[Build 69564] Planet smashing via Halleys no longer auto-kills everything

There's this small line in the patch notes: "[Celestial] Enhanced planet collisions" which I initially though would only change the behaviour of planets colliding on their orbits ... but apparently it also applies to Halley collisions!

I just had a game where a small moon left a crater on a main planet but did little other damage. Wondering if larger bodies now do more damage?

The first screenshot shows the crater, the second is a picture of the planet post-impact. Plenty of units left!

Note: I don't want to report this as a bug or anything. Just spreading the word, great change!

Correct, been in PTE some time now. Not sure if this means units path INSIDE the crater now or not, but it does mean small impacts do controlled damage (just their base and if well aimed their commander) while large impacts I believe are still capable of making the planet cease to exist and become replaced with empty void.

This isn't a bug. This is a new feature. Planet smashes and the damage they do are proportional to what was smashed. If you smash a smaller into a larger then the radius of the smaller will determine the size of the crater. If the planets are equal size they will both be destroyed entirely. If the planet is larger the smaller will be destroyed completely the larger will have a crater and only what was in / around that crater will be dead.

After the smashing is done if a planet still exists the crater and the blast radius around it currently stays Radioactive and will destroy anything that tries to path through it. (I haven't heard from Uber if this is planned to stay in or not) I find this kind of interesting because it diminishes the size of the play field.

Also if you are moving a planet and you cancel some how it will stop and start orbiting what ever it latches on too.

These are HUGE enhancements. That provide a lot more interesting game play.

Wow golly gee, I did NOT know about the cancelling moving to closer orbit to target, nor the larger colliding with smaller causing the larger to remain (albeit you can't control the impact point on the larger right? that is still fairly dangerous...)

It is better this way. Trust me. Controllable damage makes it MORE useful. A smart bomb prevents much collateral.

The way it was before, you had a LOT of killzone on 2 whole planets to keep your commander out of. If the system had just 2 planets to begin with, it was either suicide or a carefully planned timing of interstellar vacation to keep your commander alive. Now, you have much less killzone for your own commander, you can easily find a safe place to stand your commander on the same planet as the collision unless they are evenly sized. If they are evenly sized, then you treat it like before as a total killzone to avoid.

Point is, now if you want to kill just a commander or just their whole base, and you want to leave your commander and your whole base alive on the same target planet, it is possible now to kill only your target with a planet smash and be completely unharmed.

Oh, please don't get me wrong, I didn't want to report it as a bug! I was just suprised by this change, think it's a great idea and wanted to let people know.

Ya @mered4 and I have been doing a lot of testing on all the smashing to find the bugs and improvements.

Currently I believe there is still a bug where if you tell your commander to go to another planet and then smash them and if they are the same size then it crashes the server when they are close to hitting.

Cool, i was thinking myself that i'd like to have more variable damage when pa'ing stuff.

Its quite awesome. But it actually adds more choice and strategy, Is it worth it to throw this moon into the planet, and lose all that valuable resources now that its not just instant win.

Now there is risk reward, like if i can hit his commander, or if i can hit a lot of his resources and make some of his base harder to build on again.

I still find it funny that the crater is filled with water.

All this being said. The Smashing UI needs a bit of help. Its not easy to select smaller planets with large ones. You have to click one then hit , to cycle to the other and then you can hit it. So they really need to polish that part up.