Planetary Rotation Period end effects of asteroid hits

So, was thinking a little about planet rotation periods. I was thinking that this should be quick enough, that it has real impact in games, so on the order of 5-25 minutes.

I don't the think the period needs to be linearly related to radius, so big planets could have a fairly fast rotation. And smaller ones, could be slow. Though probably not the extremes.

What I would like to see though, is when you throw a large asteroid at the planet - assuming you don't destroy the planet completely, you may affect its rotational spin rate, either increasing to decreasing the rate.

The change would be based on a number of factors: mass, mass of asteroid, velocity of asteroid, did the asteroid break up on entry - like in the video, angle of incident of hit, etc.

I don't think the change needs to be accurate - we want it to be fun at the end of the day - so, a noticeable change might be interesting, example.

5 minute to 10 minute
25 minute to 20 minutes
10 minutes to 5 minutes

Something the user will notice - assuming they survived the impact

this would make the planet more dynamic as the war progresses to orbital bombardment.

Slim

For this to have any impact on the game would imply the fact that a planet's rotation already has an effect.........but you mentioned no such thing.

Mike

It would be better if rocks from the planet broke of posing a threat to other nearby planets.

Speaking about asteroid timing.

I think 5 minutes is a long enough time if you get a warning that says something like

"Large entity approaching"

5 minutes would be just enough time to either get ready to defend or evacuate the local facilities, the short time would add some intense properties too.

Maybe after the asteroid has hit the planet the force causes the remains of the planet to orbit around it creating a moon.

Planet rotation would only really have impact on day-night cycling, and that based on the planet's revolution. The impact on the planet alone would be minimal.

Where this might be very interesting is on moons; tidally-locked moons would play very differently than their non-tidally-locked cousins. Consider a moon with a "dark side". A player could land there and establish a relatively safe (possibly hidden, if radar-shadow is in the game) forward base. The other side of the moon would be a great place for artillery, and could send a constant barrage of fiery death onto the planet. A non-tidally-locked moon with a similar set-up would have windows of firing opportunity, and windows of forward-base exposure and vulnerability.

I've commented on this kind of thing before and got a "don't see why not" kind of response. So that's encouraging. Now, I don't really think asteroid impacts should be able to adjust such things; that's a lot of force being imparted in a very short amount of time, and would probably make the planet/moon/asteroid in question a ball of molten goo. That said, I don't see why one couldn't position one of those giant asteroid-moving rockets on its side, and slow/speed-up rotation (yeah, the physics of this are questionable too, but it's a thought).

The point behind such a maneuver? Other than tidally-locking a moon, I can't think of one... Maybe as a last minute attempt to avoid an asteroid impact on a critical base or some such?

Hey Mike, yes my idea is that the rotation of the planet would affect things like solar collectors. Due to the day / night cycle, so speeding up / slowing down that rotation would affect you.

If you were on a tidally locked planet with no night/day cycle (so locked with the sun), on the light side, you may decide to rely solely on solar power, then someone hits the planet hard, and causes a spin, now as you previously day-time-only base slips in to night, all your power goes away (or more likely significant reduction)

Likewise, if someone has a moon based artillary, with the change in rotation speed, you may be more or less in the path of fire - assuming artillary can only fire upon the side facing the moon - Uber have not really talked much about that aspect yet. Same goes for Unit Cannon

Slim

Hey mrknowie, I like this idea a lot! You can put all your support infrastructure on the dark side, so, safe from strategic missiles maybe, but certainly hidden from radar, then put your artillary on the near/dark side deliniator, and pound the planet with minmal units showing

Slim

On the moon thing, what might also be nice is eliptical orbits, so perhaps you can only use Moon based Artillary / Unit Cannon for shorter times, this might give the poor guy left on planet a restbite from continual attack.
Obviously, the eliptical orbit would need to be fairly rapid, otherwise, it would frustrate everyone, perhaps every 5-10 mins, with a 2-3 minute window when it is close enough.

This is obviously unrealistic! But, the aim is for it to be fun, with strategic and tactical possibilities.

Slim

When it comes to big, interplanetary games, I think planetary rotation is going to play more of a role than people think. You can't hit a unit if you can't aim at it That is assuming that it rotates horizontally compared to the sun, of course. Assuming we stay on a 2-D plane, vertical rotation wouldn't get you out of the line of fire, it might just change how solar plays into energy production (if it does at all.) There's so many cool things about this game that's going to factor into gameplay. I can't even think to predict half of the impacts of them.

The problem with altering the rotation of planets is the pointlessness of it. It does have a cosmetic effect, but it doesn't truly affect the game mechanics. See, a player can get to the side apposing them by orbiting the planet to get to the destination. If I launch a artillery shell to the opposite side of another planet, I just orbit them to get there - it has no affect. It could be made to alter game mechanics by, for example, hiding the dark side under a thick fog that blocks electromagnetic signals but only condenses at night, but in terms of weaponry it doesn't really matter.

I have to point out that no rotation helps players navigate on the planets. Like in the combat livesteam, it was very easy to see that 1 player was on the light side of the planet, another was on the light side and the last one was in the shadow border between the two.

I guess my point is that while the planetary rotation would add a LOT of depth, it would also ad a lot of confusion. Especially to new players who is also trying to get a hang of being attacked from all sides, the economy, ect.

But we don't worry about that right??? :lol:

http://what-if.xkcd.com/26/

This is a calculation to remove leap seconds by speeding up/slowing down the earth.

TL;DR: You're obliterating everything on the surface long before it changes the rotation by even a second.

Also i don't see the point of this at all.