Gas Giants and moons

From my understanding it is typical for gas giants to have lots of moons.

Jupiter for example has 66 moons.

Saturn has 62.

And from my understanding this is pretty common with other gas giants we know of in the galaxy, these are just the two closest to home we can get a good accurate count on.

Yet in your typical space strategy game, In many cases Gas giants end up not having any moons at all. I am hoping this will not be the case in PA. Maybe 60+ would be a bit excessive for hardware reasons, but I am hoping they'll commonly have 10+ making them real centers of conflict.

Different maps for different conflicts.

60+ moons around a single planet may indeed be a bit excessive.

That said, I will be playing out that situation at least once... because, well, it could be amazing too.

That does raise a question, what of rings?

It would make for an amazing map, even if there were significantly less moon.

On the subject of rings, I am kind of hoping this translates into a generous number of asteroids, and also an artistic ring made up of smaller rocks. The smaller rocks are just an artistic element, from a game play perspective they are too small to use, but are still present in some fashion artistically.

Yeah, 60 is too many, but the idea that they just have more in general is cool and helps make gas giants more attractive to players, making them more worthwhile to fight for.

Mike

also jupiter is MASSIVE in real life compared to earth where as in game i imagine the difference wont tend to any where near as drastic (although you could probably make it so with options).

So you've got the earth down there... being tiny... and thats a little under 12 thousand miles in diameter. the planet represented in the concept footage wass 2.5 kilometers in diameter. with a moon about the size of venus.


what i'm getting at is that i agree 60 moons is to many.

The only way I could see a gas giant with anywhere near 60 moons would be in a conflict that was specifically designed to take place on/around a single planet.

More than 10 seems like a bit much. I'm betting that around half of that will probably be common.

I would love to see at least multiple moons around gas giants.

For reference, the earth's moon is the biggest moon in the solar system compared to the body it orbits (Ganymede is the actual largest moon, of Jupiter)

So moons can get quite somewhat smaller.

would love 5-10 moons/astroids around a gas giant.. or an entire map of 40 moons with 1 or 2 small planets! think bout playing a game in a setting like Avatar!

It's worth mentioning that most of the "moons" around Jupiter and Saturn are actually quite small. So while there are lots of them, it's not like you're getting 60 planets or anything. Most of them are only a tiny fraction of the size of earths moon.

Of course also a tiny few of them are a bit larger than this as well.

To be more precise, 62 of Jupiter's moons are more on the scale of asteroids than what you think of when someone says "moon". The four you can name off the top of your head are the only ones that are Moon-sized.

Would be very cool to see some sort of resource extraction structure that could be utilized to harvest from the rings of a gas giant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Jupiter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Saturn

Yes, most of the "moons" around these gas giants are under 10km across. They're tiny. A few are much much larger. But still generally still smaller than earths moon.

And saying that. I suddenly have an image of my head of a couple commanders fighting to the death on the only rock left available . . . A moon less than 10 km across. Epic.

60 moons? Is that all? Why is everyone thinking so small?

heh, I think a single gas giant map would be pretty epic tbh. One super gas giant + 100 rocks to leapfrog to and from for some more intimate close quarters but still epic scale combat? /yesPlz

<3

That is all!

If the underlying sentiment is true (which I doubt ), I may just come back in a dozen or so years and donate a few thousands posthumously.

AWESOME!