Planetary Mass affecting gravity and projectile drop.

Hello, I have a suggestion after that awesome little trailer re-dub that I thought of whilst thinking of the "mass" function for planets, which allows you to make a planet have more mass so that bodies of lower mass can orbit them.

Now my suggestion is: what if mass not only affected what planets could orbit them, but also the gravity on the planet itself. Planets with higher mass would cause more bullet/projectile drop, artillery would have lesser range because of it for example, whilst planets of lower mass would be the opposite and may even cause some units to possibly move slower because of the lower gravity. Basically, more mass equals... more gravity and less mass equals... less gravity respectfully.

What do you think about this, at least an option, a mod?

I like the idea, but not affecting projectile range. Instead, I think it should affect the distance at which planets/moons will orbit other planets/moons.

It mostly works against the idea of WYSIWYG, Range being dependent on gravity makes it really award to work with, especially for new players.

Mike

Projectile Range dependencies? Naw, changes the dynamics of the unit types too much. Strategy would be nice, but wouldn't be reliable for strategies, and would over complicate an already complicated system that is hard enough to balance as of now.

Though I'd like to see the gravity change how planets can orbit. As of right now, mass/gravity does effect how big orbiting planets can be, but I would like to see size of orbits, how many planets can orbit, and more effect gravity has between interplanetary movement of orbital units.

It'd be interesting as a lobby option.
I'd definitely give it a shot.

yes. Besides, if the planets begin to be too large, range becomes melee range, which dampers scaling. It directly conflicts scaling, the smaller planet more easily promotes planetwide artillery and larger one turns artillery into very short range defences. If anything, it makes more gameplay sense for smaller planets to have stronger gravity.

besides, this is very unuseably detailed, how would the game benefit from even harder to calculate firing arcs in the engine. More complex, less use.

but, the poll will show "yes" to win. Guess why? There are three yes answers. This is why there should be voting classes and tests required to vote. In government and in this forum. Why this poll is botched, should be a test question, and proper understanding should grant access to democracy.

Uber has discussed this before.

They opted for a WYSIWYG. It would be too confusing and too unintuitive if unit ranges were different all the time.

I very much oppose this.

Heh, alrighty then! I was just thinking stuff up last night and it popped in my head.

What you see is what you get is very important. If I see a Dox, I instantly know how fast it goes, how far it can shoot, and what it will take to kill it.

If mass changes how units work, then I can never tell whether units will or won't fire at each other.

That's also the same reason why Uber isn't going for a level system or upgrade system. I see a unit, I know how much damage it does and what its capabilities are. If it has levels or upgrades, then I can't know its capabilities at a glance.

What you see is what you get.

it affects units with ballistics, that is to balance them will not be possible

I voted for: I don't like it, it's too complex.

I can see all sorts of ways for this to go wrong, aside from the fact that it wouldn't improve gameplay

Let's say you're playing on an asteroid, and all of the missiles and projectiles fly off into space because there's not enough gravity to keep them bound to the asteroid.

Or the opposite, let's say you're playing on a scale 1200 planet, and projectiles lose momentum so quickly that they would just instantly drop to the ground.

This could of course be balanced out, but it wouldn't be much of a simulation at that point.

Yes, I understand, that's why I included the mod idea as I know it'd add an unnecessary amount of complexity yet someone may want to give it a try for the fun. I also didn't vote as I normally don't on my own polls... messes with the data.

I definitevely voted "yes". However gravity should only affect projectile weapons (pelters / holkins and shellers), and not energy based weapons or direct hit weapons.

I voted for I do not like too complex option.

Well honestly i would love this idea, but i rather get that calculations and cpu power allocated for better stuff.
It is not only plotting trajectory, but much more resources would go into aiming, you need either do reverse calculations to find out where to aim for projectile to hit target, or you need to simulate several traces to find out this. Also Keppler mechanic depends heavily on precision of math and timing. I say aiming with this kind of equations would be quite costly. And then on top of it all add AI that needs to understand orbital movement to even use such weapons.

All that together to have gimmicky feature.

Eh, it's a simulation and should run the same only with a variable being changed.

Nope, either you have formula that tells you where to aim if you want hit certain spot on another planet, or you simulate around 30 traces. NASA has that formula, but its probably in range of hours to calculate one trajectory. For game could be simplified a lot, but still you need some complex equations. For game simulating should be lot faster.

For 2 planets it could work like this: First you simulate trajectory for plane that has target and cannot and target planet mass center. For both planet not moving. then you simulate few more around to compensate for movement of target. I would say like 5-10 for first, and around 12 for second phase.

Then add to this that one would probably build 20-30 of such artillery. For it to be effective you need to simulate planer rotation and add speed from it to projectile, else it cannot go on orbit. Then some shooting angles will never give working trajectory, so cannons would not shoot at seemingly random times and for unknown reasons (to player).

And on top of all this players would not notice difference if gravity is really simulated or scripted. I think current way is better, interplanetary travel always works, but sometimes look weird.

Ps. few years ago i played with Kepler rules and simulating gravity. For 2 exactly same planets, one used single precision float, another used double precession. One went on orbit but with some weird precession, another escaped sun gravity. Also simulation was heavily dependent on delta time i used. Totally different results. An i made it for only sun+planet. PA has multiple planets you need to count them all in else unrealistic errors will remain, and whole simulating is not worth the troubles.

I like the idea.
On high mass/gravity planets infernos would be the go to unit.
On low mass planets, artillery would rule.

it would be nice to see at least a cosmetic difference in gravity - fragments from explosions or debris from dead units could disperse over an area dependant on the planet gravity.

That's actually a very good idea; I'd love to see that.. Imagine the slow motion explosions and floating debris on moons.

yeah, theres quite a lot of small cosmetic stuff they could add to the game really. For example "moon" based planets with little or no atmosphere could have eerily muffled sound effects.. or however things sound when theres no air.

Id like to see them associate a fluctuating wind speed associated with each biome for wind turbines as an energy generator too.. but I suppose that can wait.