Asteroid field idea/discussion thread

So as people know, unit cannons are being put on a back burner, and that uber has stated that asteroids are how you solve sieges, by wiping planets out so you never haver to go there.

Fair enough.

So lets get a cracking on the ideas and talks on getting asteroids fully into a defualt game, and by having their use be HOW games are played, and how games are ended.

Destroy the battlefield as we go!

So to start things off, here is my ideas:

Asteroid belt: A part of a system that is perilous and dangerous to even approach, making asteroids within inaccessible, until the point that one is able to drift just far enough away to be accessible to the player, limited metal to no metal, these pebbles are the smallest asteroids available to the player.

A asteroid belt in the system generator can be configured to release a number of asteroids to the players at a time, giving access to number of roid re-spawns if not infinite, time between spawning, and number of active roids at a time.

Thus giving players access to a replenish able number of asteroids to weaponize and expend during a multi planet battle, as players degrade the battlefields, destroying metal spots, and terraforming worlds into lava hellscapes.

Thus bringing games of PA into periods of intense surface conflict, culminating in pauses in the action as factions burn particular worlds, leading to gold rushes for new exploitable resources.

Commanders will be caught, most will wait up high in space, if not just at safety rocks out in space before returning.

Ultimately it might be bad for default play to have a infinite number of re-spawning rocks, particularly with no system to make smaller asteroid planets be completely be destroyed, so a smaller cap, released over, say 30mins to an hour, might be sufficient.

But do you also have ideas about making this kind of play even more fun?

And what about the use of small rocks to kinda planet turtle? Is roiding them sufficient, or could orbital play with asteroids be expanded into a proper space fight?

Id love to hear what you guys think!

Some ideas:

-Comets from the oort cloud
-a few metal spots within the belt that can be built on by orbital fabbers
-having larger asteroids (small moons) within the belt that are coloniseable, but risk being bombarded by small asteroids (nuke explosion?) every once in a while in random places.
-different types of asteroid belts depending on the distance
-ejected asteroids having their own orbit, and perhaps potentially colliding with another planet on their own? (can easily be redirected)

Asteroid belts are nice, but the commanders and economy buildings should not be allowed to be on them. It would be really annoying to have to hunt down a player who has tons of Mex and power gens spread over dozens of asteroids.

I like the idea of asteroids be small respawning rocks, but they need to be balanced properly, and can't take away the fact that planets should be the players goal for conquest not the asteroids themselves. They can't have resource viability or be able to act as a base. They are simply a tool, one that can move around the solar system and give some strategic placement or damage advantages to the players that own them.

• Asteroids do not have any metal. If they are suppose to respawn and be reused they shouldn't have the ability to build an entire economy on. The planets should be the goal of players to hold for the economy. The asteroids are just tools.
• They are Incredibly small. This makes sure a player can't just use them as a secondary base. An idea would be to make them the size 10-30 radius planet.
• Asteroids only need one halley.
  
• Players can put halleys on them, move them around the solar system or smash them into a planet. If they do smash into a planet it will be a much smaller explosion the a planet or moon. Maybe slightly larger damage area of a nuke, or even double of a nuke. The impacts look like the craters currently in the moon biome.
  
• Nukes can be launched off them. But because of their small size have both nukes, a Halley, and defenses to protect it would be hard to properly set-up and and adjust.
• If another player successfully nukes an asteroid, chucks/building space, are removed from the asteroid. A similar effect as smashing two planets together.
• If an asteroid smashes into another asteroid, the cancel eachother out.

Random Thoughts:

• Maybe an asteroid smashing into a planet that is on a movement or collision trajectory will change that planets movement vector.

To add to my idea, you could not build ON the asteroids in the belt (unless they were a small moon of course), but orbital fabbers could build orbital mining stations or something over asteroids that are clearly defined as having metal (just like metal spots) and units cannot land on non-ejected asteroids.

• Comets could be cool, but i would just use the as flashy asteroids that are already moving across the map in a elliptical orbit.
• NO METAL SPOTS ON ASTEROIDS. The planets should be the main focus, and will help direct the characters toward conflict with a limited set of goals/resources. Having metal spots floating in the middle of nowhere is redundant for skilled players, and new players will go for them eating up a considerable amount of resources to go up and get at them.
• We already have moons and small planets. We could just place small planets out there if we needed to, filling that roll. Asteroids, if they are going to serve a different purpose need to act differently from a planet you can place out there.
  
• EH, could do without. If balanced right asteroids should only vary slightly differently is size.

No for the asteroid belt mining stations. Again, the planets should be the goal of the players and funnel them into conflict. Also its a way to motivate having to take planets.

Making the asteroid small fixes the base problem. Have to pick what goes where because of base restraints would solve most players dilemmas of having to build a advance energy or a nuke launcher. And I say let a commander land on an asteroid. If they get killed because they couldn't fit a anti nuke its the players fault. Plus kickstarter backers would complain its no enough like the trailer if the commander can't land on an asteroid.

Also, in my idea, a asteroid will slowly get chunks blown out of it if a nuke successful hits, so it wouldn't be smart to put a comander on it anyway.


Note: A comet could also act as a VERY high damage asteroid (could potentially take out a large section of the planet (justified because glowing things in games signify them as powerful). And they cannot respawn.

Didn't the Commander land on a moon in the trailer? Letting the Commander lan on an asteroid would quickly turn the game into hide and seek. "Oh, you found my Commander on an asteroid and a weapon of mass death is on the way? Let me just evacuate to another one of the dozens of asteroids and start it over again."

Also, Halley'ed asteroid should not cause as much destruction as a normal sized planet. Maybe make it so they are like a more powerful nuke than a planet destroyer.

• Basically would be exactly that but would be available in games that don't necessarily have asteroid belts.
• I think it would be interesting to have a few high-yield metal asteroids within the belt that could be mined by orbital units/structures. These would be essentially impossible to defend, and would be a risky investment. (is your enemy patrolling the asteroid belt with fighters? yes? don't build asteroid stations) just an idea though.
• I should restate this idea. Being able to put planets into the asteroid belts (perhaps only moon, metal and lava biomes?) that players could colonize for a resource boost, (maybe have more metal?) but at the risk of being randomly bombed. It would only be in there if placed into the belt through the system editor.
• Don't understand what you're saying. Could you rephrase that?

I think the idea is that you could only land units on asteroids that are ejected from the belt at random intervals, not any asteroid in the belt. Because of this, there will still only be a few places that the enemy comm could be at a time, hide and seek would not happen any more than it does now.

Also, another idea:

• decaying orbits, asteroids ejected from the belt will have a randomly generated decaying orbit, so that they are either dropped into the sun, or smashed into a planet, returned to the asteroid belt, or flung out of the system. This would prevent infinite asteroids in a system at a time, and would also give your opponent a bit of a heads up to what you are doing, if one of the asteroid's orbits suddenly stabilizes.

At the very least, this would mean that occupied asteroids would be very visible, as players really need to move them to safety, or expend them, if they want to make use of them.

• I agree, as stated in the last part of my post, could a different type of orbital body with the properties of an asteroid. Acting as separate entities, in an example, shiney with a blue tail behind it, generally set up with an elliptical orbit. They are fast, so harder for a transport/orbital to get to, but if you launch them they do mass damage. Easily destroyed by nukes though.
• It seems like a waste, I still think focusing on planet gameplay with orbital bodies acting as support is a better course for the game.
• Yeah I could see that happening. But it would be easier to have players set up and asteroid belt and just use the normal system editor interface to drag and drop any planets your want in them.
• I mean, what differences could asteroids have other than size? And if they are balanced properly they will onlyy slightly vary in size.

I like what's going on here - an exploited asteroid would hardly be considered a base, then, but more of a high-orbit warship (slash projectile.)

Given that this would be the case, though - I feel like a few nuclear strikes (like 3-6 depending on the size of the rock) should completely frag an asteroid.

Also, given that such a warship's primary weapon would indisputably be its array of nuclear missiles... should there be any other interorbital weapons available? Maybe some kind of humongous bombardment laser that is interorbital ONLY, and can't target anything in its own SOI? The impact effect being like a scaled-up Holkins strike? I'd like that. I'd like the heck out of that. =P

Finally, on the subject of different types of asteroids - why not artificial ones, like the Metal Planet? Heck, they could even be cubes.

Ok I'm gonna create a list of everything we currently agree on.

• Asteroids should respawn.
  • Fixing the issue of infinite asteroids... An asteroid belt would spawn with a set number of asteroids (determined by the system maker in the editor similar to the current halley system), and a new asteroid could only spawn when a previous one is destoryed.
• Asteroids should not act as economic hubs. Whether this be a reduced size for base building or having no metal at all.
• Asteroids should have one or two halleys to move them.
• If a player uses an asteroid to smash into a planet, the explosion would only be relative to that of a nuke. Slightly more powerful, possibly double.
• If a successful nuke hits an asteroid it takes a chunk out of it. Several nuke hits would completely destroy the asteroid. The chunks taken out of the asteroid cannot be built upon making the asteroid smaller.
• Very small surface area on asteroids reduces spam of nukes (because other facilities like halleys, anti-nukes and umbrellas need to be built. This would also help if a player has to decide an asteroid is to be a nuke launcher, or build an orbital canon on it with a facotry to launch troops onto planets.
• Comets could a a different asteroid type (small orbital body, not planet). That could be separate from a belt, have a fast eliptical orbit, and do high damage on impact. They do not respawn.
• Planets could be placed in an asteroid field in the systems editor.
  • How would this effect those planets. Would the sometimes be hit by meteor showers or other environmental effects?

Things in dispute:

• Commanders landing on asteroids
• Asteroids having decaying orbits
• having high desnse metal areas in asteroid fields.
• Besidse normal asteroids and comets, what would other types of asteroids be

I have just been playing on maps with small moon planets that are halleyable. Getting to know that kind of gameplay could be enough in itself without any explicit "asteroid mechanics".

I supposed that you could have "unextracted" asteroid repeatedly bump into each other making explosions that would be hazarouds to any units or buildings health that happens to be there and maybe even the asteroid too. Even if you would eco up in a system it isn't exactly long term if you need to constantly keep rebuilding it to keep it running. Then each asteroid that is halleyable would be fair game to be hiding in (moved out of the belt). If you have an opponent do 30 halleys making the commander hunt difficult it would be your fault of letting that many halleys be built. Beside I think orbital units need to be controllable enough that doing multiple locations at once isn't a huge burden anyway.

Maybe with the relatively small velocity between asteroids in belts you could transition with "elevator pads", small sites that act as a simple oneway bridges between spatially close asteroids (if the unit cannon doesn't fullfill that role). That way ground forces could sweep the asteroid field with a little engineer assistance skipping the whole "orbit the sun" step in moving from planetoid to the next.

It could be fun to have a really ecliptical orbit that allows the "elevator pads" to only be used on the low part of the orbit. The factories on the comet would build up for the next time while the jump distance is too great. It would also have limited entry area on the host planetary body that would change with each orbit. Changing the orbit of a asteroid would then allow you to set up a orbit perfectly fitting your siege intentions.

What I envisioned for asteroid belts was something like this, but I'm not sure if it's a feasible/good idea (pictures obviously not to scale):

A flat, disc shaped orbital layer filled with asteroids.
Orbital units would probably need to path-find around these asteroids.
Land units can be transported to the asteroid field and dropped on asteroids as is the case on planets.
...But orbital units will be able to fire on asteroids directly as asteroids sit inside the asteroid belt's orbital layer, preventing hide-and-seek issues and preventing asteroids from being too easily defended.
Orbital fighters will need to patrol an asteroid field to protect it, as static defenses would be particularly useless.

Both of you are getting the same idea, so I'm going to comment on both at the same time. An asteroid belt with actual simulated asteroids, would just put a strain on the tech in the system. Playing right now with multiple planets is at times strenous enough on medium systems that if we had MANY MANY bodies even the size of a small asteroid would be an issue. And even if you have a system that reduces jumping between them, there is a way that fixes both probelems which we are discussing.

Have a astroid belt that could be placed in the system. This belt is made of random objects and particle effects that look like a belt, but have no geometry in the game, and can even be hand craft removing generation during system generation. Then have a few (determined by the system maker) asteroids that players can land on in the system. In most cases I could see 3 or 4 per belt. These can be landed on and built upon like a planet (except for the rules we've be discussing above). Players can move around, smash, build nuke warships, or troop transports. When the are destroyed a new astroid takes its place randomly spawning in the belt. There can only be the determined number of asteroids from the belt in the entire system.

This system limits the number of bodies in the system which reduced tech strain, and because there is only a certain number at one time, reduces jumping of commanders between them. If commanders are even there.

• yeah sounds good
• I guess it depends on how it's implemented
• That's the way I envisioned it/tried to explain it
• That has nothing to do with random orbits...

• We'll see if any other ideas go about, someone will probably have a cool system
• Ah ok, didn't quite understand that
• I thought you were talking about asteroid size and variety not orbits My bad.

I don't think our approaches are really that similar; in mine, the entire asteroid belt rotates on its own, asteroids themselves are static. In their suggestion, they wanted colliding asteroids with individual orbits, which I think is a bad idea all around (no unpredictable environmental events).
You also don't need very many proper asteroids to make an asteroid belt look reasonable (1-2 dozen), and unlike planets, those asteroids will not have brush geometry. That point is important, because the amount of geometry that needs to be rendered from an asteroid belt would actually be quite small.

I have found that the cost of a new body isn't in itself isn't really an issue. It's almost like a planetoid is heavy only proportional to it's surface area. You can get a lot of asteroids for ommiting a medium system. I have been playing on a map with 8 200 radius planets. If the proportionality is right you can get way more than about 80 20 radius planets (as this number is obtained by keeping the heavyness proportional to radius and scaled downwards). If each requires a halley to utilise (assuming that it has room in such tiny space on the surface and the curvature isn't a problem (not sure about my intuitions about the scale))

I mean that if the vast majority of the "asteroids" are not indiviudal objects the ones that are would still be subject to a "weather" of being bombarded. Light impact "nudges" would actually need a whole different collision mechanics (the collider actually lives after the impact). And doing it as individual asteroids would make them at the beginning impact some but then settle at non-collision courses. Asteroids don't really impact between them that much (they would either grind themselfs to dust not landable or aggregate into planetoids. In order to stay at the intermediate size they are they can't keep changing their size as there are no sources providing new asteroids (at significant volumes)) and the simulation of that would show it to be true (they either collide and wear down or they don't collide and thus no "weather"). However the "hollywood mechanics" could percieve them as that with the bendable non-conservation of mass. Available planets would wear down but a steady stream of new asteroids is provided that isn't dependant on what happened to the previous ones.