 

[Tavior]

I do agree with you on principle but not sure how to fix it myself.