Strategic relevance of planetary revolution periods

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by Rentapulous, May 22, 2013.

  1. Rentapulous

    Rentapulous Member

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    Stemmed by a debate in another topic (Backers' Lounge, so no link. Sorry.), I'd like to see the period of revolution of a planet be of strategic relevance.
    I'm a big fan of the idea that a small, simple mechanic that can branch into large, complicated scenarios is the best approach to clever gameplay, and I think one quite simple way to make things interesting is to implement range limits on planet-hopping tech. The result would be that invasion forces would need to launch within a window of opportunity while the target planet is in range. This would make a fast moving planet a bonus, as raiding opportunities would arise much more frequently. One could even arrange to have home bases on diametrically opposed planets on the same orbit, effectively forcing the armies to planet-hop to reach their target.
    I am of course aware that in reality, once escape velocity is reached, there is no real maximum range on how far something can travel in a frictionless vacuum with no gravity, but for the sake of gameplay, I'm sure we can explain it away somehow.

    As an afterthought, it could make a good way to distinguish between different biomes by letting different planet types have different densities, which would affect their mass and thus their revolution period.
  2. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    You're allowed to link it. Only Backers can open the link to Backer Forum topics and it would be useful to at least name the topic so those not in the know are aware of the topic you were referencing.

    I'm also willing to bet that it's not a "sensitive" topic anyway. 90% of the Backers Lounge is just General Discussion 2.0

    ---

    As to your point: I can only think about garat's Blog and how, what many people think of as a conceptually simple mechanic, can be a complete arse to code.

    Remember, this isn't a game about orbital mechanics and optimum insertion opportunity windows. It's about Robots mining Metal with metal pumps, building fusion reactors in less than a minute and colonising asteroids to build engine clusters the size of a small city to push them into collision courses with the "bad" Robots' bases.

    Remember what you're dealing with.
  3. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    In the end, all you need to do is put planets in an elliptical orbit and make them rotate, and you have strategic relevance. You can just keep using the original code for moving from one planet to the next (that you'd need anyway) and calculate the travel time based on whatever the current distance between the planets is.

    The code is needed regardless. The strategic relevance is a cool feature that will arise automatically from the design, I'd say.
  4. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    Is it?
    Why?

    I can see "Good to have", but not "Needed". Sounds like a lot of constantly fluctuating numbers to me... numbers that need to be recalculated every single frame...
  5. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    Well, I'm assuming we're already going to have:

    1) spinning planets with orbits
    2) travel between them

    That's all the code you need to allow strategic relevance. The only thing you'll need to do is make sure the balance is such that the way planets spin and orbit and the method of travel allow for interesting situations ingame.

    But if you can travel from A to B, you have all the code needed to make it strategically interesting to do so; all you have to do is vary how fast and far the various objects move.

    Although I did kinda ignore the artifical distance limit mentioned in the post (but I doubt it'd be complex) I think the strategic interactions would be much more interesting if you allow movement from any planet to any planet. It's just a matter of time. If the travel times are suitably long (or short) depending on when and where you launch, then you're there.

    (Something as simple as the difference of launching from a point where you are looking directly at your lunar target from the planet surface vs launching from the dark side of the planet to the dark side of the moon can be enough to make things interesting. I mean; the distance difference would be huge if you need to make a bunch of circular motions vs a straight line. There's your timing windows right there, and they'll be included in the game anyway.)
  6. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    Depends if the actual quantifiable and accurate distance between planets is measured, or if planets fall into "Bands" of 'Near the Sun', 'A Little Further Away from the Sun', 'Past the Asteroid Belt' and 'Super Long Ways Away'
    :p
  7. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    I'd hope they use the actual distances between planets. It'll look really weird to see a rocket fly at 10x speed just because you happened to have launched it when two planets where far apart in their orbit even though they're usually in the same band around the sun.

    That'd probably be a big immersion breaker.
  8. nanolathe

    nanolathe Post Master General

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    Depends on what makes the computer not explode. Astrophysics calculations... aren't that simple, y'know?

    It can be fudged... sure. But if you're going to fudge it why wouldn't you strip down the calculation as far as it could go? We're not watching rockets in space... we're watching them leave orbit and then land. We don't see them in transit very much.

    Of course this is all Devil's Advocate.

    Uber, as far as I know, were still on the fence as to just HOW detailed they want their physics to be.
  9. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    Fortunately we can skip 99.9% of them and still get the effect right. All we have to do is calculate how to hit a target moving in a stable orbit. And that's the same calculation as is used to calculate hit trajectories on the planet surface.

    The complex astrophysics simulation is widely different stuff. If the Uber guys can't figure out how to calculate the distance between two points in a 3d space, I'm going to have to give up my trust in their abilities :p That's easy. There's literally no excuse to not use that distance.

    They can even give up on showing them go on a proper course, but not being able to simply predict when a rocket arrives on a planet based on their current position and their orbit means your programmers don't know basic math :p
  10. Rentapulous

    Rentapulous Member

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    I think pluisjen and I are thinking along similar lines. The one huge difference between PA and its predecessors is the presence of multiple planets, and I'd like to see that really matter. Honestly you might be right about traveling to any planet, just taking a long time, but I suppose we'll have time during the alpha to decide which we like better. As for the physics, I'm ok with them being fudged.
  11. Rentapulous

    Rentapulous Member

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    Correct me if I'm misinterpreting you, pluisgen, but I believe this is EXACTLY what you're suggesting? It's certainly what I'm thinking of. I'm not too interested in the trajectory being perfectly simulated (my roommates work for SpaceX and Aerospace, so I hear enough about trajectories already) I just want the strategic consequences to be there.
  12. Pluisjen

    Pluisjen Member

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    Yeah exactly. You can strip down the calculation really far and still end up with actual distance between two moving objects in 3d space, because that's trivially simple to calculate. You don't have to do slingshot mechanics, or take into account gravity, or escape velocity, or really much of anything, and you'll still be able to make distance matter a lot.

    Stripping the calculation down further than that would be silly; after all even bullets use that type of calculation to determine how to fly to hit their target, and we have thousands of those on the screen at times without issue.

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