Dyson Sphere as a system to visit (suggestion)

uss917019 · May 2013

Hey there I just wanted to suggest this if its possible in Star Trek Online to have a Dyson Sphere as a place to visit. This appears in the episode ST TNG : Relics

marc8219 · May 2013

I was disapointed that the Dyson sphere was never revisted in a later episode. A discovery of this magnitude is huge. They never said what happened with it later, was it repaired and made habitable again? What about the race who built it, did they all die or are there others left outside somewhere? What kind of technology was discovered from this as any race that can build Dyson Sphere must be many times more advanced then the Federation.

This would be a fun depature from the main story line if a mission was made involving this and revealed much more about the story behind the sphere.

sparhawk · May 2013

marc8219 wrote: »

I was disapointed that the Dyson sphere was never revisted in a later episode. A discovery of this magnitude is huge. They never said what happened with it later, was it repaired and made habitable again? What about the race who built it, did they all die or are there others left outside somewhere? What kind of technology was discovered from this as any race that can build Dyson Sphere must be many times more advanced then the Federation.

This would be a fun depature from the main story line if a mission was made involving this and revealed much more about the story behind the sphere.

Indeed. This could be an great idea for an future episode series.

voicesdark · May 2013

Actually you're forgetting an important part of the episode. The Star within the Dyson sphere had become unstable and was emitting lethal doses of radiation. Even current ST technologies wouldn't block the radiation so there is no way they could go back to it, and the crew actually surmised this was probably the reason why it was abandoned.

As far as the game goes, sure they could invent some uber shielding that would allow us to explore the sphere, but I don't think the game engine would be able to actually create the sphere in the magnitude that would be needed.

jonsills · May 2013

Assuming the sphere has a radius similar to Earth's orbit (thus, if it's a G-type star, you get a nice M-class environment on the inner surface of the sphere, provided you have some way of keeping the atmosphere there), that would give us a surface area of approximately 108,686,539,443,592,486.9 square miles. That's 108 quadrillion, or approximately 548,921,916 times the surface area of Earth - including the oceans.

You could set the entire game there and the three factions might never meet...

Edit: A quick glance at Memory Alpha shows that this sphere was somewhat smaller in radius, and thus had a surface area equivalent to "only" 250 million times that of Earth. My point still stands, though.

tangolight · May 2013

It's been brought up many times before, it's another dead horse really.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=142620
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=203831
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=369341

Including some threads with dev replies. Basically, the game can't handle rendering that much, it would be a LOT of area, and really boring for the most part.

coryb77 · May 2013

I mean the Dyson Ball vacuum is a nice vacuum and all but I just don't see how that kind of cross promotion fits into a star trek game.

jonsills · May 2013

I see a lot of people in those old threads didn't do the math (like the one who thought the Sphere would be "hella smaller" than the planets of a solar system, because "it's only one AU across").

For reference, the formula for the surface area of a sphere is 4 pi r-squared (where r is the radius). The interior surface can be regarded as functionally equivalent to the exterior surface for our purposes. My figures were in miles because I'm in the US and have a better emotional feel for how big a mile is (and besides, I happened to know offhand what one AU is in miles, approximately). No matter what units you use, though, the sphere in that episode had an internal surface area equal to 250 million Earths. The entire Federation could move in there and spread out until no individual could see any other, and they'd still barely have begun exploring it.

I see no possible way it could be made into a usable zone in-game - it dwarfs everything else, entire quadrants, in terms of explorable area.

romeowhiskey4 · May 2013

coryb77 wrote: »

I mean the Dyson Ball vacuum is a nice vacuum and all but I just don't see how that kind of cross promotion fits into a star trek game.

This reply sucks...

Ba-dom CH!!!

drasketo · May 2013

romeowhiskey4 wrote: »

This reply sucks...

Ba-dom CH!!!

This reply made my hour.

rinkster · May 2013

jonsills wrote: »

I see no possible way it could be made into a usable zone in-game - it dwarfs everything else, entire quadrants, in terms of explorable area.

Well, we still get to visit Defera, Andoria, Vulcan and Risa without getting to actually explore the whole planet.

Your point about the total area is well taken though.

However, we don't have to have access to the whole thing to make it a usable location in game.

An FE mission arc would do quite nicely. Or even a small zone, such as Nukara or Defera.

angarus1 · May 2013

As long as it isn't the same Dyson sphere as in the game "Freelancer"...

maxvitor · May 2013

I could see a rescue mission to help a scientific team trapped in the sphere, it's highly unlikely that such an object would simply be forgotten after having been discovered, the physical sciences needed to build such an artifact would be far more advanced than even 25th century technology, justifying the risk. But how it could be implemented convincingly in the game is another matter. The sphere itself would need to be radically scaled down to be roughly system sized, it's interior surface would be the area box of the system map. In sector space it would be roughly borg cube sized. Starting the mission would load a cutscene of the ship moving through some kind of aperture to the sphere's interior, then followed by the loading sequence for the mission map proper, then I'm coming up blank. A dyson is essentially a big empty ball with a sun in the middle, there's no place for planetary objects so other than it's interior surface it's pretty visually uninteresting and only a miniscule fraction of that surface could be made into an explorable area. For all the work that would be required to make it there actually be very little to do in it. That's speaking comparatively with everything else in the game, an entire series of games could be devoted exclusively to exploring the interior of a Dyson sphere, an entire season of episodes in this game, but for one mission it's way too much work.

kasandaro · May 2013

Incidental: there is a "Dyson Sphere" novel. Soft canon, but so's the Vesta.

That said, the ep was set in 2369. Shielding has come a bit ahead in those forty years, as TNG hadn't much in the way of personal shielding, and ship shielding had issues with any and all Borg ships.

starkaos · May 2013

Might be interesting to do a hollow world. Could be a planet modified by highly advanced aliens that put a type sun at the center of the planet. So one race lived on the outside while the other race lived on the inside. Dyson sphere is just too big. We would see the Enterprise-J before we see the Dyson Sphere.

motito78 · May 2013

if not an sphere because to much rendering, why not a halo, that's almost the same thing but much smaller

sovakofvulcan · May 2013

I don't see that an adventure zone similar to the new Nimbus Zone, just shuttle based would be out of the question...Again it would not be accurate to size...similar in size to the romulan city mission in LoR...

keistermatz · May 2013

rinkster wrote: »

Well, we still get to visit Defera, Andoria, Vulcan and Risa without getting to actually explore the whole planet.

This, actually.

At no time do we ever visit a whole planet, or a whole solar system. We usually splash around in the gravity well of a single celestial body, and ground missions typically consist of a single village / valley / underground complex / whatever.

A series of missions involving a Dyson sphere would consist of a few space maps showing a small part of the sphere, and a few ground maps showing an even smaller part of the sphere's surface. There would be absolutely no need to try and squeeze a whole sphere onto a single map at any time.

Just assume that the player's ship investigares a few key areas, and leaves the rest for its faction's science establishment to explore.

paxfederatica · May 2013

keistermatz wrote: »

This, actually.

At no time do we ever visit a whole planet, or a whole solar system. We usually splash around in the gravity well of a single celestial body, and ground missions typically consist of a single village / valley / underground complex / whatever.

A series of missions involving a Dyson sphere would consist of a few space maps showing a small part of the sphere, and a few ground maps showing an even smaller part of the sphere's surface. There would be absolutely no need to try and squeeze a whole sphere onto a single map at any time.

Just assume that the player's ship investigares a few key areas, and leaves the rest for its faction's science establishment to explore.

One way this could be implemented would be to treat the Dyson sphere like a sector block that can only be accessed from a specific location on the map, sort of like the transwarp gates to Gamma Orionis.

While they're at it they could also add some DOff assignments for the sphere, maybe a social zone too, as well as the obligatory grinders.

chronoss2012 · May 2013

drasketo wrote: »

This reply made my hour.

uss917019 wrote: »

Hey there I just wanted to suggest this if its possible in Star Trek Online to have a Dyson Sphere as a place to visit. This appears in the episode ST TNG : Relics

i just watched that too , and they give a wild screen shot behind the enterprise showing it wasnt all bad , that if one could stabilize the sun you'd effectively have a place to put a population that could be ALL the federation into one due ot the surface being so large ....

and yea there are still some real cool possibilities to go with stuff like that.....
i for one think that it will get done one day and you can have expandable struts that allow a kind of re-sizing so that one can expand for a red giants phase and even perhaps a kind of transformer like set up where they can pack it all up and move to the next star ina massive set a ships. ( YUP i have imagination.)

The sheer size could make fora whole epsidoal kinda of idea....and who knows maybe a culture like this could learn how to travel dimensions too....one has ot think making one would literally eat up all the rest of the matter in that solar system and YES you'd want to have lights outside so others don't "RUN INTO" you.

I have 4 slots for foundry missions .....perhaps if i and a few others teamed with what we have we might get a pseudo feel of that...enough maybe to get attention more to it to get more done for that....

and yea the sector map only via a certain location is a great idea to do that kind of thing and if anyone is willing to lend a hand i'd be willing to use a foundry slot or more to do work on it.

The other idea is that if they allow you a silver shaped sphere planet that looks like metal one this is you set a trigger that then pulls you to its interior that then has another map part , each part can lead to other areas of your foundary , im not sure if you can program a foundry like that say you goto edge north trigger north map area ...it would be also neat if we were allowed some api or ability to make models and have them approved for our foundary missions and one could say , 20000 REFINED dil for rights to make some models ( still requires approval ) and the bonus here is that the devs also get free designs for use as they also see fit....

Some of us disabled have loads a free time to help out....USE us is what i say and make the game better, and more fun ...for all the few bugs the game has its appeal is just these kinds of potentials.

and making big models is not cheap the hardware alone is crazy ....i know i bought this pc to do stuff and so far ive had to upgrade to 16GB ram and a wish to goto 64 gb and possibly more to do really massive scaled models .....
and im doing this for fun ....

maxvitor · May 2013

It would be fairly easy to hide a dyson sphere mission in one of the unexplored sectors, that would resolve most of the problems of placing such a massive object in known sector space, since there it would just be another anomaly.

alkelda · May 2013

The background for being *inside* of a dyson sphere is just replacement for the stars with a cityscape walpaper, or burned up cityscape in this case.

As for mission background, just because the star emitted lethal radiation in TNG does not mean it always would be like that. The star might have 'calmed down' by STO time, hence why it is suddenly having its interior explored. Alternatively, some bright Federation scientist at Memory Alpha may have come up with a prototype process to force a stellar calm-down (which could be Dyson Sphere Feature Episode #1).

The creators might have known, too, that the star would finish its dangerous period at a certain time (or detect the change), so might come back...and won't they be miffed discovering tomb raiders from the KDF, Starfleet and Romulan Republic (or even Tal Shiar and Tholians!) there already? The returning creator race might even have devolved technologically, so they won't be *too* overwhelming. Part of why they would be coming back might be to recover technology information.

For precident of a lethal place suddenly becoming habitable in STO, look at Dewa III.

maxvitor · May 2013

I could be wrong but I don't think stars work that way.

samurai1rob · May 2013

A Dyson Sphere mite make a good ship adventure zone.

jonsills · May 2013

The point of building a Dyson sphere is that you aren't going anywhere, either because you refuse to or because the only star-travel method you've found is either slower than light or cripplingly expensive. Nobody's going to leave, then come back later - that's why they built something with the surface area of 250 million worlds to begin with.

Even in Ringworld, the original engineers didn't build the Ring as a base of operations - they built it to withstand the radiation wave-front from the exploding galactic core (that was written before we learned that all spiral galaxies have a supermassive black hole at the core). It also had another purpose, but I don't want to spoil the ending of the last book dealing with the Ring, Fate of Worlds. I will note that its other purpose precluded building it as a sphere - it had to be a ring.

If we visit a Dyson sphere and it no longer has the building civilization running, then either they're all dead or their devolved descendants are running about the inner surface (as pointed out in Ringworld, once civilization collapses on an artificial world, it's unlikely to arise again, because there aren't any natural resources to exploit - no ores to dig for, no petroleum to drill for, no geothermal sources to tap...).

lindaleff · May 2013

The only problem is that if you do enter a Dyson Sphere, you will trapped inside. The only way out is if a friend uses his own ship to jam open the door, and his ship gets destroyed in the process. :rolleyes:

Dyson Sphere as a system to visit (suggestion)

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