Proportional Planet Smashing – FINALLY!!!

Kinda similar to a video I'm working on right now.

Just did some more testing.

First off, PA has a real hard time rendering craters, particularly large craters. It can sometimes take minutes to swap out terrain to a crater. And I have a beast of a machine.

Also, if a planet is smashed, all units that move to that area, or even slightly close to that area, just blow up. We knew that, but there's no warning. There's no blocking of the pathing. Just boom. They're gone. Hopefully that gets fixed sooner rather than later.

I recorded a video, but it's pretty crappy because of the rendering times and stuff. Don't really think it's worth posting.

If you want to see my experiment, you can do so here: http://www.pastats.com/chart?gameId=181371

This makes me very happy, can't wait to try it out!

Craters always appear instantly for me.

On smaller systems craters appear instantly. But larger systems and larger craters take longer.

Is the proportional smashing gone in the Titans expansion? I really liked having some custom systems and crushing a lava planet into an ocean world vaporizing the water and leaving half the planet completely gone. It was amazing. Why do those smashes destroy planets now? WHY? I think they should have changed it to destroy everything in impact area (where the proportional smashing takes place) and make a shockwave around the planet which damages everything else, destroying most smaller units and buildings. (destroy all t1 units but leave sturdy t2, commanders and all buildings except for the smallest ones alive but damaged)

The issue was down to how the engine dealt with the craters, the motion of the moving planet to hit a specific spot, and the fact that path finding couldn't be updated to cope with the crater properly resulting in either units walking in air over the crater or just making everything that went over it die (including aircraft which was just annoying).

Essentially they couldn't get the tech to a satisfactory point and in the end took the decision to remove the mechanic completely to have the simpler (and more like the original pitch) concept of a smash destroying the planet.

I agree the proportional damage system was nice, although I understand why Uber decided to ditch it as well. My personal vote would have been to go back to the original planet smash system from early Beta where the impact destroyed *everything* on the planet, but left it otherwise intact. Still quite a lot of people preffer the simpler system they went with.

Also note that classic PA had this change a while back before Titans so it's the same in both games.

I really hope they get back to it. It has been a while since I last played so I must have missed that update - but I never had problems with it. Even on a cut in half planet like in this video I was able to walk inside the crater with my units and fly over it. It just was a no build area, which was nice as it made the whole process worth it, cutting the enemy supplies while at the same time leaving the other half of the planet open for conquer and gathering resources. I always used to play maps with 1 largest size planet and 2-3 smallest size moons (150 radius) without metal resources on them and only 2 halleys to launch em. Together all 3 could wipe around 2/3 of the planet to the core. The fight over the moons was fun and sometimes when the engines got disabled before it crashed it went back to an orbit and crushed into another moon destroying one of them while the other one had 1/2 remaining. Launching that into the planet looked incredible. Though it created a smaller crater. If the match went to a turtlefest (it rarely did and with the new titans that should happen even less) the moons were always there to remind everyone that their base could be wiped out any second if they don't start capturing the moons for themselves. I hoped the new asteroid belt addition with asteroids coming into existing WHILE the game was going on would finally allow me to make an even better 1 giant planet map with asteroids to crush parts of the planet not being there from the start but instead coming into existence after a few dozen minutes. Instead even one smallest size asteroid now destroys a 50 times larger planet making it impossible for me to use asteroids or anything with halleys on my 1 HUGE planet maps. Is there a mod or something like that to change it back until they finally release a patch which will give us an option for proportional smash destruction? It might not have been strong for multi planet solar systems with medium sized planets. But for solar systems with 1-2 HUGE planets even destroying half of it was still worth it to use 120k metal (3 halleys) and in the solar system editor you can set it to 1 if 120k seemed too much. I want asteroids to be game changers, not game enders. :/ Buff their craters, but don't make them instant kill planets.

I agree, this change was hugely disappointing to me and removed one of the bigger new mechanics that this game introduced. The devs have set a hard line on not reviving it due to time limitations. Given that, I favor the solution proposed here:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/suggestion-turn-asteroids-into-big-nukes.70255/
...make the impacts generate a huge explosion, but no crater. That way the tactic still lives, but the mesh and pathing don't need to be regenerated. Still a lot less cool than craters.

I want a dust cloud to cover the planet like the one that kill off the dinosaurs. Make it happen uber!