Planet boosters?

Just a fun thought, why stop at only being able to fling asteroids at people? Why not entire planets?

Would be entertaining, but the amount of force that would have to be exerted by those boosters would be tremendous and prohibitive.

But who cares about real physics! Haha.

On a more gameplay-oriented argument, in order to do this you'd have to:

• Have control of an entire planet
• Give up large amounts of metal deposits to be able to construct boosters
• Pay to construct an obscene amount of boosters
• Hurtle your planet (and your bases on the planet) at another planet

Despite the cool factor, it seems like it'd be economically unfeasible and put you at a severe disadvantage regarding numbers and military prowess.

Would be cool though.

A thought from a different thread I was commenting on though: If you hurl an asteroid into a moon (and break up the moon), it's debris should go into a deteriorating orbit and ran fire upon the entire surface of a planet. So that'd be fun and cheaper!

Is it good for gameplay? and if it is, how good is it?
Is it a massive boost, or a tiny luxury?

Answer those questions first.

Is it good for gameplay? (and how good?)
It's an extension of a gameplay element that already exists, so it shouldn't be difficult to add. Assuming asteroid movement dynamics are related to it's size and whatnot that'd already be inherently factored into the planet. It's not a huge change in gameplay. If anything it gives more reason for conflict (stop your enemy from crashing a planet into you) and is an easy target. It creates a location for raiding and defending. It'd surely be cost-prohibitive and strategically questionable, however this game is all about overkill and destruction.

It seems like a simple addition that wouldn't take any dev time other than "Allow booster on planet" somewhere in code. (Assuming the code to fling any planetary body through space is the same).

It probably wouldn't be done except for fun. Perhaps massive comp-stomp games where your economy can sacrifice a full planet and you and your friends want to mess around. It may not have much benefit, but there's not really a cost inherent in the design, and it doesn't seem like it'd mess with the gameplay balance. If we're already balancing asteroids as weapons the construction for boosters and time to do so should scale easily.

It seems like a cool feature but if I remember correctly planets are on static orbits. It'd probably also make my computer detonate from trying to process two planets colliding and the consequences of post-collision. Perhaps add support for it and flesh it out post release due to it being needed less for 'gameplay' and more for Planetary Annilation.

It's not about the difficulty of addition. However the proposition here is also not a significant increase in gameplay, as you said yourself. It doesn't provoke a massive change in how one would play the game, and doesn't generate a very significant increase in conflict; no more than a massive asteroid or small moon would.

I do question the sentiment behind 'The game is about overkill and destruction' however; it's a rather 'simple' way of looking at things (and I don't mean that in a good way). The game should be about strategy, since it's an RTS. If you're shooting for 'Awesome', and yet forget the defining feature of your genre then you're just wasting talent on flashing lights and shiny objects and doing a grave disservice to your intended audience.

Unless you want to appeal to simpletons. In which case, go right ahead with the Big Booms. Hide your creative bankruptcy behind the title of 'Innovation for a new generation', 'Improved graphics' and 'Appealing to a wider audience'.

I agree with you wholeheartedly regarding the bolded section. However the suggestion neither adds nor detracts from strategic options, it just allows you to hurl larger rocks than we have been told we can. It is purely a method to wreak more destruction. If it had negative implications towards strategic depth I would stand against the idea.

As it stands it is solely suggesting to spread a gameplay element as far as possible. Whether or not it gets implemented is inconsequential, because I doubt it would be used very much. I see it like the 'infinite' population cap. There is a roof, but we're likely never going to hit it. This isn't so much about 'expanding' gameplay options as it is about not restricting them.

But yes, it is just a "flashing light" or a "shiny object". But it is no more of a shiny object than the ability to fling an asteroid at a planet was from the beginning. (Albeit the initial idea does add strategic depth, but it catches more people initially from the 'Awesome' factor than analysis of strategic depth. Nit-picking over the size of planetary bodies we can fling doesn't change the 'awesome' factor change the strategic depth involved.)

I don't see a clear reason how it would detract from gameplay or should not be implemented. I'm all ears though if you have thoughts in that regard.

If it doesn't add anything, it's bloat. Fat to be trimmed.

And throwing asteroids was most definitely not just a shiny object decision. It's a critical lynchpin for the entire game and a strategic 'first'; the reduction of the playing field via the literal destruction of the map, or at least part of it.

The Addition of asteroid KEWs added something.
Extending it to planets, doesn't.

I agree with your assertion that things which do not add anything should be trimmed. We do not want 5 tanks that serve the same purpose but have different names. It creates confusion for players and, as you said, is unnecessary bloat and complication. I've played games like that, it's needlessly cumbersome and confusing.

However, allowing planets to be hurled is not a form of bloat. It does not add any complication, or any additional UI that isn't soon to be implemented. It does not add an additional unit/structure, it actually doesn't 'add' anything as the boosters are already planned. All this suggestion would do is allow these engines to be built on any surface. Why should we restrict which surfaces we're allowed to build engines on?

The smallest planet and largest asteroid may be close in size; where do we draw the line between these? I'm sure the distinction will be even harder to draw between 'asteroids' and 'moons'. Are we only allowed to put boosters on rocks that lie in an 'asteroid belt'? Is that how we're going draw the distinction between the rocks in the solar system? The 'moons' of Mars are thought to be captured asteroids. As 'moons' would they be disallowed from rocket-play? Or as 'captured asteroids' would they be ok to build engines on? Do we care more about the radius of the rock, or what the rock is orbiting around?

And then there's Pluto becoming a 'dwarf planet'. "... there are more than 40 of these dwarfs, including the large asteroid Ceres and 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena—a distant object slightly larger than Pluto discovered by Brown last year." (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060824-pluto-planet.html). Pluto and Ceres being classified as dwarf planets is nothing more than a change in naming convention. Ceres is an asteroid one day, and a dwarf planet the next. Would we be allowed to build rocket boosters on it? Clearly the naming convention of celestial bodies is an imperfect and changing science.

Gameplay-wise allowing us to construct boosters on an asteroid is functionally no different than doing so on a moon or planet. It is not 'adding bloat'. It is not 'adding' anything, it's removing a restriction imposed by naming conventions. There is no decrease to strategic depth, there is no solid reason to impose the restriction.

Placing boosters on larger celestial bodies will be a slow and costly process, and may not even be worth the benefit of doing so. In most situations it'd be fairly impractical to do so, however I don't see why we should disallow players from making this choice. If players decide doing so would be fun/beneficial, then why should the game limit their options? The massive amount of destruction that is possible with this idea seems to fit in with Über's design plan. Especially with their vision of massive multi-day 40-player games. This sort of over-the-top strategy could spice up the mix.

If they decide that this idea does not fit in with their vision for the game, I will bear no argument. However I do not see why they would implement unnecessary restrictions when the precedent has been set for excess (again: the 'infinite' population cap).

The only examples I can think of in regards to useful game-play applications are:

- Planetoids/Smaller Planets crashing into much larger planets in order to create greater devastation. This would likely be in a large game to deny the enemy a planet which had been lost, rather than destroying only part of the surface.
- Planets crashing into Gas Giants to deny that resource.
- Crashing planetoids into Metal Planets; I'm not sure how resilient these will be to asteroids, but I'm hoping some allowances will be made.

All in all I agree there is no economic/military advantage to firing your entire base at the enemy, however these circumstances do suggest (in limited circumstances) that moon-sized planetoids could be used to strategic effect.

Edit:
Also I'd just like to add that I think people should be free to have common sense. They should be allowed to build rocket boosters anywhere they want - it would be economically infeasible, barely move the planet and would likely get you invaded and destroyed before too long. And then you wouldn't try it again.

Imposing a restriction is unnecessary if players can be relied upon to play the game sensibly - what if someone is on a far-flung planet like Pluto, wins it early on and, by mid-late game, has managed to build enough boosters to go and help their team in the middle of the solar system by entering a smaller orbit or ploughing their planetoid into what their team couldn't hold?

If you don't trust players to be inventive and adaptive then you're gonna have a bad time.

The only sensible application i can think of is maneuvering Metal Planets.

For everything else, you got asteroid fortresses.

This.

Although it would probably be a massive drain on ones economy (no more so than an asteroid if you spread out the build time), it just adds more strategic options (whether or not its a stupid idea at the time is based on the current game situation). Besides maybe its not your whole base? Maybe you simply want to deny said planet to another player and don't have asteroids available.

Me personally? I would just want to have a plan Z in-case plans A-Y fail.

Its alot of maybes, but as we all know. **** Happens.

They likely have their own method of transportation.

If the 'roid rocket structure is indeed based on the mass of the planet to determine how much rockets you need to move the astralbody, then I imagine that number would increase exponentially. Meaning, you would need infinite amount of rockets to move an earth sized planet. I don't know what their system is going to be, will they just limit the use of the structure with "not to be used on planets" or what.

Gameplay wise, this adds nothing to the game. An asteroid is enough to obliterate the target planet. Neutrino said you might be able to move moons, which means you might have a large movable attack base. You don't really need more than that.

Planets orbit anyway, so moving them would be the exact same thing.

As observed previously, this feature doesn't add anything, it merely removes a limitation. I quite like the idea of using planetary engines as a (expensive) method of dodging asteroids as well.

The space required for the number of engines required to do that in a speedy enough time to dodge an asteroid would be more than the surface area of the planet itself.

Not necessarily. It very much depends on how early the force is applied relative to the time when the collision is due. For example, the earth is about 12000 Km across, and moves at an orbital velocity (average) of 29 Km/s, which means it moves it's own diameter once every 7 minutes. If an asteroid was due to hit it in 10 years time, then one would only need to delay the earth by 7 minutes to miss it entirely. Over the course of 10 years, this translates to a change in velocity of about 10 m/s (very quick maths here). This doesn't correct for orbital mechanics, but it's certainly true that you only need tiny changes in order to effect a miss if the time frame is great enough. And if you have giant magic fusion engines the size of Europe.

As has been pointed out, however, the question isn't about physics, but about how it effects gameplay. At the moment, with the limited information we have available, the counters to asteroid bombardment seem to be:

Don't let your opponent get to the asteroid.
Don't let your opponent complete the engines.
Don't let your opponent power the engines.
Don't let your opponent complete the burn.
Don't let your opponent hold onto the asteroid, while you try to invade and build your own engines or capture theirs (if capturing is included)
Hit it with your own asteroid.
Flee.

I'm all for encouraging player interaction, but the fact that almost all of the counters are purely aggressive in nature tends to suggest that this could be fleshed out a little. Given that almost all of the options force the player to invade the incoming asteroid, which may be prohibitively difficult depending upon how interplanetary orbits are designed, I think adding one or two more defensive options may promote choice, providing they can be balanced well. As it is highly likely more engines would be required to perform a dodge than to perform an asteroid bombardment, it seems like dodging would be a last ditch effort, which is dependant upon economic superiority in order for it to work. It may also promote raiding power-gens in order to prevent the dodge occurring, introducing a layered strategy to asteroid bombardment. I really don't see a problem with this.

I think you missed the part where I specifically said that you couldn't do this quickly.

I'm fully aware you could move a planet slowly, but that's not much help against an object that traveling at several factors greater than your speed. It's like a snail trying to 'dodge' an incoming predator.

Remember that the asteroid that is coming for you isn't without its own control. What stops the asteroid from matching your 'dodge' attempt by just adjusting its thrusters by a fraction of a degree?

It is literally impossible for a planet to 'get out of the way' of something that is a fraction of its mass and that is actively TRYING to hit it. Unless you employ bullshit.