IC STAR IDEAS

A stellar idea for IC

With Interstellar Consortium, it is possible to implement many star systems into one game world. However, if only a few systems are desired, the galaxy will be awfully empty! I have a few proposals to deal with this.

1: A new classification of three types of stars: Planet Pack Stars (PPSs), Interstellar Consortium Catalogue Stars (ICCs), and Member Stars. PPSs are Member Stars that have their planet pack installed. Member stars are PPSs whose planet pack is uninstalled, but whose star is still displayed in-game. ICCs are stars added procedurally to fill space. Member Stars and ICC stars use the same procedural base star. PPSs will use whatever star is used in their own planet pack.

2: We will create a star template which can be procedurally modified based upon the radius, luminosity, temperature, and mass of the star. This includes five corona textures (OBA, F, G, K, and M), and a single sun flare texture based upon the stock Sun but without the camera ghosts, and completely white. Member stars and ICC stars will both use these configs to generate placeholder stars, and the procedural template will also be made available for mod authors to use in their planet packs if they chose.

3: All member systems will be added as a star only with the IC plugin download. Any textures unique to the star will be removed, the star should be defined only by plugins and common stockalike textures. They can be disabled in the IC settings.

4: Empty parts of the galaxy should be populated by pseudo-random procedural stars. These will be empty, save for the occasional reached = true asteroid disk. Their names will be represented by the following code: ICC-Class-X000Y000Z000, so that a red dwarf star at coordinates 5.02,4.343,2 will be represented by ICC-M-502043432000 Any conflicts (ex: 121 could be 1,21 or 12,1, or cases where SOIs intersect) will be regenerated. ICC = Interstellar Consortium Catalog. The current map is said to have enough space to host 80 to 100 stars. The catalog will therefore contain 40 stars (There are roughly 20 taken planet packs at this time, and we don't want to completely fill the map or lag up the game). 20 will be M stars. 10 will be K stars, 5 will be G stars, and 5 will be F stars. They will be largely placed around the far side of the galaxy to even out the distribution of stars.

5: Whenever a new mod is implemented into IC, the author has the choice of replacing a ICC star. If they do this, they'll have to keep the same spectral type and location of the star they chose. The ICC star will be removed and replaced with a member star with more or less the same characteristics and a new name. ALTERNATIVELY the author can add a new star wherever they want within reason. Any stars within 1.5 times the mutual SOI distance between the two will be removed from the IC Catalog. If more than one star is removed, those stars will be replaced with new ones in a new location to keep the total number of stars the same.