Asteroids

Hi all,

I've made a quick search but didn't find the answer to my question (but I'm almost sure that Knight will come with at least two threads with the answer I seek )
Right now we fight in planets and what we call asteroid is just an small moon. So, are we going to see proper asteroids like the ones in the kickstarted video? The most obvious answer is yes, but as far as I know there are some features in the engine that takes as asumption that the battlefield is spherical (or almost espherical)

Thank you!

I think the primary issue with this is how gravity currently works. All of the asteroids in an asteroid belt would end up mashing into eachother because of how close they are, so the gravitational constant needs to be scaled down along with the distances.

But scaling down the gravitational constant is kinda like using crayons in modern medical practice. You don't just do it without a little research first.

I sure hope we do get them but like MushrooMars, I think they're probably a little ways off.

Well, you do know that asteroids in belt aren't that close as they show in movies, so I don't think that the gravity is really the problem here (I could be totally wrong).
I do think that the smallest asteroids must be much smaller then the current smaller planet. So small that it is impossible to land a commander and build anything on it. So, what about the option to send an orbital units that can build advanced stuff on it without the need to actual land.

Why would they be anything more than fun visual stuff that has no impact on the game?

I read 3 times what I wrote but didn't find how you made this conclusion.

Making moons small with a large height variation makes them rather awkward shaped and astroid-like. So really its up to you making a bunch. They do weird things though, so hopefully some optomisation and perhaps a pre-defined "astroid" preset with fixes catering to these issues would be a good solution.

He was referring to asteroid belts themselves being in the game.


I actually thought asteroids and asteroid belts were going to be in-game as well.

I had reason to believe in this because it would be excellent for K.E.W's would be more prevalent and readily available to launch and hurl at your foes on different planets and bring another interesting dynamic to space battles and land interactions.

I was also hoping for asteroids as a nearly limitless supply of rocks to throw at a planet. They might be a nice low-grade bombardment option where you can launch a single asteroid with a single Halley, but they do damage to only 25% of the planet's surface.

I agree. i think having several degrees of halley bombardment would be cool instead of 3 or 25. Maybe a 1 halley asteroid could be a mini nuke ect balanced

Well maybe the problem is that everyone is thinking about asteroids the same was as we see planets, with the same orbital positions and gravity, perhaps instead of giving asteroids gravity or what not, we could just simply have a static asteroid belt, and inside the belt there are just a few select asteroids that we can take control of? rather then trying to animate an entire asteroid belt with gravitational pull and orbit like movements? I think it would be easier to do from a gaming stand point as well as performance stand point.

This, thought it was obvious.

Topic about asteroids:
Planet Limit

Small post by me about asteroids.

I suppose that it's one thing to program a sun with a few rotating planets and the light emitted from the sun going over the planet, and then quite another to add multiple stars, moons, asteroids, comets, eclipses, sunsets, gravity, heat differences, planets with atmosphere, corrosion due to atmosphere, asteroid belts, dust rings, gas giants, meteorites hitting planets and creating craters, interplanetary collision, planet rotation, ice clouds, solar flares, radiation interference, solar power which depends on direct sunlight. Just off the top of my head, although some of it is probably in the game already, and I also didn't mention any man-made structures you find in space or in orbit that go beyond the current scale of orbital units.

I would love to see an asteroid belt, but then again, my computer crashes when there are more than 4 planetoids in the same system. Hundreds of small asteroids? Yeahh.... So unless they really force down the computer requirements, adding something like that would kick lower end system users out of the game.

optimization is still a long ways from being done. uber knows that making the game playable by the maximum number of people is just good business so I wouldn't worry too much.

You wouldn't need hundreds, just a few. Plus the performance will get better as Uber optimizes PA.

asteroids belts will be cool

In the last live stream Neutrino said: 'If you want an asteroid belt just put a bunch of small moons in orbit.'

I TOTALLY disagree with this. I would really really like asteroid belts or groups of asteroids (planet remains).

Just make asteroid belts 90% textures (fake) and 10% real usable asteroids. It would even be an option to make asteroid nonplayable but just stend an engineer to it and you would get a couple options like: Turn in to, KEW, recource harvesting(power or metal) or an orbital defence.

I think he was just being a ****, because the question is asked a lot, and the answer for now is obvious.


In Kickstarter concept of course, you see an actual asteroid belt. So I would hope it is in the works :/