"Natural" planet collisions are anti-natural?

Well planets on conflicting orbits in real life do collide with each other, unfortunately you'd be unlikely to every witness this as it would happen very suddenly due to an orbital hiccup and then never again as there would just be debris in its place.

Here's the video I was talking about: http://exodusesports.com/match/19306167/

And yeah, I guess it's old, but I don't watch many videos so I am usually behind the curve on what's going on with stuff like planned collisions which I don't use myself in the game.

Basically a system starts out highly chaotic, and planets of high mass attract smaller object to run into them, making them bigger and bigger. Planets can have highly elliptical orbits whilst others have your average circular orbits. They may never run into each other for millions of years even, but eventually they'll run into eachother. N-body physics. This is how Thea ran into us, or vice versa depending on perspective.

See this is the thing: "conflicting orbits" is an oxymoron. If they conflict they are not orbits. That's why you'd need "orbital hiccups", as you say, to make this happen.

But do the planned "orbits" in this game where collisions are supposed to happen look like "hiccups"?

And I would guess that systems in their early phases of development, where these sorts of collisions tend to happen, would have lots of debris flying around, and not look as clean and orderly as ours. The planets themselves would look different too, probably not as round, etc.

You are designing a system to start from a static point in time, so yes. If an orbit has shifted to conflict with another one, thanks to some mysterious event before your commanders arrival, why would it be unrealistic to have that capability.

Yeah, that video is from before incidental planet smashing was a thing

Erm.. I don't know if you know the definition of an orbit..

or·bit
ˈôrbit/
noun

1. 1.
   the curved path of a celestial object or spacecraft around a star, planet, or moon, especially a periodic elliptical revolution.
   synonyms:course, path, circuit, track, trajectory,rotation, revolution, circle;
   rarecircumgyration
   "the monthly orbit of the Moon"

Fair enough. I guess I should try the feature myself someday.

From a pure game mechanics standpoint I'll just say that I wouldn't want to have this feature in a small system, because of the massive decrease in the battlefield size it would lead to.

Squishy, the key term is "periodic".

It's nice for making a time constraint. Like- you have twenty minutes to destroy your opponent, or you both die.

Or ten minutes after you begin your starting planet is eliminated so no one can take advantage of the eco there when others have fled. It's an interesting gameplay feature, you don't have to use it.

I did accidentally blow up half the planets on one of my systems.

That's another reason I don't like it. I like games that have the potential to stretch out for hours, if the opponents are matched evenly enough. 20 minutes feels like a mini-game to me, not a proper game. And it's because of the scale that I love PA so much.

It's a game, and deliberately setting up collision courses is something some people could like.

I think the point is though Icy is it's just an option. It's quite nice for a small game (1 v 1, 2 v 2) to create a scenario. It's a bit like the 'lava' maps in TA:Spring where lava rises removing levels of a battlefield on a time (forcing players into a smaller and smaller play area causing chaos!).

Not to everyone's taste I grant you, but a fun option to experiment with imo.

When you have a gas giant throwing the orbits of planets when they just get that little bit too close, it happens in real life. I'd imagine it actually pretty common.

Think about an asteroid running into another, those two asteroids were still orbiting but it turned out... they ran into eachother! Because their orbits always intersected but it took millions of years for it to be just right.

That can happen with planets too, just not nearly as common.

I'd love to have a system with hundred's of asteroids all on unique collision courses with planets, it would be mayhem. But all we have is moons.

It's astonishing we've survived long enough as a species to create PA (and all the underlying technology / software that makes it possible) without being blown up by some catastrophe or other when you think about it!

Periodic just means repeating at intervals. It's entirely possible for two planets orbiting something to collide with each other. And it's happened before. "Conflicting orbits" isn't an oxymoron; it just means the orbital paths of two bodies cross each other, which isn't actually uncommon (in real life, not just talking about the game). But just because orbits intersect, it doesn't mean the planets are both at the point of intersection at the same time, so a collision can take thousands or millions of years to occur in such a situation. Eg:

That would be amazing.

That's why I don't like stuff like the "Cheddar Cup". It all feels like gimmicks to me. Of course people like different things, but when I am posting I am of course talking about what I like and don't like. And I don't like little experiments, or messing around with little options. I like gigantic epic battles that reach the maximum possible in terms of units, planets, players, duration, etc. That's why I think I would not like planned collisions, even if I managed to get over the "unrealistic" thing. Asteroids would be fine of course.