Build Solar War as a multiscale, event-driven, partially observable simulation of a mature Solar System defending a distributed Dyson-swarm civilization from an equivalently capable but technologically asymmetric interstellar expedition.
The game is not centered on ships exchanging hit points. Its central question is:
Can either civilization keep its distributed metabolism intact while the other attacks energy delivery, cooling, sensing, trajectory options, manufacturing, trust, command, and population continuity?
The canonical hard-SF simulation is governed by:
\boxed{M,\ E,\ \mathbf p,\ Q,\ I,\ R}
The four contributed reports converged on several strong ideas:
A Sun-enclosing rigid shell remains a poor engineering premise: a uniform shell has no restoring force under displacement and faces extraordinary structural problems. However, “all Dyson shells/rings/bubbles are dynamically forbidden” is too broad. Recent theoretical papers examine special stable binary, nonuniform, radiation-supported, or charged configurations. The simulator therefore makes a swarm canonical while allowing unusual structures only as explicitly specialized technology.
The fixed detection-radius formula in the reports is not suitable for the engine. Detection must depend on spectral radiance, aperture, band, integration time, background, geometry, detector noise, search volume, and threshold.
Persistent high-power operation is difficult to conceal, but “stealth” remains meaningful as:
The core rule is:
Stealth is thermal and informational debt, not invisibility.
The claimed generic 80–1,200 km weapon range was rejected. There is no universal range. Performance follows from:
D,\ \lambda,\ M^2,\ P,\ \eta,\ \sigma_{\rm pointing},\ P(\mathbf x,\mathbf v),\ t_{\rm dwell},\ \text{target response}.
NASA’s DSOC demonstrated precision optical communications across 494 million km, proving that long-distance photon links and pointing are real. It does not prove destructive fluence, but it decisively rules out a simplistic universal kilometer cap.
The pasted estimate that 100 metric tons could be accelerated to 10 km/s with about 1 GW over one second was wrong by orders of magnitude:
E=\frac12mv^2=5\times10^{12}\ \mathrm J.
A one-second launch requires 5 TW before losses. The engine therefore derives all launcher requirements from energy, pulse duration, acceleration length, stress, efficiency, heat, and recoil.
Relativistic kinetic vehicles remain strategically catastrophic, but they are not “click to win” units. Their constraints include:
Quantum illumination is real and can provide a 6 dB advantage in the error-probability exponent under specific noisy, low-reflectivity assumptions with an appropriate receiver and retained idler. It is not perfect radar, FTL, or immunity to geometry. It belongs as an optional high-end sensor component, not a magical reveal mechanic.
The hard-physics core excludes:
Axion/dark-photon couplings and photon–graviton conversion are legitimate research topics, but the leap from weak theoretical/detection effects to practical weapons is unsupported. Artificial black-hole formation from focused light is itself disputed in current theory.
Caplan-class stellar engines belong on million-year campaign clocks. They can reshape galactic trajectory over megayear timescales; they cannot dodge an incoming weapon during a battle.
The kernel stores one objective physical state. Each faction stores its own delayed probabilistic belief state.
A track contains:
Faction AI and the player interface never query objective truth directly.
The engine uses an event queue and lazy propagation.
Strategic scale: - days to centuries; - industrial construction; - transfers; - political change.
Operational scale: - minutes to months; - tracking; - maneuver; - logistics; - interception planning.
Tactical scale: - milliseconds to hours; - beam dwell; - terminal guidance; - damage; - thermal limits.
Dormant objects are not continuously integrated. Cohorts represent large homogeneous populations and split into explicit entities only when necessary.
The civilization is modeled with separate graph layers:
The same physical node may participate in several graphs. A small physical attack can have a large nonlinear effect by breaking synchronization, cooling, routing, or authority.
There are no rigid “ship classes” in the kernel. Entities compose:
Damage affects component graphs and operating envelopes.
A craft may become mission-killed through:
An energy-network civilization:
Weaknesses:
A matter-network civilization:
Weaknesses:
Scope:
Premise:
A collection of anomalous interstellar objects reaches the main belt and begins converting asteroid material. The player does not initially know whether this is invasion, colonization, quarantine, accident, refuge, or decoy activity.
The player must:
Build in this order:
The first end-to-end demo should be tiny: Sun, Earth, Mars, Ceres, one sensor, one beam node, one interceptor, one alien seed, one delayed observation, one policy, one engagement, one radiator failure, and one delayed damage report.
It succeeds only when the player makes a consequential decision using uncertain old information and later discovers whether it was correct.
A serious vertical slice is roughly a multi-person, multi-workstream program:
The master plan supplies phase deliverables, exit tests, effort bands, repository structure, architecture decisions, test suites, parameter schemas, acceptance criteria, a 49-item initial backlog, and a formal risk register.
The project should create a kind of strategic experience that existing space games rarely attempt:
You do not lose because the enemy has more hit points. You lose because your estimate is stale, your beam network is out of phase, your interceptors spend their maneuver budget on a decoy, your damaged radiators force the belt foundries offline, and the alien factories cross their reproductive threshold before the coalition agrees on what they are.
That is the game the audited physics supports.