N-Body Simulations

I put it in the title so that I've already given the easy answer and we can have room for debate.

I also made a poll so that we can see who wants it and who doesn't.

Topic at hand? : simulated orbital bodies. Remember being able to switch on gravity simulation in the system editor during Alpha?

I thought that was going to be a thing. I was visualizing myself building tons of crazy systems that nobody would want to play on except someone who's as OK with chaos and having to keep track of a billion things at once as me.

I liked the idea truly. I was hoping to be able to toy around with this in-game.

in short :

I disagree with N-body simulation as the default... but I think it could be cool as an optional setting.
What I would like to see is a better 2 body simulation for objects of comparable mass (barycenters anyone?). Only issue is that people may try to have 3 objects of comparable mass orbiting eachother at comparable distances... but I think a "this configuration is unstable" warning and disallowing the placement of planets in that way would work nicely (since such a configuration would be unstable).

ok. that works for me.

IT'S YEA NOT YAY!!1
1!@1o4272986509128 4yijsfgl;j

Also yes.

To me, it seems like a good thing for an expansion. Right now, there are a lot of more pressing things heading toward release, but it's definitely an interesting thing to have.

If I recall correctly, it's fairly difficult to get a N-body system to be stable. You'd wind up with things crashing into each other or flung out of the star's orbit into deep space, which doesn't make for fun gameplay.

I really don't think it's necessary. Definitely post 1.0, if at all.

We totally NEED this post 1.0.
Look at their own stream:
Planetary Annihilation: LiveStream, July 30th, 20…:

It was great in the alpha days. The freedom of creation. You're lucky now, if you can get an elliptical orbit.

guys keep in mind it never got more than a first pass. So if things flung out of orbit alot it was because there was no code to counter that. Once again you aren't being tolerant of the unfinished state things were in and took them for what they would be in their final state instead of an early draft. If the code was tweaked, they could make planets strive to stay within a certain area even if it's not realistic. this way they don't go for a wonder. As for the rest there's testing your system and a scroll bar that could be added at the bottom for time to see what positions the planets would be in at a certain time and when they collide or if they don't.

More than trying to set up collisions it would be really fun for setting up drive-bys as you could have multiple different planets pass each other really close and ....hoping that uber also make the nuke and unit-cannon range-dependent not orbit-dependent have a bunch of opportunities to attack one another with nukes and unit cannon.

Sorry, but there is absolutely no way to ensure that an true n-body simulation is stable, especially given the scale of PA's celestial bodies things are very likely to go awry. 'Tweaking' the code isn't going to help very much with that.
And don't forget, fly-bys are also going to cause chaotic behaviour.
I'm still advocating a more realistic system than what we have now though, and I do think it would be cool if a close approach of two bodies could cause one to be captured in orbit around the other, but I think 2 body's physics would still be fine for handling that with something more akin to kerbal space program's simulation (which also uses 2 body physics calculations).

well sure but we could at least leave the N-body simulations as an option.

If people want to mess around, let 'em have at it no?

It would be cool, but I don't think it would add much to gameplay, especially now that nukes can be fired at any other planet irrespective of orbits. The only gameplay difference I can see would be planets colliding with each other, but then you can set it up now so that planets will collide with each other (nothing happens at the moment, but I would guess that that will change).

From a gameplay point of view the fact that we are playing on orbiting planets is currently just arbitrary aesthetics - there is a travel time from planet to planet, but you could put in any arbitrary fluff to explain this without changing the core gameplay experience (e.g. the 'planets' are rocks in a garden, and to travel from rock to rock your transport frog has to jump, but it takes him 30 seconds to stretch his legs and get ready to do it).

So unless the fact that we are fighting planets orbiting in space becomes more integral, real simulation of planetary movement seems a lot of effort for little tangible payoff, with the potential for very annoying games where the simulation breaks down after 25 minutes and suddenly you are randomly thrown into the sun.

EDIT: Is there any change we could have an actual transport frog? The more I think about it, the more excellent it seems.

you don't understand that for the moment people don't take into account the planet's movement as part of the game but if you had to adapt and change your strategy according to changing facebook statuses between planets, just imagine all the possibilities!

have you ever tried the SupCom FA portal map? it's literally the most intense thing!

My imagination is not very good, I can't see how it would make any difference. Without some sort of change to the way things move between planets it wouldn't change anything. What sort of changes do you envisage that could make simulated orbits become an interesting gameplay element?

well for one the way I hope the unit cannon will work is that it will be range-dependent

(I mean if the units just go out into space and do the same thing orbital units, nukes and KEWS do, and parkour the whole solar system then I can't really see what makes it a cannon ....nor a distant relative of physics for that matter)



so that means that if you're in a game where each player spawns on his own planet, you are preparing an assault on a planet you're orbiting around of with a unit cannon nukes and whatnot but then your planet leaves it's orbit and starts orbiting another guy's planet, you're then faced with the choice of attacking this new guy instead rather then the one who's been your enemy from the star of the match.

or it could have been the opposite, you were building all that stuff but orbiting an ally, who then suddenly got switched with an enemy and suddenly it's on!

In a dynamic alliances game this could be even more interesting.

the planets alone might serve the randomize conflicts in the way Murder Party does but with free will and choice thrown in instead of obligation.

ask for more scenarios and I'll think more up.

Any ideas you've got, please say, it may well inspire the devs or give others idea to expand on.

Range dependent unit cannon would be good, but if it's capable of firing something out of an atmosphere there's no reason it wouldn't act like current interplanetary travel. I just see it as being a fancy sort of mass transit when used interplanetary, and used on the same planet it would be like a teleporter that you don't have to set up a receiving station for.

I support N-body simulations, but the size of the sun would have to be vastly increased, as would the scale of the stellar space surrounding it, and the size of all orbits of everything. Remember, N-body in real life is (mostly) stable because things are reeeeeeeeally far away from each other. Fortunately, simulating empty space is really cheap computationally.

N body...this isnt SimPlanet...its a tad more violent

I rather that idea die in the fires of hell.

I'll be damned before we get to call something that does that a cannon.

I think this could still be bullshitted by having a planet with 0 radius in the center of two planets orbiting even possibly a lopsided orbit.

assuming lopsided orbits and planets can exist in engine without generating an actual planet at all. Also helps to have ways to change orbital speed of a planet to sync closely the orbits and avoid collision if so desired.