Adjustable asteroid impact speeds

Something that would be fun and add a bit more fun to asteroids is if you could choose from a dropdown box (low,medium,high,maximum) how hard you want the asteroid to hit that planet,moon,other asteroid etc. In the trailer you saw how whe the kinetic strike was engaged the asteroid slingshoted around the sun. What if this was able to be controlled to a degree?
Basically when you select low the asteroid you selected will take into account the size of it and how much power it can output through engines to determine how many if any slingshots around a celestial body it needs to hit the target. The ammount of time before it was ready to strike the target would vary as if you were to select maximum it would have to try and figure out a possible route to gain the speeds required mayber even having to make several loops around the sun and planets to gain the speed required to hit something. This would be useful because I want plenty of time to prepare for someone attempting to crack my planet like an egg as opposed to someone trying to clear out a landing zone whic while damaging can be dealt with easier.
The second part of this relates to the sentence above, impact zones. That way you could select more in depth options besides just a small asteroid not hitting as hard as a large asteroid. Okay it dosn't hit as hard, but do you want it to hit the hardest or do you want to preserve the planet for a more precise attack? Or you can select maximum for the obvious outcome of maximum destruction at the cost of the time it will take to achieve the momentum you requested to hit your target with.

Asteroids are planetary destruction weapons. The speed is irrelevant because you wouldn't even waste the fuel to be able to adjust it, and achieving a lower speed in many cases would require more fuel. For small scale destruction, use inter-planetary nukes. Asteroids power should be dependant on their mass, not speed. The speed at which it hits should just be the most efficient possible.

Why should there just be one basic point to an asteroid strike? If that's all it's for hardly anyone would use them as they'd be considered a waste of resources that destroys a major source of more resources you could have used. Nukes can only cover a certain area in damage while with an asteroid I can outfit it yet still choose the damage I want done, allowing for more 'ready when I need it' gameplay. There's no telling how effective if at all interplanetary nuclear weapons and whatever else similar would be. And speed does matter, if I throw a gumball at earth the same speed I hit earth with a couch, you're going to see quite a difference in impact. At the very least an asteroid is a far higher chance of actually hitting the planet since most enemies will have anti-nuclear missile capabilities.

An asteroid of x mass hitting a planet. At a certain point the speed of the collision doesnt matter. The sheer amount of mass plus gravity means the target planet is screwed. If you have engines to slow it down the force of the engines blasting towards the planet will have the same effect.

Well, no, speed will ALWAYS have an effect; it's a law of physics. However, yeah, not much distinction between "completely destroyed" and "completely destroyed a bit more"

My argument isn't from a realism standpoint, but a gameplay one. Why add another meaningless variable? Whether you use speed, or mass, or both, the end result is the same. Using both just adds an unneeded level of complexity.

I don't really see the point of choosing any option other than "hit as hard as possible" as this does the most to reduce reaction time as well as reduce the usefulness of defences. There is no situation where you would want to only 'lightly' collide with the planet. You're on the planet yourself - so what? You know what you are doing so get off.

As far as i am concerned engines are only there to throw the asteroid out of orbit and to make course adjustments to make sure the enemy based is literally crushed and not just merely scorched, blasted and then ripped apart.

there may be (wished) outcomes of planet vs. asteroid in which the planet isn't completely destroyed (even if the asteroid impacted as planned). For example, if you want to use an asteroid to take out your enemy and let's say a quarter of the planet surface.
It depends a bit on how the asteroid stuff is implemented.

But while there may be use for a variable size of impact, this can always be arranged, as mentioned before, by using a lager or smaller asteroid. Adding speed is not strictly necessary to reach that goal.
Also from an UI viewpoint, on the receiving end of an asteroid attack it might be easier to judge the degree of impending doom when the asteroid size is the ultimate measure for it.
(it's also a bit of a movie moment, in asteroid movies I can't remember people worrying much about the speed of an asteroid, the focus is always more on the size. )

completely agree, controlling the speed of an asteroid might sound cool but theres a lot more involved maintaining a relative degree of realism in the necessary space maneuvers needed to control an asteroids final impact velocity than it might seem, its way easier and probably more fun to just use a bigger or smaller rock to control the damage and a lot easier to judge the probable damage if your on the receiving end

It's been a while since we had a stupid poll about a stupid thing, I was starting to get withdrawal symptoms!

Thanks OP!

While it’s more complex I like the thought of having to slingshot my asteroid around the sun to get the planet ruining speed I need. Were if I just pull a random asteroid out of orbit it won’t annihilate the whole planet (I have done simular types of things in SC, using nukes in a defensive manner and such, droping them on forward bases and deadly armies).

It also prevents asteroids from becoming unbalanced, so you get sufficient warning that such a thing is coming (if your paying attention).

Well a big asteroid is coming towards earth, this is a scale of all asteroids' speed relative to the earth, categorized by what would happen. This also assumes that we detected it at the same distance from earth. Assume that this is a logarithmic scale as words cannot describe how big section 3 is compared to the first 2.

|1|-2-|--------------------------------------------------3----------------------------|

Category 1 - This wont hit earth, or the sun will die from old age before it does.
Category 2 - This will hit earth, however there is a good chance that we will learn to live on other planets or at least the current gen will die of old age before it does. This is also the "will cause non-total damage" category, although in almost all cases gravity will move the rock into Category 3 (case and point, this is what a 1km wide drop of water does when it falls from 2 km. Imagine the same thing, except solid rock, and falling from >200km)
Category 3 -Everything dies. If you are lucky you can land immediately after the fallout and only have to live through an ash-induced ice age (big deal for robots). If you are unlucky then you will have to wait until the volcanic activity to settle and for the crust to reform. If you are very unlucky you have just created a brand new debris field.

I would like to point out that the pc gamer interview (http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/15/plane ... interview/) states that both size and speed will make a difference on the amount of destruction.

If we will be able to control the speed somehow using the UI (or just build more or less engines) is debatable.

It'll likely be a simpler inertia equation where # of engines and mass of the asteroid will give you a total speed, rate of acceleration, final damage to a planet and so on.

What situation would benefit from having an asteroid moving slower than its maximum possible speed?

As mentioned, You may decide to destroy half the planet instead of the whole planet.

The obvious answer would be to just build less engines, but what if you want to have a astroid ready incase you want to destroy a world so you build aloot of engines, but then decide to just destroy half?

Offcourse i guess we could just ctrl+k (self destruct) half the engines or something.

I'd submit the obvious answer would be to just start with a smaller asteroid, or keep the big'un and take over a new smaller asteroid.

This is because you may find that the number of engines required to achieve a "destroy only half" speed with a bigger/denser asteroid is still more than to get a smaller asteroid to do the same. This becomes even more of a problem because at the slower speed, your opponent has more opportunity to strike out and try to deflect or destroy the asteroid, so by the time it hits the surface (if at all) it may not have enough mass left over to do even the amount of damage you intended with the initial number of engines.

I would recommend reclaiming the engines instead of self-destructing, if you just want to re-use the same asteroid right now and don't have time. This would be a more forgiving option for having to change strategies, because you'd still be able to recover the investment of the engines, instead of having to "waste" them by just running at a lower power.

This also gives a more tangible economic cost to the amount of destruction that can be wrought, and the twisty knobs of balance are easier to control because there aren't as many variables to account for.

Perhaps you then use the revenue of the reclaimed engines to spend on a couple smaller asteroids, and just use your big asteroid to draw as much anti-asteroid fire as possible, so that when your smaller asteroids built using your re-invested resources come along, your opponent has fewer resources to counter you?

I guess I don't have to point out what the point of slower than full speed is as several have already pointed out why I'd want that. Though as to why if you had a bigger asteroid why not just use a smaller one I'm simply going from the trailer. Bigger asteroid mean more hits before it's destroyed to where t burns up in the atmosphere. Smaller while it should be cheaper dosn't have that toughness and would be better for a less defended planet. Also in most movies where they don't mention speed it's generally about the side of the one from "Armegeddon" so yeah the speed isn't going to be a big problem and I'd be surprised if selecting low speed didn't smash the planet. I was hoping people would take the idea of strategic uses of choosing how much you want destroyed as opposed to "confirm planet destruction" or "confirm planet 90 percent destruction" if you chose a smaller asteroid.

The trailer has little to no bearing on the actual balance and implementation of specific mechanics, and we can't draw many specific conclusions from it. We know they want asteroids, and that there will be defensive weapons, but not how effective they are. We don't even know if the asteroid used was actually "big" or "small" on the scale they will offer, or if the scale will even offer different choices in that regard.

Wait, you're using movies as the reference for why you think this would be a good idea? You are aware of the special brand of "Hollywood science"?

Heck, some of the stuff in Armageddon doesn't even align with reality, such as using lasers to deflect asteroids (thanks XKCD): http://proceedings.aip.org/resource/2/apcpcs/664/1/509_1?bypassSSO=1

It's not that folks don't want that strategy, but the specific method you suggested may not be the best way to do that. I strongly believe the UI for the asteroid system will need to provide much of the information you've talked about, but I think that for the mechanics feeding that information, there won't be a lot of variables for the player to fiddle with other than total number of engines constructed.

Having engines running less than full power is always inefficient, and it would never be more effective to build more engines and cut power to them than to have just not built as many in the first place.

Maybe not from the trailer, but the pc gamer interview (linked in one of my previus posts) cleary says that the size of the astroid will make a difference, i doubt mavor would even mention the size if there werent more choices then one.

As said before, you may wish to have a astroid ready for total plannetary destruction "just incase" (I doubt its something that you construct easily or/and with great speed, its most likely a big project) but then decide to destroy less then its capable of (Half a planet maybe). Offcourse its not such a big deal since you do have options (If you have time, rebuild on a new astroid or reclaim some of the engines, if you dont have time just self destruct some of then engines).

A lot of this discussion involves interface stuff, how to control the speed, etc. The game should probably handle all this stuff for you. I envision targeting a location on a planet, and then selecting the size of the impact desired. Depending on the position and current velocity of the asteroid, the number of engines, and the asteroid's size, you'll get a "time to impact".

The idea of choosing desired results instead of involved actions is the basis of clean interface design. If I have to type in engine settings, asteroid speed and heading, or anything other than selecting the location and size of the impact crater, I'm going to be disappoint.

I think "impact velocity" is hard to control if you are just trying to modify it's speed.
The way to do this is by choosing what orbit or angle the asteroid hits the planet.


The "fastest" impact would basically be a 90degrees impact with the planet surface.
To do this the asteroid has to thrust against the orbit until it has lost all orbital velocity.
Then the planet will just pull the comet at high speed to the planet. To help the engines can then try to enhance this effect by thrusting directly at the planet. A hit like this would be compared to a super powerfull nuke with a circular impact crater (if the planet survives)


The "slowest" impact would be where a comet is sent on a grazing course with the planet where the comet would actually fly by the planet though within the atmosphere. Air resistance will reduce the speed until it hasnt got enough to escape the atmosphere anymore, resulting in a impact with moderate speed. However the impact zone would probably be more stretched out as during landing it would "slowely" travel through the planet surface, leaving a trail of destruction.

A way to influence the final impact speed is also to vary the "starting point" of the final descent of the comet. If a comet is being "de-orbited" from low orbit it's impact would be slow, though if the comet is far away from the planet (like starting from a different planet) it would have a very high impact speed.

If youre interested in this kind of things, try Kerbal Space Program it teaches a lot about orbital physics. I know that the system they use might be too realistic, though i can imagine the same physics being used but all orbital manouvres being automated and calculated by the game instead of by the user.