Can we get a Planet Smashing preview?

I was playing a 3v3 with a couple of friends the other day versus the AI, in a system with 4 or 5 planets. A couple of us were holding down a planet together, and the other guy was doing pretty well and had expanded to a moon that he was building Halleys on to launch at a planet where the AI had a firm hold.

Suddenly, without warning the game ended for me and my mate on the planet with me. Then I heard an 'Oops' from the other guy. He had launched his moon at the enemy planet, but on its route it had coincided with the path of our planet and blew us up instead!

It was certainly an amusing turn to the game, but I don't think that it should be pretty much left down to chance as it was in this case, as the guy had no idea what route the moon was going to take to its target.

I expect that once you get familiar with the route that interplanetary transits take, you can probably be better placed to avoid things such as these, but would it be possible to add some sort of preview mode to the Annihilate option? Something like what Kerbal does with maneuver planning where you can see the path and how other bodies move in relation to it, or even if it is just a dotted line on the system map so you can estimate roughly where bodies might be when your moon crosses its orbit.

It does show the path when you launch the planet, *and* you can cancel the launch, so it could have been avoided if he was paying attention

Would be cooler if you could set waypoints yourself Or drive planet manually You wouldn't have to smash it necessarily, just fly around like a space cowboy on your planet.
jk

Why can't it just preview the path for you though? Having to hit launch and then cancel it instead to be able to do this, seems a bit clumsy don't you think?

That'd be hilarious. I hope we get to switch Orbits again soon ^^

Yeah it isn't ideal.

You can switch orbits if your 'creative' with the controls

Select a target, hit launch, watch in orbital view until its where you want it and hit 'cancel' and the moon will settle into a stable orbit (just make sure it doesn't wind up in the path of another planet XD). This technique can also be used to pull the old 'switcheroo' on your opponent. Launch at one planet, they all run for a gate to another planet, and at last minute you cancel and target the planet they ran to They don't realise whats happening until your moon comes into view...

That'd be awesome with the Unit Cannon and Capture tools!

*Play chicken with opponent, they evacuate as you come into Orbit.*
"Oh, what a nice evacuated base!"
*Launches Fabbers down with an Area Capture Command.*
*Opponent returns to destroy their own base.*

You are not hte first that hit himself:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/suicide-by-halley.63620/

Even a Dev admist to accidently anni-lasering his own commander.

And then there was Brian who rode with his comander on the halyed object...
Hence the light Tanks name was fixed to Bolo - Brian only lives once.

Now I want to do that. Put the nuke range limit back on, and then do a fly by. that would be awesome.

Should lobbing celestial bodies around the solar system be a risk-free endeavour?

But whoever has the technology to move celestial bodies around should be able to do the simple math to figure out if they'll hit something other than their target instead. These sentient bots should be doing the calculations in nanoseconds.

So, like a spaceship then?

I seem to remember Uber saying they didn't want things such as weather effects or earthquakes, random meteors etc as they didn't want random elements affecting the gameplay, I would say that this is kinda in the same boat.

I'm not saying that it shouldn't be possible to accidentally smash the wrong planet, but that it shouldn't be left down to luck, or the mechanic of stopping and starting the halleys to see the actual path.

There is always a risk of hitting something in the way, and enemies wont know if you are going to smash or just move, so they will probably start focusing on that planet.