More details on upcoming Asteroids update!

To me, the perfect scenario would be:

1- Every asteroid impact leaves a crater, but the shockwave destroy all units and buildings, but the ones orbiting. The player cannot select the impact position, only the target (planet, moon, asteroid). After the shockwave, there is a crater but the planet can be populated again
2- Planet to planet destroy both entities, no discussion.

This way we can have the good from what Uber wants to achieve and what players wants. No more targeting the exactly impact position, but craters are still there, gameplay is also improved.
And I don't think it is expensive to implement.. I guess all features but the shockwave are already in place.

Maybe someone already suggested this as I didn't read all posts =(

To be fair this is really disappointing.
One of the promised features was Terrain deformation. And even though the craters were pretty bad at that, at least they were something.

I fail to see the hype in asteroids if they're just going to be respawning planets. If all planet smashes are going to destroy completely both planets. then why not just use them instead? it's going to be an instant kill anyways. Seems like an useless feature. I Would much rather have other things.

Don't get me wrong. I was really excited for this game, it's still the RTS with the most potential I've seen. It's just that it seems it won't achieve said potential and that makes me sad.

I think this would be the best alternative indeed!! ^.^

A lot of people here want asteroid impacts to destroy everything on the planet, but have it remain intact and allow it to be repopulated. This would cause balancing issues, as the asteroids would then be more favorable than large planets due to less Halley and no lost eco (if no metal). I like the shock wave idea if it kills most things (t1, weak buildings), and leaves the rest heavily damaged. In this case, two asteroids would finish the job.
However, this mechanic is not currently implemented and may take too much development for Uber . In that case, I would prefer the current crater model to be applied to asteroids, and the gamma kill-all model be applied to planets. If everything is kill-all then I believe a balancing issue between asteroids and planets would emerge where asteroids are much more favorable.

On a side note, I would like to have see the Halley building mechanic mimic that of the annihilazer, where the position is predefined. It would look better, and allow others to attempt preemptive strikes. This is just an idea, it may take to much effort for little gain.

Either way, I'm excited for asteroids!

Nothing should stop Uber from distiguishing between mutual annihilation (roughly equal sized planets), and scorching the planets surface of the larger body. Both options are fairly trivial to implement and can co-exist.

Wiping all units from a planet, or even "reseting" the entire planet as in "replace it completely with a lava planet" is still much less complex than the old crater system was.

Well, damaging all units planet wide is actually about the most trivial thing you can do, that's as simple as triggering a regular weapon effect with unlimited range, which gradually hits the entire planets surface, starting at the point of impact. The tools for that are already part of the game!

Deleting a planet is actually still more complex than that, but not impossible either, and also already a feature which is supported by the engine as it is.

I think @jables made pretty clear that the original crater thing only was a dirty hack, and caused more trouble than it ever solved.

PS:
Don't even think about saving Orbitals from destruction by such an event. Just to put things in relation: If our moon crashed into our earth, the energy released would be enough to destroy every single piece of organic life on the surface of EVERY PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM! Just from the gamma flash released, and that's despite the huge distance between planets in our case. Now guess what this does to satellites in our orbit, which are also caught in an hailstorm of fragments in addition to the radiation.

It was?

Actually, yes, it was.

You realise the word promise has a specific meaning, right? They didn't promise this feature in either video.

Poor Jon, he's laying out his ideas, and here we are now with every word he uttered being a "promise".

"The engine can definitely handle it" seems much less true these days...

Hey Jables. First of all enjoy the holiday (I'm sure you will).

I think you're making the right choice with the whats doable within the budget. I'm glad to hear that the smashing gets a proper overhaul.

It always looked so cheesy when you saw a wobbly planet going into orbit of the other planet and after that smashing it. Its good to hear that the developers wil give it some power punch.

Its unfortunate that the whole crater thingy might be obselete stuff. I think its really hard to actually have a proper moon movement and being able to select a specific spot to target? I think that if done right it'll give you a proper base to build on in the future (for creating specific craters in the future like the community wants to).

We'll find out in PTE!

yep. Fact is that did not work out from a technical aspect.

Well annihilasers targeting moving asteroids, and those crazy planets people make certainly qualify as things the engine were not expected to be able to do.

as said the difference will be THE respawn ... the fact that asteroids come back after a while ...

as for being exited .... yea .. i still wait for better orbital logistigs more than anything else ... hovercrafts are personal preference ... however i do not mind asteroid play to be improved ... nor would i mind if craterplay would be removed in favor of partial asteroidwipe instead of full wipe or planetbusting ... ( the latter 2 should be still size depandant)
after all planetoidsmashing is the unstopable nuke of this game and can only prevented by destroying the halleays

Good to hear but I'm kind of scared... I don't want planets to magically vanish...

But is there any chance to planets behave physically accurate???

Like, two planets hitting each other fuse in a maelstrom of lava, dust and asteroids, leaving a burning planet, a brand new asteroid belt and shapes and rock flying accross the system which can hit the other planets.
With giant gaz too...

May be asteroids can be obstacles to insterstellar travels, need to be avoided... But you have the choice to travel faster but risking to see your army wiped out by flying rocks or safely but way slower...

And annihilaser leave only dusts and asteroids field with errand rocks...

This way it still be OP but it's at your own risks... A surprise facial meteorite is not really pleasant.

sounds way too detailed to be easily implemented

They had a game build with all that physically accurate stuff, but they had to change it. It was so realistic that the energy genereted by the planet collitions burned most computers and some players

I think it is going to be awesome as long as it looks and sounds good, so an epic explosion with epic sounds will be much better than any other implementation without that epicness. I'd certainly love to see planets smashing hard instead of going to planet and dancing for a smash!

We already had an iteration of planet smashing that killed everything on the surface with a shockwave, if craters are a problem, could we throw a lava thingo over where the crater would be and still have a planet wipe? (unless it's in water, then it just stays as water post-shockwave)

I think having mutual annihilation for planet-planet and shockwave wipes for asteroid-planet would be much better than if everything mutually annihilates everything. Also adds a gameplay dynamic that we haven't had since alpha, (the scramble to colonise a recently wiped planet) and also makes asteroid and planet interactions seem less redundant.

I didn't buy the game this early, but I didn't know that, but I didn't mean this accurate... But it's good to hear that was tried, even if it wasn't successful.

I agree but we can dream..

I get the whole LETS MAKE IT AWESOMELY DETAILED and ASTEROIDS and EXPLOSIONS and YEAAAAAAH.

But at the end of the day, PA needs two things desperately:

1) New content. (Asteroids, for example).
2) Gameplay fixes (Orbital *hint*)

The rest of it can come later. Polishing a feature is one thing - excessively nitpicking the lack of asteroid belts is another.