Setting up galaxy for RTS

Hi

I started with a RTS game set in space. Could be best described as an anno game in space. I already created a blueprint setup to create Planets, Solar Systems and a Galaxy.
I wanted to have a vast amount of solar systems where the player and some AI races colonize the galaxy.
The controls are 3 dimensional so the player is more or less able to fly around in the maps as it pleases him/her.
That means the galaxy is also generated with that mechanic in mind.

So how would you setup this, since i am fairly new to game design i do not really have any expirience with optimizing things like this, i did research and found the level streaming and the World composition tool.
World composition i believe isn’t what i want since it looks more to me like it is meant for open world games on a world and not in space.
So the streaming sounds interesting, i play around with the thought to create the galaxy and setup a stream for every solar system, is there a limit becase at the moment i do not know with how many systems i will end up, could be 100 could be 500.
Originally I wanted to try out how the gameplay expirience is if the player has access to the space between the solar systems but that seems a little complex to me now.

I did also read that there is this 5km boundary. I inteded to make one planet about 2.5 km in radius, since i do wanna have a sagnificant difference in size between the ships/stations and the planets/moons.
I did read that this boundary is for physics, i do not plan to use any physics effects, only particles but i do not know if these are affected by these boundaries or not, also i do not know if that goes also for lighting.
Lower the scale seems like the solution to this but will that be fine with the small ships then like fighters or transporters, I really wanna keep a scaling between objects that makes somewhat sense ?
So how is this usually done, there are space sims out there even really old ones like Freelancer which have a setup like this, how can such a thing be achieved with the unreal engine, preferable with the features already existing, I try to keep things as simple as possible.

Also the AI is a bit of a riddle at the moment, since no matter what the solution will be, only stuff close to the player will be in memory.
AI will also harwest recources, epand the territory and even fight and trade.
How does that need to be setup, so this works if the player is on the other side of the galaxy for example.

thanks in advance for any help here
cheers
eFieX

I suggest you do a smaller project first from start to finish.

You asked for a few things that would need some engine modification or sick design principles and it seems like its a pretty big poject.

There are hundreds of possible ways to answer your question(s) since its/theyre very broad and cover(s) alot of topics, and to answer most of them we would have to ask you for many more things about your game.

I suggest you start doing something and if you have a Problem with it you come here and ask for specific help.

PS: a few small answers: no theres no limit for the ammount of maps you can have. levestreaming is just maps you stream into eachother

Hi t0b4cc0

Honestly i didn’t see it as a big project, it may sound like much but for example i will not have multiplayer or a storyline.
But what would you suggest as starting project ?

For This type of Engine the code is more involved. (alot more wiring up of nodes than you may realize has to go into what may seem very simple on the screen. but requires quite a lot of wiring up in the code
to make it all happen.

I ran into the same problem with my own project which also has over a hundred systems in it.

I thought about the nebulas of freelancer as well, dust clouds that you could fly your ship all through and explore,I would like to do this also in Unreal Engine but don’t know how to set up the nebula models for this to allow that. Does anyone know how to do these dust clouds?

Well i do work for 10 years now in VFX industry, i am not really scared by huge node trees or writing code.
I just have no expirience in game development.
Because of the nebular. I do not know 100 % how far you can push unreal engine particle systems and what are the rules, but i would just spawn particles around the camera when you for example enter a collision volume.
So the particle smoothly fades in and the camera is constanlty flying through the particles, that way you don’t need alot of them and it looks like you actually flying through a nebular.

I made this video a while ago that might help. It’s about making a procedural asteroid field. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx9R0b4uK6g

I know you want a galaxy instead, but the principles are the same. Instead of randomly spawning an asteroid, spawn stars, spawn nebulas, etc. This might be a way to get started.

thanks i watched your video.
I do have everything in place for the galaxy, i can create a nice spiral galaxy with solar systems, what i am after is the optimization since the galaxy will be in the way bigger than the 5km boundary the engine has for levels, which means i need to find a way to dynamically add those solar systems to level streams.

wow that’s very interesting.
So do I get this right, it does not matter how big i make the galaxy, i just need to make sure to rebase the world origin correct ?
I did read somewhere in the forums that WORLD_MAX is 5km, that’s why i wrote 5km boundary.