Does the entire planet still explode if a small moon is halleyed into it?

All I want to know. The planet crashing is the most fun part of the game and it's completely stupid when a size 50 planet can destroy a size 2000 one. Why even build on a large planet when they're that fragile? Ruins most of my custom maps too.

I think the asteroid smashing stayed the same

Yep. Planet smashes are still as they were in PA.

Here's what I mean:




It's completely absurd. That moon is smaller than an average asteroid and meant to be just a minor nuke that only needs 1 Halley. The lava planet meanwhile is the centerpoint of this map, an enormous planet called Nemesis that after 1 hour of playtime comes crashing into the system from far away, literally eating up all the other planets one by one in the span of less than a minute unless someone gets the metal planet before then.

It's a very fun and incredibly spectacular map, and you can imagine how long I spent tuning the orbits to make it work.

But now, the unstoppable lava planet can be destroyed by a pebble, and once it arrives I assume it will also get destroyed by the first planet it hits.

This NEEDS to be changed. I love the new collision effect, but the target planet should only be destroyed if the Halley planet is equivalent or larger in size/mass ... It was so cool before with the various crater sizes you could get, and sometimes two planets would even graze eachother, tearing craters into both of them without destroying either planet! Please retain the kind of dynamic planet interactions that made the game so unique.

I gotta agree with takfloyd, all the end-game content seems a bit superficial if it only takes 1 asteroid to obliterate a planet. Why would anyone do anything but rush the smallest Haley-able planetoid?

It's risk/reward. We start on a single planet, you rush orbital, it leaves you open for commander snipe. It plays out fairly balanced from what we've seen in the wild.

Also, according to physics, you don't need to be an equal mass of an opposing object to counter it. I'm not saying the planet-smashing mechanic is necessarily accurate with regards to physics, but then again neither is what you want them to be like.

That said, what you have achieved with your map is fantastic; I didn't realise orbits could be used in such a way. I hope you're able to resolve issues in time, regardless of how it works out.

At first I hated it too. But there is no fix so it's here to stay. Now I'm okay with it. Might even be semi realistic bc even small moons are massive solar bodies.

It may be balanced for the kind of competitive games seen in ranked, but one of the biggest complaints from critics is precisely how bland this game is on a competitive level. That's not where the soul of the game is!

The real draw of this game is and has always been the massive games with many players and huge systems, and THAT's where this just doesn't fly. The new way may be "balanced", but it's not fun, and it completely hampers creativity in system design.

I used to run games frequently, drawing from a sizeable pool of my custom systems that all have real personality to them, with every planet carefully customized and tons of versatility in design, meaning no game was ever the same. And an important part of that is allowing for stuff like a low-risk-low-reward moon that needs 1 halley but will only leave a crater, versus a gigantic moon that needs 10 halleys but can destroy any planet outright. This kind of dynamism is paramount. Now there's no point in ever going for a larger planet, whether for halleys or settlement.

Here's another of my systems. I would have taken a System Editor screenshot, but *OPENING A SYSTEM IN THE EDITOR NOW RESETS THE ORBITS OF ALL PLANETS*, just another game breaking bug, so this in-game screenshot will have to do:


See all the interweaving orbits? The thing about this map is that everyone starts on the big water planet, but it constantly gets bombarded with tiny little lava moons so remaining there is risky. The moons barely do more damage than a nuke and the water planet is huuuge, but it adds an exciting element of tension to the system. Again, now the entire water planet will get destroyed by the first lava moon.

I'm pretty sure few people have contributed as much to creativity and uniqueness in system design as me and my compatriot. Anyone who's played on our systems knows how dynamic a game of PA can really be - it doesn't have to be just blobs of ground units crashing into eachother as the critics say.

How can you then treat your biggest fans like this? Ruining the work your players have done in your game is the worst PR I can think of. I've always defended PA in discussions all over the internet using these types of maps as justification for why the game isn't boring.

I strongly urge Uber to consider more than just simple systems with few planets when deciding how this works. At the very least treat minimum size moons as asteroids (I heard asteroids still work the old way, haven't checked though). Or just at least add in the OPTION to have the old mechanics, for fricks sake! A checkbox in the system editor or in the custom game options or something.

I also prefer that the planet or item has to be as big or bigger than the planet itself to smash it, being able to rush so fast, after which the whole planet goes is stupid imo.

personally I prefer the newer model, it makes the whole game feel like its teetering on a knifes edge once everyones got orbital and t2, it gets rid of certain options for map-making, but if adds a few too.

If the realism aspect of the moon smashing thing is bothering people, then consider this.

Looking at the relative speeds and sizes of the bodies involved, the impact of a small PA moon would almost certianly melt the entire crust of the planet, essentially totally destroying it for few hundred years.

The larger moons would at minimum impart enough energy to totally destabilize the planet, converting it into a homogenous ball of molten rock surrounded by a cloud of debris. Said debris cloud would probably constitute a significant fraction of the total mass of both bodies, and as it fell back over time it would continue to impart energy, keeping the planet molten for a very long time.

More likely, the impact's energy would exceed the gravitational binding energy of the planet, blasting it apart completely, as the graphics in PA portray.

Either way, impacts between celestial bodies of this scale are never "just nukes". The only question is how many hundreds or thousands of years (if ever) before the crust of the planet reforms.

I'll crunch the numbers later to be sure, but this is what I think would happen.

As a modder of other games myself, you lost my sympathy when you pulled this.

Uber should never hamper their design for the sake of keeping modded features intact. You are investing too much ego in your own work. Or someone elses' work, in the case I've read you horribly wrong.

If the only reason you defend PA is this type of map, one of which you've worked on . . . it isn't a threat to infer that you will stop doing so. All you've been promoting is your content - not the game itself.

@stevenrs11 It's not about realism, in which case by the way two colliding planets would NEVER completely annihilate both planets anyway. It's about gameplay potential.

@Gorbles This isn't modding, I've never worked on mods precisely for the reason that a developer should never restrict themselves based on other people's modifications to their games, so I feel like it's a waste of time unless the game is in its final state.

All I've done is made systems with the official System Editor. And ruining content players have created in the game itself is extremely bad form, especially when it's SO EASY to just leave the option up to the system creators!

Ahh, sorry, I class mapping as a form of modding. It kinda is in a way; the way it's integrated into the social aspect of the game is far superior to most other forms of mapping tools though.

However, there is no "ruining" here. You implemented a very specific orbit (which I've already said I found cool) to emulate a specific effect. It doesn't work ideally with the new build (correct?). The developers don't work on systems bearing in mind every single community-built system out there. There is no intent to ruin your work, and the way you're phrasing it is unnecessarily hostile.

Just my two pence. I'll stop taking up your time here.

Don't get me wrong, my systems no longer working as intended is just the lesser half of the problem. I'm using them to illustrate the bigger issue, which is how counter-intuitive and unfun the new mechanics are in a large game, regardless of creator.

A small moon is now a guaranteed total kill on any planet once a player claims it - you can rush a couple of Halleys before your opponents have time to react or invade, and once launched, it can't be stopped. And in a system with 10 planets, it's extremely easy to pull off. I've only played a few games so far in Titans, but they've all ended with this kind of cheese tactic, which used to be counterbalanced by the fact that such a small planet couldn't do that much damage.

No, I get what you're saying, but your explanation is risk/reward for going orbital at all; I'm talking about rushing a small 1-engine moon/asteroid as opposed to a 4-engine planet. It's just going to be the easiest thing to lob at the enemy every time, because it's a guaranteed kill.

Exactly. If you are the most powerful player in a crowded game and control the biggest planet, how do you defend yourself when it's so easy for your half dozen opponents to rush a Halley on any random small moon and instantly destroy everything you have? You can't stop them all. Suddenly the best tactic isn't to conquer the biggest planet, but rather to hide out on small moons so you can both easily instakill your opponents and avoid being targeted yourself.

Furthermore, the Annihilaser is suddenly completely outmatched by throwing pebbles. Why bother trying to defend an entire huge metal planet while you construct the catalysts when 1 Halley on an asteroid does the same job but doesn't paint a huge target on your butt, AND is extremely trivial to defend since you only need a few Anti-Nukes and Umbrellas to make an airtight defense?

The thing is, in real life small planet impacting large planet will destroy everything on that planets, but it wont destroy planet itself. Destoying all units on planet + firestorm effect.

This. Thing from kickstarter trailer.

-planets that survived an impact can be re-colonised.
-there could be some high metal concentration in the impact crater, creating a valuable strategic point of resources
-planets could reform themselves after a while (accelerated for obvious reasons), making a brand new planet using the procedural generator.
The "new" planet could be lava at first before cooling down and retransforming little by little into it's previous biome.
-creating a larger planet using the mass of two smaller moons. (taking into account the lost mass from ejected asteroids/small belts that make hazardous rains of debris at the surface of the newborn planet)
-orbit modification, destabilizing the whole system and forcing the player to leave the surface before the next collision occur (using some kind of prediction with countdown between collision of x planet and y moon)
Can be used for strategic purpose: launch a small asteroid into a moon to destabilize that moon's orbit and eventually make a massive collision with the enemy planet (cheaper and safer than building tons of halley in the probably already colonized and well defended moon), kill two birds with one asteroid.
-counter attack by launching another asteroid into the incoming asteroid?