Elliptical Orbits look like pretty loops.

I love annihilating planets, but the orbits that are present in the game don't make any sense. Are there plans to make elliptical orbits look more like actual orbits? I'm not trying to be overly critical because it DOES look amazing, I just feel like the attached image demonstrates what I'm talking about really well. Too loopy with no regard to gravity wells.

For units, it makes perfect sense. You're shooting for synchronous orbit. For planet smashing, you want a collision course and more often than not it would be far more efficient to simply add some velocity away from the largest gravity well in the system to collide with stuff further away.

In the picture I attached, the crazy loop in the middle of space for no reason is the motivation behind posting this. It could have simply continued without needlessly course-correcting. Then again, nanobots. That's an acceptable reason why it did that

The orbits are actually circular, you just have to look at them from the right angle!

Yeah that's a crazy s-shape.

Sorry, I don't follow...?

You should track the actual movement of an object as it follows that path around the sun. It might not be as curvy as you think.

If you're talking about planet orbits, which I assume you are, because they are the only orbits resembling elliptical ones, then all you need to do is adjust your camera angle, the orbits are actually circular.

Ah, no. That is not what I mean.


I was not talking about planet orbits. I am talking about the path moveable celestial bodies take to intercept planets in order to annihilate them. Did you see the attached jpg in OP?

edit: Here it is again:


AND



Why does it swing down towards the end of the attack? Why not simply keep coasting? What it does at the end is nonsensical...

Honestly, I think that curvy 's' shape is probably the best (read: least cpu heavy) way to represent it. Like Dementi said, the actual path (from what I've seen/remember) isn't as dramatically 's'-y, otherwise they would end up real time calculating and re-drawing the trajectory and that is a bit much for just a better/more accurate looking line.

I don't think i have ever seen anything follow exactly the actual marked trajectory on the map, come to think, maybe its supposed to or maybe I have the memory of a gold fish.

Someone could always mod it in anyway if it ends up like this at release, maybe even you or me

but probably not me.

Are you sure your suggested path is actually physically accurate?

The path that PA chose might be correct according to physics. It looks like the planet is looping around the sun, it makes sense to escape the sun's gravity and briefly be on an orbit that is in the 'gravitational middle' (I think I'm making that up) between the sun and the target planet - in other words a place far enough from the sun that its gravity is the same strength as the much smaller but also much closer target planet. Then the moving planet shifts orbits at that point into a high orbit around the planet, but then thrusters decelerate it below orbital velocity so gravity pulls it and the target planet together.

The more direct path would be possible, I think, but it seems like it would require a lot more energy to break away from the sun's gravity at the angle you have drawn. And then the planet would be moving very fast and could easily miss the target planet, the margin for error would be very high.

@mostuniqueusername - I'm no physicist, but I played around on a gravity simulator for 15 minutes so I'm pretty much an expert at this point at how simulated physics should work in PA. They definitely look off, in game. In regards to your second paragraph, the sun is such a large gravity well that in this particular instance it would be much, much easier to not loop around the sun once, then loop towards a planet and attack the rear of the planet. The reality is that if Planet A is on the left of the sun and Planet B is an approximately equidistant amount away from the sun on the right, it requires less energy to simply nudge the orbit of Planet A to intersect Planet B's...

... Not to loop around the sun and then practically all the way around another planet. That bit is just ridiculous!

@masticscum - That's not really the point. The simulated path is wrong, regardless if it's followed or not. Furthermore, how could simulating a more realistic path (that involves less interaction with celestial bodies than seen above) possibly take more CPU? Logically, the simplest change to Planet A's path to force it to impact Planet B's path would be the least CPU heavy and the fewest amount of calculations needed.

Look at it this way - programming additional interactions in the solar view simply so it looks fractal and pretty is probably a greater waste of processing power than simply programming the planets to behave in a realistic way. As I said before though, if the devs don't want it to make sense so be it - nanobots.

AN ILLUSTRATION OF MY POINT.



Obviously, a couple neat-o loops around the solar system is cool but it's just a little crazy looking. If the planet got that close to the sun, it would be slingshot an equivalent amount of distance away and never simply loop around the sun neatly to hit a planet directly opposite it.

I'm totally cool if the artistic design is intentional, but I'd like to voice my personal dislike (that's a little strong, I don't dislike it really...)of the ridiculous gravimetric properties present in PA. Feels like Star Trek, yo.

I was just thinking about what I thought would introduce more calculations thereby more CPU cycles but I don't program, so that's that. Now that I think about it, at this point the path is just acting as a feedback mechanism to let the player know that the game acknowledges the order to change orbits. We cannot yet do anything to disrupt orbit changes so it doesn't need to be accurate or even there at all with the introduction or alert popups. An alert popup saying 'Switching orbit to X planet' does the same thing as the drawing of a line on the map.

I am curious about how much travel time as a balance mechanism plays a part in how the planet gets to a new orbit. Something that calculates travel time as a relation ship between planet mass and target planets' distance then plots a path that takes that certain amount of time, realistic or not.

Of course it could just be future-space-nano-physics.

Future. Space. Nano. Physics...

Those are all awesome things. I concur that making those things as apparent as possible in a game is neat, but what we see in game currently is just ridiculous. I appreciate that the player needs feedback; just make it look less silly

Depending on the actual speed of the planets and presence of moons, etc., it may actually be faster to slingshot the sun rather than try and transfer from one orbit to the next, and require less energy. If we had more data on speed of planets orbiting, distance of planets apart, etc., we could probably figure it out.

I've studied a bit of astrophysics when getting my Physics degree, so this makes a little sense to me.....except for some of the S shape. That is a bit silly. Though...now that I think of it...it would make some sense for a space craft to slow down it's approach to a planet based on how far ahead it is from the planet. It requires a lot of energy and isn't very efficient. I doubt NASA does this very often because they plan their missions out years ahead of time so they don't need to, but since we are continuously and haphazardly launching our robots into space whenever we please, some odd trajectories are to be expected.

> it may

> probably

> some sense

I feel that's how this had been designed so far. Just a lot of guessing. That's totally fine, beta be beta. Can we just get a smidgen of something that looks less silly for launch?

edit: Also, it is probably almost never the case that trying to slingshot the sun would result in a more efficient approach to impacting another planet. Go play around with a gravity well simulator it made me an expert on the matter

http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/my-solar-system/my-solar-system_en.html

Yes, the red line is correct, because the sun have a very high gravity and the smash-planet must circle the sun to get to the planet, the blue circle would be physical incorrect.
It would be possible too that the smash-planet circle the planet he would impact too, because he have so much speed.

No, the dotted red line is incorrect in the picture you quoted, the blue one is the one that makes the most sense. This is what would happen if the red line were used to launch a planet's initial trajectory:



In a very general sense, of course, and it totally could hit a planet that way. There's definitely the possibility that the approach would be just right to put it in an elliptical orbit too! The way it is now, it is literally reversing in the middle of space.

Even if it came back in for another pass, Planet A would still orbit in an ellipse, and not just circle around the sun nice and neatly, make a reverse maneuver and come back to still nail the planet as was the case in the original post...

Neutino said he himself found the paths hideous I think that means they're working on it.
they'll probably get a graphical rework, a better last distance run-in so that the KEW comes straight into the target planet and doesn't juke around it at the last moment. and work on orbital mechanics.

For the kew it seem obvious the looping around the sun would, for the cost of less energy, pick up more speed, hence more destructive force, but some of the orbital units could save time in the case of two planets with close orbits that happen to be lined up with the sun, by just wasting the energy and going straight to the target.
I mean.

In kerball you're never going to be like : "well I need to go to eloo .....gotta make a stop by the sun first, it'll be quicker."

I would actually love that you be rewarded for picking what looks like the dumb and obvious time to launch on the planetary map to do it and be rewarded for it. no pre-calculations, just guestimating it.

It would be accessible to everyone and there would be times where you simply don't have a choice, you have to take the long route because your base is being overrun and other where waiting a while would actually result in saving alot of time.
creating a choice mechanic.