destroying HAILLEYS doesn't stop planet's progression

i've built a couple, but never lived long enough to fire them

i've had an AI throw a moon at me, but i'm unable to figure out how to aim one moon at another

there should be reams of calculations required to shoot one moon at another... but is it just point-and-shoot in PA?

is there a minimum number of halleys required to move a moon? it should take ages to even begin to move a moon

and once a moon is moving, nothing should slow it or redirect it except gravity from a sun, planet or moon... in my opinion

Not exactly, in KSP you never move to a planet, you're only adjusting your orbit so it intersects with a target, not actually accelerating towards it. That's why a journey to another planet can only start in a certain window (orbital constellation) and takes usually multiple years. Even going to the mun takes days.

In PA planets are directly accelerated, even when going for a slingshot around the sun. It might not make much sense, so i'd be for OP's suggestion either way. PA is so powerfull you imo should be able to do some last minute counters.
Tbh, i thought killing Delta-V's would already stop the planetary annihilation.

Talk about it, going to bop was the most challenging thing I think I ever did in that game (I got back too )

>Builds the most amazing, realistic, and feasible rocket/lander.
>Can't even get to the mun and land.
>Goes to youtube.
>Watches video of someone building the most ridiculous ship ever.
>They make it to the Mun
>mfw

I think the planet should fly in stages. If it doesn't already.

Then, if destroyed, the halley should stop at it's next stage and continue a normal orbit from there, around it's target if at the last stage.

Physics really doesn't work that way, but it makes sense for gameplay. Really, orbits currently already don't make sense. They look realistic how they slingshot, but they completely ignore physics as far as interception trajectory and such. Might as well have them do just exactly that when the halley is destroyed.

I once build a 2000 ton heavy spaceship with vertical engines being able to start from every planet aside from eve and kerbin (1.5 thrust-ratio), and horizontal nuclear engines managing up to 13.000 Delta-V. It took me so long to build that thing.

I traveled to the moon, landed the ship, and never touched it again because the performance was to horrible to deal with that thing.

Totally worth it.

No my most advanced, but hardest mission was bringing a ship+lander to Moho. Now getting to any planet is like the easiest thing in the world, but at that time i didn't know anything about interplanetary travel, homann transfers and maneuver nodes. I just tried and everything went perfectly, strangest thing that happened to me in the game.
Although going for a mission to duna and arriving at a intersection with dres was also pretty weird.

Usually getting my ridiculous stuff up into space is the difficult part for me. Although the 1300 ton asteroid proved to be a challenge.

Wat?

The thing was with Bop, was that it was orbiting Jool counterclockwise(?) and I was orbiting Jool clockwise(?), so I wasted pretty much all of my delta-v trying to overcome my velocity towards Bop. The only reason I think I succeeded in getting back was that I had overestimated the amount of fuel I would need to get there(phew).

But, the planet would still be on an intercept course, It just wouldn't be accelerating along it.

It would still be on an what used to be an intercept course but, I assume the acceleration was calculated for. So not having that added speed, the planet will be 'late' and miss the target planet.

PA physics are not realistic when it comes to space travel but, something that needs thrusting rockets will fail if they get destroyed, that does make sense both in PA and real life.
A middle ground that could give good gameplay would be that a certain number of engines should be destroyed, and that if you destroy them too late, the planet will hit, but not on the target zone you planned.

Lol, that sounds like a typical KSP-accident. I'm always using nuclear engines, they get you incredible far when used in a mothership-design.

My first travel to the moon accidently - damn that devious time acceleration - sent me into an orbit arond the sun, and i needed five ingame-years to get back. Only the nuke could provide the ridiculous amount of thrust for the countless clueless maneuver's.

That's the point where PA physics are getting weird. As said, you modify your orbit so it intersects with something, these maneuvers don't make the orbit go faster by itself. Accelerating your planet ahead is a huge modification of your orbit in itself, and even the tiniest poke would completely ruin the actual intercept course around the sun.
As an example, to reach a low sun orbit (like planets do in PA) you wouldn't accelerate, but actually decelerate to lower the centrifugal force keeping the orbit high.

If we send a spaceship to mars, the time to arrival will always be the same, now and in a thousand years - as long as we don't find a way to manipulate physics somehow.

That's why you can't accelerate that way in reality. The only other option is to attain speeds where orbits 'don't matter' that much. Earth moves with 30 km/s, that's the kind of speed we would need to overcome. In that case you wouldn't do classical orbitals maneuvers, though.

sorry, fixed now.

Destroying halleys that is moving the planet should make the planet enter an elliptical orbit, since the engines are ''brute forcing'' the planet into position to smash, even when slingshotting, and realistically the planet should be flinged out of sun gravity at last stage cause of all the power the engines has forced into the planet, making it behave as it does, going into intersectioncourse with another planet. The energy is actually so enormuos that the planet would crumble and the fuel would replace the hole inside of that one planet firing (and it would be extremely pressurized), but, if it would be done the efficient way it would take a lot of time for the planet to reach the target, since bruting it makes it all so much faster. The halleys are even firing the planet around the target to fing the right spot, turning the hole planet in a U-Turn over a few seconds, the forces would just melt the planet down, or make it explode due to the fuel. So if the halleys are destroyed, the planet should enter a highly elliptical orbit around sun (Not even target planet cause of all the force).

haven't you noticed random system start out with elliptical orbits now?

Yes i have, i only said that destroying halleys during planet-smashing should make this planet enter a elliptical orbit calculated from its position and direction. And some of the new random ellipctical orbits are crazy .

EDIT: Also i fail to see how planets being randomly generated with elliptical orbits has anything to do with orbits of planets which are being moved are changed if halleys are destroyed.

well that's because skewing a planet's orbit that originally had a highly elliptical orbit you could obtain a circular orbit. : |

you said that it should enter an eliptical orbit, period. yes I'm nitpicky

Well if you destroy the halleys directly after they fired up, OKAY,you nitpicky, but as soon the planet is being directed towards sun and moving closer it will achieve an elliptical orbit if halleys detroyed at this point. Actually as soon as it accelerates(which it does instantly in this game), the planet will enter a new elliptical orbit .

This is a game mechanic that has never been done before, or anything like it. So it's tough to say what should be done from a gameplay standpoint.

In my opinion usability and predictability should be the main considerations for planet smashing. In that regard the current planet trajectory seems very unintuitive.

I think what should happen is that the halleys gradually adjust the planet's orbit. The projected orbital path of all the planets can be displayed in the orbital view, and a gradual shift would be intuitive. Halleys will gradually adjust the orbital trajectory until their orbital paths intersect.

The actual calculations of the trajectory are out of most people's ken, but the computer can of course handle that for the player. The important thing is that if the target planet is at an outer orbit relative to the projectile planet, the planet accelerates (elongating its orbit), and if the target planet is an inner orbit relative to the projectile, then the planet decelerates (shortening its orbit). Eventually the computer will arrive at a firing solution that means the two planets will collide.

The AI will automatically burn the Halleys as long as necessary to reach a firing solution to the desired target planet. Bigger planets will take longer to adjust their orbits. And more Halleys will make the process faster. If the Halleys are destroyed during this process, the planet retains the trajectory it had when they were destroyed. Once a firing solution is established, the Halleys are no longer necessary since the two planets' orbits will cause them to collide without further input.

A player with Halleys on the planet would be able to decide to change trajectory by burning the Halleys again. But there would essentially be nothing the victim can do about it once the orbit is locked in. Unless that player can land on the projectile and construct Halleys very, very fast. Which is essentially impossible.

This also means there can be a giant epic countdown until a planet gets destroyed, which would be very fun.

Using this design, destroying a planet has three stages. First, a resource-intensive countdown to construct Halleys (which can be accelerated with buildpower). This is the only part that would be hidden. Second, an energy-intensive Halley burn period, with a countdown until the firing solution is reached. All other players would know all the orbital adjustments you make. But they might not know your intended target.

And finally, an epic countdown until the planets actually collide which is more or less inevitable. When everyone knows the exact time that someone's planet is getting annihilated, and madly scrambles to get off-planet.

Although i believe it would just take too much time, the current brutal pushing of the planet is also epic, but needs MUCH bigger flames on engines. I guess that when halleyable asteroids make it to the game we could maybe have some of that.

not at all.

Completely untrue.

haven't you noticed you AIM where the KEW lands? and it land precisely there?

this matters because KEWS no longer wipe out whole planet's surface regardless. they can even make a damage zone as small as a nuke.

So sometimes you see the KEW having to swing around the back of the planet and having to make the tightest of turns to obtain it's targeted landing spot.

that's called killing delta-V. In what would have otherwise been a drive-by slingshot using that planet's gravity.

how do you achieve this?

Engines.

BAM!

I rest my case good sir.