Black Holes.

[Weskerdoo]

Big gargantuan monsters of the universe.

Please, Tsuna.

[cloudrambler]

Black holes would look really cool.

The question is how they would fit within the game environment.

Visually a big black sphere should be simple enough, but the gravitational lensing effect could be more difficult to simulate, as it's not similar to any other game elements. A possible compromise would be a fake black hole; a black sphere with a glowing halo (like the one in the film Interstellar which is a special case). That would not be very representative of the general theoretical case, but would avoid the need for special optical mathematics, because the visual halo would hide the lack of gravitational lensing. Alternatively the halo could be an Alpha layer that progressively dimmed the background stars close to the inner disk; again not really how it works, but a reasonable representation that is computer friendly.

Gravity for ships is not a thing inside STEVO, so unless that gets added, it's unlikely a game black hole would actively pull your ship to it's destruction. However you could simulate the event horizon (and the danger) by making the collision sphere larger than the visual sphere. So you would not know exactly how close to get before your ship was destroyed (by impact). It would be like flying into a planet is now, except even more difficult to judge the distance.

[ZachZent]

Easy solution, exponential damage.

At the event horizon, you take 0 damage per second. 10 meters in you take 1 damage per second. 20 meters in you take 2 damage per second. 30 meters in you take 4 damage per second and so on. This allows players to go inside anomalies for at least a short time. More if shields can soak the damage. But this is a soft limit and at a certain point, the damage being taken will be greater than the shields can soak up. This is a soft limit, you can't go all the way in but you can go as far as your ship allows it. Plus it allows players to go under that point of no return for a short time before you die for tactical reasons such as you escaping a threat. This system also can work with gas giants, stars, and other anomalies (which links to an idea for resource harvesting in gas giants, stars, and black holes where the further you are in/down, the more resources you can extract but on a linear scale: 1 gas 10m down, 2 gas 20m down, etc. Higher risk for higher reward and the requirement of better/stronger shields/hull/armor to collect greater resources).

That is the gameplay effect, but visually you can have distorted vision or something else, but honestly if something pops up on your HUD saying you are in a black hole, that would be simple enough indicator.

Edit: With the system map showing orbits, it would be really cool to see super altered orbits nearby black holes. Or just systems with only a black hole in it. Or both.

And as for gravity pulling on ships, an easy workaround would be needing more fuel to fly out and less fuel to fly in and/or decreased and increased speed respectively. Simulates the gravity effect effectively