Solar eclipses

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Now, I hate to start a competing titled thread, but his was about a different subject.

I remember when a nuclear missile was launched, a glitch made it perpetual night…

Which proves that it can be done. That day in this game can be made into night.

Feature, not bug. Unfortunately, someone “fixed” it.

I propose that the slim possibility of a natural solar eclipse be added, and that the artificial blotting out of the sun by nuclear launch be reinstituted.

2

I see no argument against this as long as it never eclipses on the first day and nuclear night dissipates eventually. Would be neat if zombies got more powerful during an eclipse or something.

3

As I understand 'em, eclipses aren’t that easy to experience in the New England area (the whole shadow-dynamics thing means that seeing the eclipse depends on where you are on Earth, and in practice closer to the equator is Better, IIRC). Basically, the moon is directly between you and the sun, and that’s not trivial astrophysics.

That said, I’ve no problem with having 'em in game. Would just be a Rare event at best, likely something that you’d be better off needing an artifact or something to artificially create. Having CBM: Artificial Night misfire (and go far more broadly, creating localized eclipse) every one in 10K times or so might be Nifty too.

Though there’s no reason the Blob would be any more powerful without sunlight, Eclipse conditions could be Neat-O if they happened to coincide with SUNDEATH critters launching an attack. Cult cabin sacrifice/Lovecraftian ritual aligns the stars and causes a Dark Wyrm upsurge, anyone?

4

Artifacts already have something fairly similar to a partial eclipse effect IIRC. That said I’d be fine with adding that as a more common artifact effect (possibly adding monster attacks) or some sort of nuclear thing blotting out the sun for a while, but for normal eclipses I don’t really see it happening; namely due to 2 large facts.

  1. Eclipses are rare. There will be exactly 44 eclipses (most of them partial ones) that touch North America in the 21st century (and with these only a very few places will be hit more then 1 times).
  2. Eclipses don’t last that long. The longest ones in this century are only gonna last for about 12 minutes, not really enough time to get much done.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_the_21st_century

5

How could a single nuclear launch blot the sun anyhow? You’ll need to set entire metropolises or forests in fire to get enough soot the atmosphere in order to block the sun. But there are no sprawling metropolises near our New England, or that the swampland heave forests of new England catch fire easily. And Aiming it at New York wouldn’t probably work as its already to far away for the smoke to block New England’s sun (plus what kind of monster would do that?)

6

A volcano could also do that.

Scratch eclipses. Add in random volcanoes! Take that random death by lighting! Random death by volcano.

tl:dr; carry on, nothing to see here.

7

[quote=“Soyweiser, post:6, topic:5231”]A volcano could also do that.

Scratch eclipses. Add in random volcanoes! Take that random death by lighting! Random death by volcano.

tl:dr; carry on, nothing to see here.[/quote]

Haha I wanted to mention volcanos, but I think the only volcanoes inside the US that would be strong enough to do that are all in Oregon/Washington/California (too far away to affect you probably) or the Yellowstone Caldera (screw the zombies you have bigger problems if Yellowstone errupts)

8

This can all be in a new fun “natural disaster” thread.

9

That’s a good idea.

Cataclysms aren’t just restricted to monsters. An earthquake is a cataclysm. A forest fire, or a flood is a cataclysm…

Agree.

10

sorry for the derail.

Eclipses are nice, if we had more sundamaged monsters. (and the eclipse is mentioned, and not just something that looks like a bug).