What I'd like to see in Stellaris ...

[TheFragPrince]

Following up on Pugmak's proposals in https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/what-id-like-to-see-in-stellaris.890246/, here's one thing I always wanted to see in a 4x space game: The need to manage the debris and junk resulting from spaceflight.

Mankind' s activities in space so far have been rather limited compared to the situation where battle stations and war cruisers are built on orbiting shipyards, merchant fleets bring wares from all corners of the universe, and huge battles are fought in the vicinity of planets. And yet, earth's orbit has become hazardous due to small pieces of debris from those limited activities zipping about at above 20.000 km/h (see NASA's page on orbital debris: "More than 21,000 orbital debris larger than 10 cm are known to exist. The estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is approximately 500,000. The number of particles smaller than 1 cm exceeds 100 million"). This situation will likely only get worse as commercial providers of space excursions enter the fray.

Why not reflect this in the game by adding a debris density to the orbit of planets, with a corrresponding chance to incur damage to spaceships, or loss thereof, due to collisions. This debris density would increase with overall orbital activitiy, battles in their surroundings, etc (volcanic activity, even?). The same concept could be applied to routes of frequent travel, e.g. interstellar hyperspace routes. Investment into first technologies, then into their implementation would be required to drive down the number of ships damaged/lost. With debris' tendency to accumulate, investing early on in technologies preventing debris could reap huge benefits for late game, adding a strategic challenge.

And I won't even get started on the educational aspect of adding such concept.

 

[RoboticManiac]

Orbital debris seems to be a trivial problem to me when you're sauntering between the stars with lasers and space age shields with armour.

For a culture that is barely space faring like our own, it's a worst case scenario because work in space is prohibitively expensive already, but when you're armouring your ships and stations to withstand full on warfare, simple debris isn't as scary as it used to be when everything was made from tinfoil and duct tape.

Also, the Kessler syndrome would only effect the viability of low 'earth' orbital satellites. Anything past that would be quite fine, even in relatively extreme scenarios.

 

[TheFragPrince]

Trivial to a moon-sized battlecruiser. But those would stay out in remote orbits anyway, and all exchange with planets will use light shuttles. You don't want to have to heavily armor those. Plus, a successfull attack on an orbital station will leave probably a few billion particles of all sizes in the orbit of the planet.

There's things to mull over, I believe.

 

[ponasozis]

chances are if you can fly millions of light years
you can probably clean the garbage

 

[TheFragPrince]

At the beginning of a game, you cannot fly millions of light years. You start small and light on tech.
But I gather there is not enough interest in adding such a feature. It is rather mundane, I admit. Although space debris probably glitters nicely given half a chance.

 

[zukodark]

I must say I agree. It is not too much of a feature, but it would add something to the game.

 

[Daddl]

I'd say once your shield technology is sufficiently advanced, some "small" particles flying around don't really bother you anymore, and once such shields are invented every ship regardless its size will have at least a basic version of it (after all, most people aren't suicidal). Before you have such technology however, it could be a nice addition, and make for some nice events (My leader, our Scientist X collided with an unknown object over planet Y and had to land on the surface, do you want to rescue him etc.)

 

[beckermt]

I'd say once your shield technology is sufficiently advanced, some "small" particles flying around don't really bother you anymore, and once such shields are invented every ship regardless its size will have at least a basic version of it (after all, most people aren't suicidal). Before you have such technology however, it could be a nice addition, and make for some nice events (My leader, our Scientist X collided with an unknown object over planet Y and had to land on the surface, do you want to rescue him etc.)

I'd just build cleaner ships with large cross-sectional surface areas and a nice shield. They would do LEO flights around planets burning out the clutter around them. After a week or whatever, they could move onto the next planet. Space garbage men(/women/(persons/aliens) of non-determinate gender)!

 

[vfmikey]

Emperor Lrrrr ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8, who has come to conquer puny humans.

 

[Krajzen]

This sounds amazing. I think the entire DLC could be made basing on general Space Ecology

*The issue of space debris
*Pollution and industrial dangers
*Climate changes on planets (take that, global warming deniers - no but seriously it'd be so cool)
*Interstellar diseases
*Space preserves
*Issues with terraforming

etc

 

[SIEGE-109]

If you want to clean the debris I think it would be more economical to build a tractor beam on the surface and leave it running, pulling down the debris.

 

[Ben Music]

I can't say orbital debris management sounds fun to me.

I do think industrial, global level pollution should be a thing though, so perhaps it could be handled that way in the abstract.

 

[Pugmak]

Keeping the orbit clear of junk could be a tech line of research.

 

[Fizzy The Unicorn]

Orbital debris seems to be a trivial problem to me when you're sauntering between the stars with lasers and space age shields with armour.

For a culture that is barely space faring like our own, it's a worst case scenario because work in space is prohibitively expensive already, but when you're armouring your ships and stations to withstand full on warfare, simple debris isn't as scary as it used to be when everything was made from tinfoil and duct tape.

Also, the Kessler syndrome would only effect the viability of low 'earth' orbital satellites. Anything past that would be quite fine, even in relatively extreme scenarios.

An object moving at 3km/s has kinetic energy equal to it's mass in TNT. Low Earth Orbit has an orbital velocity of about 7km/s. To make things worse, it's all being delivered to the spot that the debris hits. The real protection from debris is simply not making it.