Does anyone know what sort of additional overhead more planet surface area imposes? Is there a metric of planet size to memory footprint? I love PA, but the size of the planets was always the most disappointing aspect of the design so far. Does anyone else here have any interest in jumbo-sized/huge planets?
Jumbo sized planets can (and have) been created by overriding the maximum radius in the system creator (i.e. type in the value you want). The problem you have however is this: The surface area of a sphere has an exponential relationship to it's radius: A = 4πr^2 So if r = 100 (units), A= 125680 (units) However if you double the radius to 200: A = 502720 (4 x more surface area) And R = 400, A = 2010880 (16 x more surface area) This is where memory quickly becomes a problem, as doubling the amount of ram doesn't allow for much of an increase in planet size (e.g. if a R1200 planet requires 8gb of ram, going to 16gb of ram wouldn't gain you much more). Due to this its much more practical to load lots of small bodies than 1 very large one for a given amount of memory.
I am aware of the math behind the basic geometry, but it is not really reasonable to expect a linear increase in memory footprint to correlate with a linear increase in surface area. There is also the possibility of distributing the same amount of geometric complexity over a larger effective surface area. Also, how much memory do our current planets take? Also, the need to load more than 2 planets worth of fine detail can be offset by increasing the size of the solar system, and setting the orbits far enough apart to make displaying a stand-in for other planets a reasonable solution.
@Brokenshakles: I can't tell you how much memory the planets take up but I can tell you this much: I created a 6-planet system where they all had sizes of about 1250, then tested it vs the AI. Took me almost 90mins to find the AI in the middle of an ocean on a planet I thought I'd scouted fully. The game had slowed down considerably but was still playable. I had something like 2500 units, something like 100 fabbers and 70-odd factories. this is on a 27" iMac with 16gb RAM. Hopefully that'll be helpful in finding your answers.
Im going to assume you haven't played a game with the max planet size if you really want bigger planets... Those things are massive.
