Messing with Planet and Moon rotation

What i've gathered from different threads in this forum is that it's basically confirmed that planets will have orbits and rotation to some unnamed (and debated) degree of complexity. I would like to add that if such mechanics are implemented i would not only like to mess with the orbits of said astrologic bodies, i would also like to use my giant mega thrusters (tm) to alternatively influence the rotation.

Imagine building a secret base on the dark side of a tidal locked moon and then use your thrusters to rotate it so that your base now faces the planet and the man in the moon can rain down awesome on the enemy base.

Or imagine you scout an incoming KEW and use your thrusters to accelerate the planets rotation so that the other side of your planet gets hit instead (Bonus points if it contains your enemies base).

Or think about how halting a planets rotation makes one side burn in the searing face of the sun (Although that admittedly requires some additional simulation effort that might just be too diverting from the main game).

Awesome ideas! I hadn't even considered the strategic value of rotating entire worlds! I'd imagine this would only be do-able on smaller planetoids .... like the stuff coming in the "metal planets" update we're currently only 5K away from? :mrgreen:

I think that would be very interesting but if both teams are trying to avoid the asteroid a whole planet might leave orbit and end up in the sun (not saying that's a bad thing).

I think it'll be more appropriate in Galactic War, I have my fingers crossed.

Maybe adding to what guzwaatensen said about planets burning up, why not be able to crash planets into the sun using thrusters?

If they stick with simpler mechanics then 2 players trying to spin the planet could still be done without throwing planets into the sun, whoever had more/bigger engines built would be the one who gets to rotate the planet! I think this could be a hilarious game mechanic, but dunno if it's something Uber's considered/would implement?

Just so long as changing rotation doesn't make everything on the surface go flying off into space XD I don't need an "e-brake" approach to planet rotation, though funny I think it'd be a pain

Uhh, some idea i got from reading another thread: Stopping the rotation of your planet with your enemy on the dark side makes all his solar plants instantly useless.

And as archer6110 pointed out this makes for an interesting game mechanic, if you start building boosters your enemy will either have to join you in an arms race over control of the planets rotation or make dam sure that he's otherwise prepared for whatever you are up to...

For reference, accidentally dropping a planet into a sun is hard (in real life).

some numbers:
Earth orbits at ~30km/s
To make the Earth fall into the Sun requires 0km/s (any velocity will keep you in orbit)
To make Earth escape from the Suns gravity ~42km/s

So it takes less velocity change(hence energy) to go from orbital speed to deep space speed.

I'm all for crazy stuff btw, I just like to inform the discussion before we throw physics out the window and drive mars into Jupiter.

All these ideas are great and would add to the possible strategies a lot!

Maybe if a planet's side gets too hot by stopping rotation, water evaporates, the magma will rise up through volcanoes! And on the other side, seas get frozen, trapping the ships until the ice melts.

We're not necessarily throwing physics out the window. We're just changing the scale. I'm assuming that in PA things will be quite large compared to the distances between them and thrusters will be ridiculously powerful. A lot of orbital mechanics problems are easy to brute force when you can just decelerate rapidly in to an orbit.

I want to be able to mess with rotation. An important question is how much should be simulated?

Should sideways thrusters change the velocity of the planet? As in say you have a sideways thruster pointing east and your opponent has one on the opposite side of the planet pointing west. If both of them are activated then the rotation speed should not change but the velocity of the planet would change. This effect would be present but harder to control if there is only a single thruster active.

Should rotations be arbitrary? This system could involve angular momentum and let people place thrusters on the poles of the planet to gradually change the axis of rotation. This system would let planets rotate in any way.

I know this is all fairly simple Newtonian mechanics stuff. The question is would the game work or is it better to remove a lot of the complexity and say these sideways thrusters just speed up or slow down the rotation planet around a fixed axis?

Sorry, I was being hyperbolic there. By throwing out physics I meant making the giant engines of awesome that we'll be using.

And yes with big enough engines you can do anything. My point was more that dropping a planet (or anything really) is not an accidental thing. And also that you have other options besides cooking your enemies, you can also drop kick them out the door.

I think in this case too much realism would be a bad thing. I'd say if it's a "angular engine" it can only influence rotation. Even if you, or your enemy, build one on the opposite side and if they are equally strong and that would result in a direction force, it should still just influence rotation. It will be hard for some players to understand why their game ended in a draw with their playing field burning in the sun because of some obscure (in this case) realistic interpretation of their unrealistic actions....

No, not any velociy keeps you in orbit. You don't have to hit the sun in the center to hit it. Also, changing into any Orbit which comes too close to it will fry everything without an actuall collision.
On an other note, what you say about orbital and deep space speed is completely wrong. Velocity isn't just a value, it also has a direction. The escape velocity normally points away from the center of the gravity source, the orbital velocity is tangential to the orbit. In other words: simply comparing their value doesn't tell you anything about how much energy you need to change the velocity of the earth from one to the other.


As for the topic in question:
Shooting for awesome shouldn't kill immersion. And I feel anything above moving asteroids is simply too unrealistic to not do that. Remember, sci-fi is so awesome, because it still is within at least some realistic framework.

Really? I mean I have seen most of the debates and been in on a few. Though ideas and counter-arguements are being thrown around like confetti I've gathered that there is zero confirmation on planet orbit & rotation. Most people just seem to expect it because "They're planets" and/or they think it would be "cool".

But in terms of a solid yes/no? I've seen nothing.

Again, I was being hyperbolic about the throwing physics out...

And yes I simplified it, I was referring to the tangential component of the velocity, radial velocity wouldn't matter, but near circular orbits are mostly tangential. The escape velocity is not actually vertical, it's tangential. It's the velocity that turns your orbit from an ellipse to a parabola. See Escape Velocity on wiki.

In orbital mechanics the velocity used is generally the velocity along your orbital path, so change in velocity is actually used fairly often to talk about fuel/propulsion energy left. Technically, bad physics but effectively the same for a given object. Since an orbit is an ellipse at any point along it you can create a tangent vector for velocity and all you need is speed (and direction of orbit).

And the reason I said 0 as opposed to tiny number is that a previous post specially said dropping into the Sun, and while massive the Sun is fairly small compared to the size of the orbits.

tl;dr I got this, hold my beer. /s

I have to point out that he was right. To decelerate from 30km/s to 0km/s, you need a delta-v of 30km/s. To accelerate from 30km/s to 48km/s, you need a delta-v of 18km/s. So yes, you need far less energy to attain escape velocity and get out of the system than to actually plunge into the star. Even if you don't have to completely stop to hit the star (because it's not just a point), the difference is not as big as 12km/s.
The in-game effect would, apart from the direction the engines are pointed at, would be that it would take less thrusting time to attain escape velocity than fall trajectory, as I guess there won't be planetary thruster fuel managed.
This excluding the presence of a second star in the system, obviously.

Non, this nitpicking aside,

I'll borrow that for a while...

OK OK, before we all get too excited about engines rotating the planet, lets all read what the some genuine scientists have to say about it...

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/lastwo ... opped.html

Now I know it's about awesome, not realism etc etc. But we have to draw the line somewhere! lol

While I agree stopping the earth's rotation is a gargantuan if not (for us) impossible task, and that stopping the rotation would have immensely detrimental effects (you'd suddenly feel that gravity in your bones, for one), not a single person commenting on that question seems to have a related degree.

Or it might just be that I'm old-fashioned and think the word scientist should be reserved for something other than "some random person posting on the internet"

Oh come on now, the first chap is a senior lecturer at Trinity College Cambridge! Lets face it, you dont get there without the relevant degree...

too harsh I know ;(

Well, thrusting asteroids in the manner seen in the video is equally as hard, if not harder, than stopping rotation. I don't see how that can be taken as realistic enough but changing planetary rotation can't.