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

In real life planets and asteroids are not accelerated to relativistic velocities via planetary scale engines, as much as i dont like new mechanic, its realistic

im active again wohooo

There is NOTHING realistic about ANYTHING in Planetary Annihilation, please for the love of the almighty Unit Cannon stop using realism as an argument for anything in this game!

The important thing is whether the mechanic is A: Fun and B: Balanced. At the moment, I argue that it's neither of those. It's just anticlimatic and cheap.

The new effect is awesome though, so I really hope they just keep the effect, but re-implement the old mechanics or part of them, at least as an option.

Giant death bots that would exhibit their own gravity aren't exactly realistic either.

I don't like this change.

An option would be nice, or have it based on relative size/mass.

What?! im not using realism as argument here, im merely saying that guy's argument above that planet would be still in one piece and not cloud of debris only aplies to normal collisions, not planetary engine accelerated ones to insane velocities

There's also a fact that this discovery youtube vid is actualy not realistic anyway, no ultra massive flash, small planet is barely starting to glow red when surfaces connect (it would glow yellowish white and turn liquid by that point) but biggest error is in shockwave, in reality it would be extremely fast and hot, shred clouds and rip the ground, followed closely by plasma firestorm, ground near impact would not eject, it would vaporise, creating a rushing tide of plasma fire, actual ejecta would be further but still near impact border, ejected as molten chunks at extremely step angle, and ejected unequaly, not in some weird conical formation, and deffinetly not that high, and what the hell is with those buildings or geological formation still standing?! all building would cease to exist, and mountains, shores and continets would be altered, flattened, not by much but still significantly, and heat from the impact along with melted remains of that little planet would distribute trought entire planet, going straight trought the core, entire swaths of land should be completely molten, and all of this assuming little planet was denser than earth, if its less dense then entire scenario would be completely different (less dense flattens on the surface of denser, more dense penetrates to the core, its, more or less, like different bullets vs different armour, only planet sized)



that one vid is way more realistic

now back to the topic, i also dont like that new mechanic, and want craters back, but thats not going to happen period

and what a sad world you live in that you say nothing is pa is realistic and possible, only way you can reach that conclusion is measuring size of everything relative to those tiny planets, said tiny planets are obvious gameplay abstraction and engine limitation

Look at that orange into art in PA titans, the one with atlas in background, and use that as indicator how big units really are, normal units are in several meters range, atlas however has its back legs behind the horizon, if thats any indication, atlas is mount everest sized, not enought to generate its own gravity (not a significant ammount anyway) and other titans probably also are, if you stretch material science and power generation capability to those that could be achieved in very far away future thats actualy kinda possible, doxes and bolos are rather realistic, and even nanolathe is kinda plausible

Heck, there is a theoretical field called stellar enginering, if science advances like it always does we could be able to build artificial planets and planetary sized engines at some point, so even metal planets and halleys are not completely in the realm of fantasy (i have a 'realistic' planet with halleys in signature if somebody wants to see how PA might look like without engine limitations and cartoony graphics)

Please don't derail the thread with walls of text about irrelevant tangents. If you want the old mechanics to return like the rest of us, just voice your support meaningfully and concisely. I also wasn't just referring to you when I said not to bring realism into the discussion, but also the other guy. We need to stay on topic to get anywhere.

Uber does listen to the community, especially when we have solid arguments, which we do in this case. They've made changes that didn't go over well and changed it back in the past. I'm hoping they will this time too. But we won't reach their ears if the thread is full of off-topic discussions.

Once again, Ill preface this by saying this only applies if the realism aspect of a small moon destroying a planet bothers you. Turns out, it shouldn't.

To destroy a planet, you need to put into it more energy than its total gravitational binding energy, which is quite a bit. Relativistic impacts carry quite a bit of energy, too. Lets see which one is bigger.

If we use our solar system as a template for the average sizes of the PA systems, we can get a good idea of how fast the planets are moving when we smash them because we know about how far they have to go. Maths incoming-

It takes around 45 seconds for a object about twice as far out to hit a target that is 'average' distance, meaning it crossed at least 2 AU, or 300,000,000. That's about 20 times the speed of light. To get a passenger on the impactor to experience that level of time dilation, the impactor would have to contain far more energy in the form of kinetic energy than if all of its matter where converted to energy.

At that speed (~.999 c), a pebble from the incoming object would contain enough energy to destroy a planet. The entire moon sized object would not only destroy the planet, it would shatter the entire solar system, blasting all the planets and the sun into atomized, superheated gas that would rapidly expand into interstellar space.

That said, the PA planets orbit the sun faster than real ones do. So, the entire PA universe is either 1) very small and very dense or 2) planetary time is sped way up. Its easier to go with #2 for this one, because we can scale the times based on how long it takes a PA planet to orbit the sun vs earth.

It takes around 20 minutes for an average planet to orbit the sun vs our 1 year. If scale everything down by .001, we can get what hopefully is a more realistic impact.

Turns out that number is still several orders of magnitude larger than the gravitational binding energy of even the very largest planets. The impact would be so violent than not only would it completely disintegrate both planets and convert them into high energy, rapidly expanding plasma, said cloud of plasma would expand and engulf every other planet in the solar system. While the other planets would technically 'survive', their entire surfaces would be heated white hot and anything on them would just... go away.

So we can count ourselves lucky that every planetary impact doesn't result in a draw.

Trying to calc this that way is meaningless, PA gameplay is a complete abstraction, you wont get anywhere trying to measure it directly, it actualy appears that gameplay planet scale and system scale are completely separate, uber should do a little more to flesh out lore a bit

Most reasonable assumption is that ALL planets, distanses, speeds and systems are supposed to be real life standard ones, that means all planets are supposed to orbit with standard speeds, halley planets are somewhere about 5x faster than orbiting planets, which gives us somewhere about 400km/s to 3000km/s

oribital probably goes faster than that, still not relativistic, ALL OF IT while nanolathe is supposed to build lazor towers within seconds, commanders survive 50 megaton nukes to the face, doxes measure in 5 meters, manhattans are as big as small house, and titans are the size of goddamn 5 kilometers (background in pa titans menu tells us this much)

this is a massive disparity in time scales here, it would take entire hours or days to get from one end of the system to the other, all of it while massive battles rage across entire planet, this scale is VERY reasonable, and suddenly everything makes sense huh?

now BACK TO THE GODDAMN TOPIC

Stop, crater system is not going to return, uber ain't got time or money for that, actualy now they have money, but it could be spent better anyway, not to mention after several games of anihhilating planets i must say they fit perfectly in current balance, i can only see a surface melting and wiping mechanic being added, not actual craters, not any more, period

As much as i liked craters, i must admit they DONT FIT IN THE GAME ANYMORE

And if you dont want wall of text, don't read it, its not directed at you anyway, and its hardly of topic, we are talking about exploding planets after all

Guys come on, see the elephant in the room. Relativistic velocities? Seriously? That's an instant solar escape trajectory, it takes a mere 42 km/s from Earth.

In fact, most of the time, Halley slows planets down so they orbit around the sun or fall on their parent planet, and yes, their relative speed is still high, but nowhere in the neighborhood of relativistic. Not to mention the collision always happens at the apohelion where the kinetic energy is the lowest.

as much as I like the attempt to make the asteroids and small moons more important as weapons, I'm not a fan of the 1 shot kill for all planets, it just makes the games seem pointless when someone can just destroy a huge planet or annihilaser with 1 asteroid from the belt, I would prefer it if they brought back the relative destruction they caused, so that small asteroids make a large dent and larger ones destroy the planet, this could be an option in a setting if they really don't want to force it back in.

A planet in PA will explode even if you sneeze on it

I don't like this change either, I think it stinks.

First off, either every planet/asteroid now has to need the same number of halleys since there's no need to go for anything other than the minimum. Previously there was far more tactical thought - am I confident enough in my aim to go for the 1-halley asteroid and drop it directly on the commander, or do I go for the 5-halley planet with much greater area of effect?

Secondly it trivialises the annihilazor - why go through the hassle of building and defending all those catalysts when I can destroy the target planet far more quickly and easily with a single small asteroid?

My friends and I mostly play on custom systems. We're going through our designs and removing all asteroids, and switching all planets to 0 Halleys. We're pretty disappointed that one of the selling features of this game has been gutted.

I just now only play on systems with no Halley slots.

It would be better if uber simply allowed us to set number of halleys on asteroids, along with possible randomisation (like spawn delay variance value, but for halleys) along with possibility to set asteroids size up to 300 radius, set metal, and even spawn points (why not?!) similarly, we need option to set up asteroid field like any other orbit, including option to make it orbit things (gas giant asteroid ring anyone?)

and finaly they need to spawn asteroids directly in field, not outside it, its ugly

I don't think anyone likes the change- Including the devs, but that it's just not really plausible to make the planets just create craters... We've had smashing for a very very long time and there's always been an issue with the craters... Either they were pathable- or units would insta-die if they stepped on them. =/

Unpathable craters were just fine - there was never any need to traverse the craters anyway. It's a little inelegant but so is a lot of stuff in this game, and it's certainly not worth trading a main selling point of the game, one that's been there and everyone's been happy with ever since launch, just for some added "elegance".

Has anyone ever had a problem with the craters working like that? I doubt it. Especially since they looked awesome.

This whole situation is reminiscent of when Blizzard removed Carriers from the Starcraft II expansion. Despite the unit being heavily flawed, the fans were ENRAGED that such an iconic unit was removed just because it didn't fit perfectly with Blizzard's new balance plan. And Blizzard immediately doubled back, listened to the fans, and put the Carrier back in, even if it meant having a unit that barely anyone ever used.

The takeaway is this: As a developer, you don't remove a major feature that people have grown attached to from your game unless it's for an extremely good reason. All you'll do is push a portion of your fans away, and that's the last thing Uber needs right now.

Craters were removed for extremely good reason, that reason being they were ugly, hacky, imbalanced, never worked and game is better without them, this is not even remotely similar to blizzard carrier controversy, carrier was a detailed, elegant unit that worked as it was intented to, if you want a proper comparison then said carrier would need to be ugly boxy thing with messed polygons, that spawns drones as hacky projectiles and not actual units, because engine doesnt support proper carrier mechanic and remodeling it would be too hard, lenghty and costly, while instead it was removed and replaced with a flying air factory with awesome models and effects, and yet people whine about getting old hacky solution back, because flying air factory 'too op and counter intuitive'

And i actualy find old mechanic counter intuitive and anticlimatic, because in impact crater everything dies, but everything slightly beyond survives like nothing ever happened, and you want THAT back?! i liked it ONLY because you could run from it, or build proxy bases full of cheap stuff that appear to be bigger than your main and decieve someone into smashing that, it was hilarious

The new design doesn't make much sense, though. If Halley-ing a single asteroid or small planet is more resource efficient/less risky than any of the other end-game options, that will become the standard. That's poor design in a game with as many end-game options as it has.

What matters to me is that the design encourages players to use a multitude of end-game options.

Hey has every commander his own Experimental Titan? Just didn`t found the answer, jet.

I could do with the old impacts I mean in one of my recent custom systems I made the Asteroids from the belt take aprox. 5/7 mins to reach the main planets giving time to blow up the 1 Halley BUT it is nonsense if your big planet gets blown to pieces by a tiny asteroid.

No. Every advanced fabber has access to their own Titan, excepting the Orbital fabber, which can build all of them, and the naval fabber, which can build none of them.