Ages of the Federation is a new total conversion mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion. This mod takes place in the Enterprise and Original series eras, focusing on the conflict between the early Federation and Klingon Empire. A resurgent Romulan Star Empire, angry and still licking its wounds after their defeat to Earth and her allies waits in the shadows, ready to take advantage of any of misstep by either the warring powers. The Xindi, new to the galactic stage are also eager to forge their own path.
Another amazing star created by Max - the Black Hole.
A black hole is a region of spacetime where incredibly strong gravitational forces prevent anything, even light, from escaping. Theoretically formed when a suitably compact mass (such as a collapsed star) distorts spacetime around itself, black holes are considered one of the most powerful and destructive phenomena in the known universe - kind of like me after too much wine. Though a visible accretion disk of light particles surrounds these events, the phenomenon itself is completely dark (hence the name), and nothing at all that ventures beyond the black hole's event horizon can escape.
Okay, this isn't exactly new. The Black Hole was actually created for our Axanar: Strategic Operations mod a few years ago, but as we sadly had to cancel that mod it seemed a terrible waste to simply abandon such a beautiful addition. We haven't yet decided what effect it will have in-game, but it will likely be destructive.
"Personally I'd stay as far the hell away from Black Holes as I can."- Neil deGrasse Tyson
He's full of good advice.
it'll spaghettify your ships
Memory Alpha - Galactic Archives.
Data Entry - 43892/B - Exotic Stellar Bodies
Sub-File - #11 - Black Holes and other similar phenomenon
Black Holes. Regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape it's grasp, not even light, EM Radiation or particles.
Under the current models for general relatively, black holes exist due to an object of sufficient density and mass effectively "tares" a hole in space. Leading to where, no one really knows. Current theories pose that a Black Hole leads to a "White Hole" where matter and energy is spewed out after being "recycled" by Black Holes. Leading to the creation of new forms of matter.
Once matter enters the "Event Horizon" it is lost forever until it supposedly reappears from a White Hole, though admittedly changed. Warped, Obliterated, Changed forever.
Some theories even pose that black holes are similar in nature to Wormholes, but rather than connecting to other regions within the universe, they can traverse into an entirely new universe. This theory shares elements with White holes in that in this new universe the white hole appears, spewing matter and energy into it as a sort of big bang, or as a particle fountain.
Ultimately very little is truly known about these behemoths beyond the realms of theory.
What is known, or rather confirmed by Starfleet vessels observing these bodies, is that Space and Time become warped the closer one travels to a Black Hole. For example, in the 2230's the USS Fahrenheit (Kelvin Class) launched a probe to observe one such body. As the probe approached the black hole on it's first and last mission, the on board clock began to loose it's sync to that of the Fahrenheit's. From the Fahrenheit's observations the probe was launched at 14:30 hours and was lost at 14:40. The Fahrenheit was able to maintain it's uplink for at least at 4 minuets into the mission, but took 5 hours to fully access the data. The reason behind this was that the probe recorded several hours of data, an example of time dilation.
Sadly the ship was lost on the same day in what would become an example of what happens when a vessel enters Warp while within the gravitational effect of a black hole.
While standard Impulse engines are able to maintain a distance for a time, the effect of a Sub-Space Bubble "Warping" an already "Warped" region of space had devastating consequences. The ship successfully entered warp, but when it arrived at Starbase 8, the vessel and her crew were not the same. While at first they were by all means "Normal" over the period of four to five hours the crew began to suffer from psychosis. Eventually committing mass murder and suicide on board the vessel. Crew logs recovered stated the crew felt the ship had become "Alive" as if warping, warped space somehow allowed the ship to travel through another dimension. Indeed some records may support this as the ships logs indicate several forms of unknown energy and radiation were picked up as the ship entered and exited warp, and the vessel took 4.5 hours to reach Starbase 8, as opposed to 2 Days. This became known as the Event Horizon Incident and is one of Starfleet's greatest mysteries, and as a result Starfleet banned the use of Warp Drives within the vicinity of Black Holes and similar phenomenon.
The White Hole.
A Mystery in it's own right. No White hole has ever been discovered but the theory of it's existence is not unique to Earth. Multiple civilizations have theorized of it and even some pose it as the origin of their creation myth. The White Hole is a fabled reversal of the Black Hole. Considered to be ejecting a stream of matter and energy which will then go on to become new Stars, Planets etc. It's even theorized that the gravity effects at White holes is reversed. Pushing matter and energy away. Due to it's nature many scientists have attempted to explain it's possibility using quantum mechanics and quantum physics. But to this day none have been discovered. It's possible that the White Holes only come into existence when a black hole swallows matter, closing again.
Because of this, many predict they are similar to the Big Bounce (A Theory that after a Big Crunch, all the matter and energy is condensed in such a way a new Big Bang occurs). Once the matter is eaten and stored by Black Holes it's then converted by the energies and gravity of black holes into it's natural forms, it's forces that hole it together torn apart. The White Hole then releases it as it's constituent forms, Quarks, Leptoms, Gauge Bosons and Scalar Bosons, the Four Elementary Particles.
End of Introductory File. Full File is comprised of several pages due to the complex nature of the Black Hole. As a message from our chief scientist at Memory Alpha, "One does not simply "Condense" a Black Hole into laymen terms. Black Holes condense you."
(I hope you all enjoyed the Event Horizon reference)
Oh ouch, feel bad for the crew if it went full Event Horizon. I mean that dimension was basically the Chaos realm of Warhammer.
Fun fact, many consider Event Horizon to be an unofficial Warhammer 40,000 movie due to the many many similarities with the dimension and the effects.
Indeed. Making it one of my more favourite theories and one I've incorporated into Trek on a few occasions during my RPG-X days.
I'd suggest making black holes a mixed bag. Getting too close will have a negative effect, but Hawking radiation can also be harnessed to increase power reserves.
Not sure if this can be done with the Sins engine though.
Why wouldn't it? Stars can have multiple abilities, and I think E4X had their black hole randomly consume a ship at certain times.
I don't know much about the engine to be honest. I just figure that because it's 10 years old, my suggestion might not be possible to implement.