More details on upcoming Asteroids update!

I think people misunderstand the concept of "destroy the planet", it means that it'll kill all the units on said planet, as per the original model, I'm pretty sure, rather than actually remove both planets from play.

there is no indication that uber is gonna stop supporting and updating PA yet ... so yes it still can get better ...
even then the game has a fairly avtive moddingscene that with propper access can do some realy good stuff ..


personaly i am not hyped for ashes of singularity ... and act of agression ... ... they look good but otherwise .. meh ..

as far as i see it there could be a place for all 3 ways ... be it partial destruction, full cataclysm or downright complete and utter planetbusting ... it gives some flavor to the lategame/endgame depending on how a map is designed ...

Whoa Whoa WHOA.

Dude, he's just reverting all the features of the planet system back to Beta. It's nothing serious, just a balance change and back-code facelift.

I hope that is the planned implementation, I liked it when the smaller smashables were able to wipe the surface clean and open it up for recolonisation. I remember when the crater system was first put in, it really did remove a lot of the epicness of smashes.

I think the best solution w0ould be

1) asteroid smashes make some sort of smaller crater (to get some form of permanent metal spot removal) and also wipe the surface of everything in a shockwave.
2) planet on planet and annihilaser obliterates both planets (complete vaporisation from laser, baybe smouldering red wreckage from planet on planet).

If we're going to have the tech to spawn new celestial bodies mid game for asteroids why not spawn a bunch of asteroids whenever a planet gets totally blown up? I think it'd be both somewhat more realistic and cool.

Why not have both?
Make an asteroid by default wipe a planets surface or just half and make a crater.Everthing dies but you can rebuild on it.

But if you spend more on orbiter launchers, then that increases your chance of cracking a planet in half. And that is game over for the planet, maybe also with the ability to recapture a single or both sides of the leftovers.

Also keep the idea of planet on planet relationships.

I like the cratering and will be sad if it goes away entirely. Like someone else posted, I really like partial destruction mechanics in general. Wrecking planets paradoxically feels more destructive than just disintegrating them. Having asteroids crater but planets always destroy would feel suitably destructive, maybe combined with planet-wiping shockwaves and/or a crater threshold where the planet destroys itself if it takes too many hits. I really like the idea of shattered planets spawning more asteroids.

My pie on the sky dream implementation would be fractured but recognisable chunks of the original planet, with the possibility of a planet just cracking like an egg and its two still habitable halves slowly separating into new orbits. e: Craters should totally have part of the impacting asteroid sticking out of them too.

I got a good idea...
Why not determine whether or not a planet/asteroid creates a crater or complete annihilation by the RADIUS of the celestial body? Lets say, if the radius of a body is above, idk, 700 or something, it will cause planet-wide annihilation. Below that, it will just make a huge crater. Because I'm guessing you could modify the sizes of the asteroids, and you could instead have these giant asteroid behemoths spawn that you really don't want to come in contact with your planet. And if it was made so that planets "always cause annihilation" and asteroids "always use the crater system" then everyone would sacrifice the smaller planets with less metal. With the radius system, you would have to use big planets if you want big destruction.

See my wish list: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/my-wish-list-for-asteroids-and-planet-smashes.69148/

I'm a bit late to this, but I'd like to cast my vote towards keeping asteroid smashes (crater) different from planet smashes (total destruction). I like cola_colins' crater with lava idea, heck even keeping craters as they are now and just making them not pathable would be preferable to asteroids functioing the exact same as planets. If there is no distinction, then (and I hate to say this because I have been and am solidly behind getting asteroids into the game) why bother having them at all?

If total destruction is the only option, personally I'd setup my own maps with no hailyable planets just so asteroids would have a clear use.

One last question @jables

When creating a system with spawnable asteroids, would it be possible to have a larger number of unusable asteroids spawning in the same orbit as the usable ones (perhaps distingushing them by either sizing them smaller and / or shading them differently) to give the visual effect of an asteroid belt?

Will we have any new asteroid related units/buildings to play with?

Completely agree... no need to add my own post.

Completely OT but, I'm looking forward to this year's opener.
Go Blue.

I prefer dark chocolate to milk. Just sayin'.

Yes. Halleys.

My vision of how asteroids could have been in PA were two options:

- A massive ant link unit that work carve out balls of the planet it was on and lob them at other planets.

- A t2 orbital unit that would use the atmosphere of a gas giant to form asteroid balls to lob at other planets.

As for planet killers versus crater. I think that should always have come down to relative size.

Hey Uber.

Pls

yupp but with much more transportslots

All I see in that picture is the awesome terrain on the planet in the background which we never got

I'm currently on vacation, so replies will be limited. Just wanted to jump in and give some clarity as to the direction we are going and why.

We are moving with all planet smashing destroying both planets. This includes Asteroids destroying planets as well.

I'll go through some of the reasons for us moving in that direction. We'll start with balance. From playtests, being that haley's are needed to shoot the asteroids, having them go off as a nuke, or even leaving craters meant no one built them, as the cost for a nuke launcher was so much cheaper. Also by the time of the game that you could fly someone to an asteroid and afford a haley, there were much better ways to destroy your opponent for the resources. No one was using asteroids at all in this case. Where we found them useful was by adding them to systems with no haley planets or even single large planet systems. This gave a way to end stalemates, as well as allowed us more viable options for the player to win.

Now for tech. The current crater system is very much made to do 1 thing. It's what is currently in game, and no one on our side is happy with it from a tech side, perf side, or gameplay side. The work to redo this system is unfortunately a huge amount, more than doubling the cost of actually getting asteroids in game, which if we were forced to go that route, asteroids would have been cut. This will also allow us to improve other elements of the planet smashing work that we were never fully happy with as well, including effects, perf issues, and a smooth flight of planets and asteroids into each other instead of the looping weird flight we currently have to hit a specific location (as if the whole planet blows up, the asteroid or planet can simply hit the planet in the more realistic arc of its flight).

We'll get the first pass on them to PTE as soon as we can, but from our playtests we feel the do add to the game in interesting ways, and can fully change how people play depending on the system. This was our goal with them from the beginning, and we're excited to see them in action.

So again, I'm on vacation, so I apologize on lack of talk from our side (but I just got married, so decent excuse ). I'll be back in house next Monday and can talk more as well as update our movement to PTE if it's not there yet.