While watching the LiveStreaming video where they are showing the metal planet concept. Looks real good btw. So was wondering if the northern hemisphere could rotate clock wise and the southern counter clockwise slowly. Of course the equator would be a no build zone for obvious reasons. Just figured if its metal and 'looks' to be semi mechanical in nature why not have the ability for this kind of rotation as an option when making the planet.
That's actually a really interesting suggestion. But I'm not sure how feasible it would be. I'd be interested to hear any dev comments on whether this sort of thing would be possible, either as a possible future addition to the core game or as a mod. EDIT: I feel I should clarify, I wouldn't want or expect this to be default behaviour for metal planets if it were considered for the core game, but having it occur randomly a minority of the time might be quite fun.
This sounds like it would be confusing to play ontop of, and would make turtle strategies pointless near the equator.
I have to echo WrongCat's sentiments - very awesome idea, but not all the time. I put some thought into this earlier today. It might be possible to have two planets laid over the top of each other, and have the planet generator make one hemisphere one each tiny and unpathable. However, that would make aircraft a difficult proposition because interacting with things on the other hemisphere technically counts as interplanetary travel. [EDIT:] If the technical difficulties can be overcome, I'd play on it.
I agree, neat sugestion, maybe a later mod, I can imagine huge mechanical ferries that detach on one end and dock on the other side continuously, allowing units to get across but only in groups of 30 or such.
When thinking through how this would work technically it gets kinda hairy pretty quick. Lots of wacky edge cases to deal with. Might be easiest to make it be a couple of planets in the code that occupy the same space or something.
treat it as two half-circle planets that are right up close to each other and counter rotating? It would mean only way to cross the crevasse would be unit cannon and artillery lobbing. I like it, very cool playfield idea
I suggested ferries. they could have set fuctioning times and would play an intergral part of the strategy and the gameplay since you'd have to play your whole game around them: make sure you're ready to take the ferry, make sure you're ready to defend against an incomming one. Really though there would be a lot of work to it, I don't know if generating two planets to do this would be best since it would be a great load on the computer. but I can see how this is fundamentally against the way the engine works.
yes that's what I responded to. The way the engine is currently set up that means, generating two whole planets than applying a bolean substract to half of each and then have them occupy the same space. really that's a brutal and dirty way of doing it. and it brings a lot of extra cost.
My though on how the air units would work on this planet. I think if there sphere around the planet (transparent of course) air craft could attach to that for flight/fighting . The sphere would only be for flying units to use as reference so they ignore the planet turning. When they land they will detach from that and attach back to the planet. Think for patrols they could follow points on the planet while being attached to this 2nd sphere we added. Whatever hemisphere you are viewing would not rotate. The other one would. At the equator would be a glowing wall of energy. Units moving through this wall would teleport from one side to the other. Basically detach from 1 hemisphere and attach to the other hemisphere. For the planet it might be best as 2 1/2 spheres put together. For the mapping could run it on 1 of the half's and have it copy to the other half maybe. Maybe would work... I'm not in the industry so....... An like I said, this would be a added feature to metal planets so the user can select if they want this feature or not. . Also could select rotation speed. I would think 4min per rotation would be min and many be up to 10min max rotation speed. Call this planet type Mayhem Style. LOL
hmmm that idea removes the whole strategical implications that the first idea had, you just suggested a planet that almost has no distinction in the way it functions from other planets appart that an army crossing the equator would be distributed in a horisontal line on the other side.
Still both hemispheres rotate opposite of each other. I took a few classes with 3dsMax so my HOW TO would be very noobish. I was only saying the equator things as a mode to move the unit to the other hemisphere. We will see down the road what happens. Either way with each patch I'm having a good time.
I think the best way to make it work (gameplay wise) is to have the Equator only cross-able by teleportation or by air, and there is something important placed at the equator (maybe energy generators for the planet's main weapon, 3 on each hemisphere). That way each player has a chance to exchange fire with his enemy using long range weapons as targets of opportunity rotate into position, and reinforcement has a bit of a logistics twist to it.
