What if the level of Space Debris were somehow related to the number of explosions that had recently happened in a sector? That way if you flew through a sector where a major battle had just taken place, there would be a lot of space debris. The amount of space debris would decrease over time until the sector was debris free again.

It already sorta is, on a small scale. After anything blows up there's debris... And try goign to 16 right after the frigate exploded!

Phaserlight... that's a cool idea. But at the moment it's a performance control... so if you have a slower machine you can draw less debris. Also when you're a couple km from anything it's helpful to have debris to tell you what direction you're traveling in.

No thank you. Vendetta slows down enough during a battle as it is. Imagine having a mine cloud AND debris all over the place. It would be like playing a slide-show.

Peoples! What i think he is trying to talk about is the OPTIONAL feature, click options, click graphics, and fool around with "Space Debris". Having this be more complicated wouldn't be a bad thing for lower end machines because it's not required to be turned on.

[Quote Suicidal Lemming: "Having this be more complicated wouldn't be a bad thing for lower end machines because it's not required to be turned on."]

Unless, of course, the debris had an actual phyisal presence where if you hit it, it does real (albet) superficial damage.

*dons asbestos underware*
*ducks behind nearest spaceport*

Does dust hurt us on impact? (i mean humans, not space ships)

Foam falling off a rocket booster (probably) took out the space shuttle. Debris from a firefight would be a bit more substantial than dust. Imagine shards of metel, glass, assorted floatsum and jetsome bouncing off a ship at speed.

But... I suppose that this may be carrying realism a bit too far.

a grain of dust going 1000 miles per hour orbiting around a planet would leave a dent the size of a baseball in solid metal.

Listen, our ships catch fire in space, there are places for realism, guess what. This most likely is not one of them. ;-)

Ships can still catch fire in space if there's an oxygen leak in the hull. The fire won't spread very far, but it'll still be present. Just FYI.

=b

So, we pack oxygen into every rocket, missle, etc.?

yes

Oky doky.

Next up, why birds can't fly in outer space. Wait, do we give them air too? ;-)

So this went from space debris to birds.
How rare!

I still think the debris changeing is a good idea.

"a grain of dust going 1000 miles per hour orbiting around a planet would leave a dent the size of a baseball in solid metal." Poenix I

Actually, it would go straight through a yard of steel... and be traveling about half speed after.

Err... a yard?

I'd like to see dust/cloud effects. If you've been reading my posts, this is probably showing up as a recurrent theme by now, so unless someone asks I'll stay quiet on it. :)

Mmm... How about a nebula? decrease visibility to something like 10m and make radar jittery (locks tend to vanish, radar shows things that aren't there). That would be a 1337 sector.

Rougelazer <-- ooohh.... O_0

/me likes

roguelazer - you know what I'm talking about. :)