Asteroid Impacts and Their Effects in Planetary Annihilation

Given that this game is going to be featuring impact events, I have been trolling around on Wikipedia looking at asteroid info and came across some interesting resources:

Impact Event
led me to:
Impact Crater
which has a video of an impact simulation conducted by NASA
I also found links to other related pages such as:
Asteroid impact avoidance

I also followed a link from the Impact Event page to:
Crust Tsunami
which is a stub but has the following very interesting link to a video excerpt from the tv broadcast of Miracle Planet - Asteroid Impact Simulation

There is actually a wealth of real-life (read: not sci-fi) information out there that provides many figures, calculations and data that pertains to what happens when a large body impacts a planet, moon, asteroid, gas giant, etc. I got really curious while looking through some of these resources as to what level of fidelity we may be able to see with the impacts in-game:

Will near misses that graze the atmosphere or meteors that impact that are too slow and/or small to survive atmospheric entry be properly represented? Chelyabinsk Meteor

Can planet-wide searing (the vaporization of all liquid, atmosphere and ground cover) occur without the planet actually breaking up?

Will we see proper coastal destruction due to tsunami waves? (caveat-I know full liquid simulation won't be present, but will this even be approximated?)

Can meteors themselves and/or debris exploding outward from their impacts intercept satellites and air vehicles in mid air?

With deep crater impacts that penetrate the crust, will the holes made that release lava have a chance to spawn super-volcanoes, rather than just lava lakes?

Will asteroid angle-of-entry be taken into account allowing for mechanics such as:
-larger meteors burning up due that would have impacted at a different angle
-near orbital trajectories that slowly decay, and in the event of very large asteroids even result in a low (relatively) speed impact?
-skip effect where parts of the asteroid break off and impact but the bulk being too far off to impact and eventually careening off?

Do very small planets have the chance of having their orbit modified with a sufficiently large impact (i.e. one that just barely is too small to break it up)?

Would the engine structures be buildable on planets and would an entire hemisphere covered in them be able to move said planet?

Will impact events generate correct proportional debris clouds that dissipate at a rate consistent with the rotational speed of the planet and it's atmospheric density?
The questions above are for the developers of PA, and are not necessarily posed as topics for discussion on their merits for inclusion.


I encourage other members of the forums to look at some of the links I have posted here (especially the Miracle Planet video) as well as others they find and formulate their own questions for the developers.

I would imagine that Uber have probably looked at asteroid impacts at a much more in depth level than what these simple wikipedia links I posted provide. However, I am more interested in what level of detail they have decided to incorporate in PA and the reasoning behind those decisions.

Re: Asteroid Impacts and Their Effects in Planetary Annihila

Asteroids will make a crater X big and deal Y damage in Z radius. And it will look pretty. And it will probably change with size.

It isn't really possible to fly an asteroid that is too small to breach the atmosphere. The robots are too big and heavy by default.

Re: Asteroid Impacts and Their Effects in Planetary Annihila

I would caution putting too much trust in some of the numbers for large collisions, some of the math becomes little more than guesswork. How materials, gases and such behave at that point isn't always well known because we don't have data, we can't fully recreate it in the lab.

Re: Asteroid Impacts and Their Effects in Planetary Annihila

I think that most of the hard data would be best used as 'guidelines' rather than simulation targets. We know that realistic gravity, physical and fluid simulations are outside the scope of PA, but my questions are more focused on what effects are planned for approximate representation in the game.

Re: Asteroid Impacts and Their Effects in Planetary Annihila

We might just find out about that in today's livestream. Their main thing is destruction on mass scale. I bet they are itching to show some of that off to us.

Re: Asteroid Impacts and Their Effects in Planetary Annihila

Doesn't look like that is what they went for. Granted, the initial pieces have to be in place before they can start dropping asteroids on them.