GW, AI threw a PLANET!?!? at me?

So was playing GW trying to get enough of a beach head on the other planet to kill everything there when i get an alarm and then a planet crashes into my commander/base and i lose....
Really? how it that a feasible super weapon and how do counter it? throw my planet?

You invade before they do it to you , is how. Or nukes. Nukes work too.

Yup, that cost me my first galactic war aswell! I think the alert for CELESTIAL BODY MOVEMENT should be bigger!

how do you throw a planet? srsly?

For now try to keep an eye at smashables, scout often and pre-empt. Invade them first if possible and kill halleys. I had massive close calls with the AI, on several occasions I was just about able to snipe the enemy commander or get mine off-planet while it was already flying.

Anyone more knowledgable: what happens when you kill the minimum amount of halleys on an already flying smashable?

how? invading a planet that the ai has no competition in... is extremely hard. especially if you don't have space tech. like in 1 game I managed to even make the beachhead, and survive the air assault... and he still landed the planet on me because it was not nearly enough time to start scouring the surface.

then again, I wound up winning that fight though... his commander landed on a friendly ai planet, and died about 1 second before my commander became an interplanetary pancake, lol.

as to how: you need superweapons tech and ability to build t2 structures, to build the 'halley'

Step 1: make sure the planet you are on is smashable. You can check this using the drop-down in the top-right cornet. If it has grey 'arrows' on it, it is smashable.

Step 2: Get yourself to advanced tech and make sure you have an Adv. Fabricator of some sort

Step 3: Use your advanced engineer to build the 'Halley' which is a giant engine.

The 'arrows' I mentioned earlier in step 1? Those are representations of the Halley. The number of arrows = the number of Halleys you must build to allow you to smash the planet.

Step 4: Build as many Halleys as you need. Once you have built them all, you'll see a button in the top right "Send to Annihilate".

Step 5: Press that button, select a target, enjoy fireworks.

Guess you didn't really get the title of this game...

louder?

Sorian must be laughing maniacally right now.... His AI is all grown up and throwing planets and everything!

In galactic war, yes. But that's because all the tech stuff isn't nearly complete. In a normal game, that's how you would do it. Also, you can just evac your commander to another planet, and save him that way.

You need to colonise a planet that is moveable (as 'engine' markers next to its name in the planet list top right).

To 'throw' the planet you need to build 'Halley' engines on it (available with a t2 fabber), the number of engines needed is shown by the number of engine slots.

Once you have all engines built a 'ready to annihilate' option appears, click on that, then pick you're target planet and pick a spot (usually on the enemy commanders head is a good bet ).

The planet will fly off and annihilate you're opponent killing everything on the target planet.

One side note, make sure to get you're commander *off* the planet before you send it to smash (unless you feel like dr Strangelove and ride the bomb to it's destination )

Update, as stated above you will need to unlock the appropriate tech before you'll have Halley engines available. If you want to try this set up a skirmish game against the AI as then you have access to all tech.

What difficulty where playing on? I've see the AI build Halley's but not use them. But then, I choose the planet with the fewest engines when I have a choice, and try to make getting the smashable planet a priority when there is only one.

It keeps flying.

If you stop an already-moving object from accelerating further, does it stop moving?

I've seen the GW AI throw planets even in normal difficulty. I've seen it twice, but both times I was lucky enough that it targeted one of my sub commanders on a different moon.

Newtonian physics is one thing, gameplay mechanics are another. Also, it wouldn't necessarily mean that it would hit it's target even if it did keep flying.

From a purely gameplay point of view, it'd be good to be able to kill halleys and stop a smash while it happens. It's very exciting to do that actually.

not to be rude or anything but the game is called Planetary Annihilation, and that you can annihilate planets is everywhere in the marketting. I just find it kind of funny you were so shocked by this and act like it's out of place in this game xD

It derps out and doesn't hit its target if the Halleys are destroyed. Flies into the sun.

depends on where the energy is put into the orbit, how much energy is put in, how long, etc, etc. Theres actually alot of celestial body mechanics you can find online on like wikipedia and stuff to describe how it works. Definitely some pretty cool stuff and would definitely recommend the read. Personally, I think that destroying halleys should simply prevent the planet's orbit from changing any more than it already has. It could be kinda cool to then use halleys defensively to set up a screen of planets around your home base, thus preventing an asteroid halley'd at you by your opponent from ever connecting.

very interesting meta game ideas but I'm not sure if the engine is coded to handle these sorts of changes to the way orbits are changed by inputs of energy while in game. Do Halley's affect a planet's physics or is it just some sort of animation that physics plays no role in? I'm all for including more physics into the game but only if it doesn't suck an overly large amount of development time / require serious modifications to the engine that might actually do more harm than good

I was saying what it currently does in-game.