[PTE] Epic Incidental Planet Smash Mistake

My buddy and I were testing the latest PTE build, on a 7-bodysystem he had concocted:
1 spawning planet
2 secondary planets, each with 2 moons orbiting
All 7 bodies in eliptical orbits, criss-crossing around the sun.


35 minutes in, he and I have both built 3 halleys on separate moons in a race to annihilate the AI on one of the secondary planets. My buddy fires his halleys up first and his moon starts to move. It loops around its main planet and begins towards the sun.... then smashes straight into my 3-halley moon, in-orbit around the target planet (see picture)!!

Result? All halleys destroyed on both moons, and both of our moons cut in half, orbiting the target planet, now with a total of 3 moons.

GG


Thank you to all the incredibly hard-working folks at Uber for your amazing work on this game, and I hope this gets some people excited at the possibilities!

I am confused ....

Yeah, so incidental contact can happen now. And yes there are circumstances where blind luck means that this happens. We discussed trying to avoid every instance of this and decided to roll with this. We'll see

Oh, I love it, because now it's not so simple as just 'send planet to annihilate'.... you have to wait until the orbits are clear!

It's probably rare, but I can imagine that a planet with a lot of tiny moons could possibly be shielded from a planet smash! Does it really count as pure luck if you know you are sending your asteroid through a crowded area? It's just a risky move!

It's pretty much luck yeah.

I can imagine a tournament map like this:

1 starting planet with 3 moons
1 secondary, resource-rich planet with 3 moons guarding it

Players rush to the second planet to claim it, but any number of moons could be flung that way.... but would they smash? It's not able to be known until the orbits line up and the moon actually gets there!

well i think that depends on where the target location is set. The hallied moon doesn't always have to hit the equator of a planet. They usually take a curve and hit the target head on.

Well the other planets are all just on rails going in circles, right? Would it be too hard computationally to find where the projected path of the moving object would intersect the other orbits, and then mark it with an explosion icon if they are expected to both be there at the same time? I guess this depends on whether the path of the moving planet is simulated or calculated in advance.

I think the planets transit in the plane of the ecliptic, so if the moons were 'guarding' far enough out, the incoming moon would still be in the plane trying to push past them before it curves up or down towards the poles, right?

Worst case scenario I suppose the planet smash orbits could travel around a different orbital plane than the main one to avoid other planets, no?
Or perhaps we could get the 'change orbit' functionality back, so we could have more control over where it goes and when, before finally smashing it.

I think the fact that incidental planet smashing introduces a failure rate to the strategy to be fantastic. It really opens up new possibilities for play, and enhances the way the mechanic currently works.

Which is why we left it in.

It's also Logical and AWESOME~!
(I need to get me a copy of that caption-head-thing)

.....

I'm gonna have to build a system and try that!! Wonder how many moons I can get orbiting a planet?

It's one of those times when we can't decide if this should be a bug or a feature. I vote feature!

While I am totally in favour of this because I think it's awesome, I can also see that.. if a tournament was decided by this, well, that'd be kind of lame.

Maybe put a flag, "allow incidental contact"? Or even a step further and have a checkbox for "tournament mode" that implements more symetry to the spawns and such.

This is an awesome feature. Thanks for leaving it there!

Well ... you could argue that if it's that important, don't use a system where it's likely!

I managed to sneak into the system editor during a teleconf this morning and knocked up a quick system with 2 planets; the first has 3 moons which are Halley-allowable, the other has 9 moons which aren't. When I get a chance I'll try and arrange a game to see what happens