Gravity, or Electricity and Magnetism.

Curious on how the solar systems are going to hold themselves together, as gravity by itself is chaotic, weak, and would lead to system breakup over time.

It may be best to just treat everything on prewritten orbital paths and asteroid movement could be handled like slow naval forces.

Thoughts? Discussion?

if our own solar system is any kind of example the game should be over by then.

as to asteroid movement, im waiting to see what type of movement it is, whether its based in reality ie. thrusting retro grade in order to decrease orbital velocity or going the scifi route and just heading straight towards your target as full acceleration, (personally i'm on the fence about this one, part of me hopes it'll be like kerbal space programs semi realistic space navigation but the other half just wants to build cool engines in asteroids and blow stuff up)

Not sure if you're trolling. I've seen your negative comments a few places around the forum, so, if that's the case, haha, very funny.

In case you're not, here's a basic overview of fundamental forces, and how they play together.
There are three fundamental forces (as we currently understand things), Gravity, Electromagnetism/electroweak, and Strong nuclear. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction

Gravity is the weakest, and thus manifests the over large scales. This is why planets and stars are big. Only something large like this can be held together by gravity. We experience gravity only because we live on a planet much larger than us.

Electromagnetism is what drives everyday chemistry and the forces on the scale that we are familiar with. Light runs on electromagnetism as well. The Weak nuclear force also falls under this category, and governs some nuclear processes. We deal with electromagnetism all the time, as it is the force from which arises mechanical collisions and nearly all of our every-day experiences.

The Strong Nuclear force has nearly all of its effect at the sub-atomic level. It keeps the nucleus of atoms from flying apart. Nearly all of the Strong forces effects are too small for us to notice, but some quantum processes are affected by it, processes that our bodies use to run. Without it, atoms would not exist, and with them would go all conventional matter.

So, as you can see, all three forces are required for planets to exist, but gravity is generally the one that you pay attention to, as the other two average out on the planetary scale. Gravity is neither chaotic, nor does it lead to solar system dissolution. In any case, electromagnetic forces rarely have an effect on the stability of orbital systems.

not trolling, but wondering, are you advocating that uber simulate these forces in game? or that they assign large planetary bodies not designed for movement to preset orbital tracks and apply a simplified form of celestial body physics to only the asteroids

I suspect, whatever my opinion is, that Uber will implement abstractions of the effects of these forces. Direct simulation of fundamental forces takes too much processing power, and yields an inferior result compared to more abstracted game rules.

Even if this were a massive scale-spanning simulator game (and not an RTS) local abstraction of fundamental forces would be preferable to continuous direct simulation.

The problem with that is, almost any disruption to an orbit leads to a cataclysmic loss of stability if just gravity is applied as a model. And since earth has been in plenty of different spots in the solar system according to historical records from many civilizations. The earth should be on a more comet like orbit due to the disruption when the Saturn formation broke as it entered into the solar system. Which means, that something, most likely a force related to electricity and magnetism generated by the sun is responsible for the orbits. Otherwise, there is no way gravity could have stabilized earths orbit before life would have died out. Even humans survived so somehow things very quickly sorted themselves out. (turn up the time on universe sandbox, earth gets flung right out of the system right away... not a perfect model but it doesn't even work for the most basic idea of how most believe it works.) Interesting reads: http://www.thunderbolts.info and http://www.saturniancosmology.org

Food for thought, if gravity was always at a constant rate, how could the dinosaurs have lived? Their bones, if their muscles could lift their weight would snap under the weight they would be under current gravity. Which leads me to conclude that either gravity is something that has changed, or, earth has gained substantial mass from an outside source in our history. Perhaps gravity is something the core of a planet can be 'charged' or 'discharged' with when interacting with other celestial bodies? Comets are very electrical and they often explode with the force that even core boiling cant explain, yet the magnitude of the explosion is on par with capacitors that have been overloaded.

Nonetheless, you are correct. Coding a exact system of how we think everything works isn't a good idea. But it would be cool as hell to see the possibility of modding some of this stuff in at a later time and enjoy some celestial destruction and planetary lightning bolts. I at least hope there is some interaction when smashing asteroids into planets, IE, huge electrical discharges from surface to object before impact. Both realistic, and awesome.

Orbital paths are not difficult to calculate. Just don't fret over gravity wells.

There /are/ a lot of changes in gravity for celestial bodies (for instance, the Sun is actually getting lighter from the fusion reaction, while every body in the solar system is getting heavier by collecting space dust/junk falling into their gravitational pull). There's also earthquakes and such which can change the orbits, inclinations, etc. of planets and moons.

However, this is very large-scale stuff happening over years, even millenia. An abstraction for a game that might last 5 minutes will be perfectly fine.

Even 20 minutes with an x factor accelerated time frame wouldn't be that much of a problem, so you have a good point. Might need to be looked at tho for Galactic War if it is persistent at all times. But at this point its definitely too soon to think about that. (still want to see electrical interaction between positively and negatively charged celestial objects. Or a way to code that in.)

I don't know where the op learned their physics, but gravity is neither unstable or chaotic. It is very stable and practically free to actually simulate it in great detail on a computer.

By great detail, I don't mean calculating per atom, but simulating gravity per large (asteroid+) object is extremely easy and not CPU intensive.

And if you're worried about orbit decay or something (which requires calculating something *else*, an orbit that considers nothing but mass and gravity will never decay), that happens on the order of billions of years. Unless galactic wars takes place over a significant fraction of the age of the universe, friction, solar winds and tidal forces don't need to be simulated.

I find it unlikely that Uber will actually simulate gravity, but not because they couldn't or that it would be hard. Just because they're not going for realism.

Edit: Also, they won't simulate it because as I pointed out, there would be no difference between simply calculating an orbit and actually simulating gravity, so why bother?

Current accepted astro physics model is vastly incomplete and doesn't account for all variables at this time as it does not incorporate plasma physics to the degree that it exists within solar activity.
Gravity simulation was only one of my suggestions tho.

A reason to bother simulating gravity would be to account for unit deployment and movement on smaller celestial bodies like moons or very large asteroids. Maybe even orbital units.

Moons and 'roids simply because I read in an interview, IGN maybe, can't remember, that Mavor said unit cannons firing from the moon to the planet would only be possible because of the lower gravity, so doing the same on the planet to the moon would be impossible.

If they are seriously adding that as a mechanic, I can see gravity physics coming into play more often than not.

EDIT: It was a PC Gamer article! Here's the link PA Revealed

Some people have serious misconceptions as to how gravity works . . .

Too much Mass Effect maybe? :lol:

I dont even know where to start, this is some seriously crackpot stuff without a published peer review article in sight. These assertions on how the fundamental forces of the universe work are about as credible as assertions that the world was going to end with the predictions of the Mayans. Basing theories on historic data of past civilisations is not a metric for determining the mechanics of the universe.

There is a body of scientific literature numbering in the hundreds of thousands of peer reviewed journals building up our understanding of physics, from the very small to the unfathomably large.

Have you ever tried to get scientists to agree on something? it is pretty bloody difficult, the default position in any real scientific endeavour is to prove your theory incorrect. If it stands up to your own scrutiny and then that of peers in the scientific community, then you can be assured you are on the right track.

Also you are confusing incomplete theories with the notion that the theory must be wrong. This is a fallacy. The theories the scientific community currently holds are our best explanation for the way the universe works with the weight of hundreds of years of observations, experimentation, discussion, and debate in the face of what ever society believed at the time (flat earth, earth at the centre of the universe, early earth creation and so on). The scientific community add to these theories and revise them all the time, getting closer to knowing the full story.

A few crackpots have not come up with some revelation that everything we know is wrong. Particularly ones whose backgrounds include being a visual artist teaching photography with "a lifetime of curiosity". Hell even a well qualified research scientist with a lifetime of ACTUALLY working on these theories could not propose such a thing without expecting to be scrutinised by the scientific world.

I apologise if this comes off as ranty but I am seeing a little too much of this sort of thing coming out of the wood work in my day to day experience. If you want to become well versed in an area of science you dont read one book that claims to have it all figured out and that "current science has it all wrong". Or ten or even one hundred. You read peer reviewed journals, become involved in the scientific community and actually try and understand the mechanics yourself for years before you can begin trying to suggest theories of your own, and then TEST them. Not take armchair pot shots at things like "how could the dinosaurs exist" without knowing a thing about load distribution in biological systems, gravitation and astrophysics.

On the topic of PA, I dont think that we would be seeing a completely accurate depiction of orbital mechanics, more a simplified version. Not necessarily because it would take too much processing power or be impossible to implement. But for the sake of keeping the focus on tactical decisions and combat.

I would like gravity to factor into gameplay, and I am sure that gravity will be a consideration. For example something like unit cannons not being able to escape gravity wells over a certain size, limiting their use to moons and asteroids.

Like alcheon I am conflicted on what I would like to see in terms of orbital mechanics and gravity but I think this is the kind of thing we are likely to see. The gameplay visualisation for instance showed the selection of the KEW and then the trajectory when the target was selected. I imagine in larger maps with more celestial bodies a series of possible trajectories for your newly constructed KEW would pop up, which could include different gravitational slingshots and flight times. This would give the player a choice between choosing longer travel times and possible flights past enemy owned planets, opening up risk of interception, for faster impact velocities, and vice versa.

Those examples are of course only my thoughts on how that kind of system could be implemented and I could be completely wrong where those examples are concerned but I think that is the kind of depth we are likely to see with orbital mechanics and gravity.

Thanks for bringing this thread on-topic.
I agree that it would be frustrating to deal with actual complex gravitational calcs when finding firing solutions between worlds (and perhaps shooting between worlds will be limited to a very few units anyhow?), even if it's all handled automatically. Of course, dealing with real inter-planetary distances would make this kind of thing silly anyhow, even hyper-velocity rounds will take days or months to travel between planets... although a "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" style kinetic attack could be pretty sweet.

Ultimately though, I would stick with symbolic orbital mechanics, rather than actual gravitational simulation. It will make everyone's job easier, developer and player alike.

Yeah sorry about my prior post, the scientist in me couldn't let it lie http://xkcd.com/386/

I dont think that we would have to be concerned about travel times being depicted in a true to life fashion regardless of the mechanic employed, the kind of stylistic aesthetic being used to depict planets to me would be evidence of that as it wouldn't take long to get around a whole planet vs a planet in reality. I think what you are saying about symbolic mechanics sounds about right however.

I am reminded of the fact that there is not going to be space combat in the game, due to all the issues that would present from an engine and UI perspective, on top of which it isn't that kind of game. I think the same logic applies here for orbital mechanics and gravity to an extent. I think they will only be implemented as far as they serve the act of getting the battle going planet/moon/asteroid side.

The focus of the game is throwing armies against each other and once orbital/gravity mechanics begin becoming too involved then it becomes increasingly about them and less about the strategic combat. Again I would like to see such things impact game play but I am unsure how in depth the depiction of these mechanisms could be before they ceased adding to the experience and detracted from the RTS.

It's not as cut and dried as you like to make out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem

which post are you responding to?