Creating Planets IN GAME?

Well the original question was if you could actually create a small metal planet and fly around with it like a death star... on the account of a planet creating Star Trek style Genesis device...

Has any of you guys ever seen the Star Trek movie with the Genesis device?
It doesn't create a planet it just seeds life on it. And after a short while that planet blows up (well that was due to some accelerator beeing used).
So a Star Trek style Genesis device would not ever create a new planet. So idealy it makes an uninhabital planet habital...
woohoo PA is a galaxy full of super awesome killing robots. they need no habitable atmosphere on any planet to thrive there. At the very best a planet hit by an asteroid would be made usable again but that's not in the PA spirit...

Your discussion is all well and good but it's about creating planets and not creating planets with a Genesis device (yeah i'm splitting hairs but the basis of your argument is a wrong assumption)

Well go on argue away but leave the word genesis out of it from now on :lol:

Yellow

The only real reason to seed a planet is to allow easy resource reclamation at a later time.

This is the central plot element of Command and Conquer. Earth was seeded with Tiberium, a von neumann extractor which pulls deep planetary resources to the surface. The crystals are then easy to harvest and process into rich raw material.

So the real question is, will we see Tiberium rich worlds in PA? It's a crystal paradise! Actually, come to think of it, there were crystal worlds in TA... :roll:

None as viral as tiberium however.

The process of spreading Tiberium took dozens of years. That's far too slow for the purposes of PA, where planets are lucky to survive that long. If a von neumann resource-rich crystal just happens to be there, great! Suck up the easy money and go nuts. It's probably just the leftover legacy of some inferior culture that died long ago.

:lol: You are growing on my bob, I have to say.

How about a device like the titan from Titan AE. In order to create a planet you need a huge amount of energy and you need the device to be inside a planets worth of ice/rocks. So the only way to create a planet is in such an area or inside the debris of a planet

GENESIS PLANET.

Titan AE, now there is a movie I had completely forgotten about, it was quite cool If memory serves.

I think it would probably be a lot more fun to see the chaos that is players battling across all the little bits of rock and ice, rather than mashing them together into a planet. It would be like a solar system in miniature, throwing units across the short gaps between mini worlds, even smashing them into one another with rocket engines. I hope such maps will be possible, either that or having asteroid belts in maps.

Could still have a compromise between building planets and have the battlefield shrink.
Give the material a limited lifespan, e.g. 5 collisions, then it's gone.
Or very long transitions between biome, lava - crust - rock or sand etc.
More of my stuff about planets.

I agree with consili's arguments that there should not be a planet creation device.

Idea: Worm hole game mechanic that grabs asteroids and wrecks and sucks them to a single location where they get combined into a planet.

I definitely believe that there shouldn't be a way to create planets; while it is going to probably take some getting used to as the battlefield shrinks from epic destruction, that is one of the ideas behind the game I am most looking forward to.

I think it's likely that the battlefield won't constantly shrink, my belief is the game will probably reach a tipping point where players reach the resources to start using the planet damaging weapons.

If you think about it, the ability to create planets is almost equivalent to extending a map mid-game, which if you think about it, on a conventional game map/style, il would be unheard of.

I thought the OP meant actually CREATING planets. As in, picking an asteroid and keep accreting it to smaller ones until it turned into a fullsized rocky planet.

I see issues with this from logical, gameplay and thematic perspectives:

Science (yes I know it is a game, but even following what we have been shown from the game devs this makes little sense)
Firstly flying an asteroid around to roll up smaller asteroids Katamari Damacy style doesn't make much sense, asteroids aren't renowned for their high gravity and it would take a fair while to gather enough asteroids up to produce a planet (we haven't seen anything approaching the like in our asteroid belt). If the goal is to have something akin to the kickstarter visualisation they will be following relative gravity between asteroids and planets given the difference in force required to get off asteroids vs planets (on the planet a multi stage rocket was required, on the asteroid small thrusters or a unit cannon sufficed).

Impact on gameplay
Secondly it strikes me that it would be a waste of time and resources that could not be justified in terms of a game mechanic, the amount of resources required to get an asteroid up and running is likely to be fairly large, certainly I don't think it should be a trivial exercise. Once built, players should be using it as a forward operating base in orbit around an enemy planet, or throwing it at the planet. If a player wants another planet, they should colonising an unused planet, or forcibly taking one from their opponents. Having players spend time trying to make planets instead of focusing on fighting opponents will be frustrating.

Thematic elements
Finally, as a small quibble, planet creation to me doesn't follow the thematic elements of the game, after all it is entitled 'Planetary Annihilation'. Creating planets (through whatever mechanic) stands counter to the core of the game. To quote the kickstarter trailer narration:

I imagined that "fabricated land masses" would be possible. Just on a costly level for a small chunk of land.

At least, what I wanted was players to be able to build a very small metal ball that acts as a "planet/asteroid" would, and be able to attach rockets to it and build artillery on it and even factories and such. The catch would be the cost would make it endgame and the limited size of one would not even allow an entire base, just specific useful structures mobilized on a very vunerable small floating asteroid.

Anyway, being able to build a small "asteroid mass" would give you something to use as a kinetic bombardment weapon in systems where asteroids arent available. Again, it would just limit it's size to small-scale-catastrophic rather than planet-killing.