For Backers Only: One Moon, No Waiting

I hope they used the unit cannon to shoot some engineers up their to buils a base than go on to build the thrusters. What I am curious about is that I guess we can shoot moons also astroids into planets?

Love it cant wait

I actually find gimballed rockets more realistic than flaps. But that's just me.

Good thinking this. I reckon it might even be possible if they use the code for 'arching' terrain brushes as we saw in Allen Chou's blog:

I think gimbals would be far more feasible than thrust vectoring vanes. It's an asteroid, so it's not like the gravity will cause them to topple over, especially when they're practically leaning against each other.

Good point about arching, but I think the actual nozzles should be on the same plane, like in the Kickstarter video. While arching will get them all pointing in the same direction, the engine nozzles would not be on the same level. My suggestion is to have a snap function, so you put one engine down, and the others will be parallel to it (if you want them to be), and the nozzles will all be on the same flat plane. The restriction would be that the engine meshes would have to be rooted a certain amount into the ground, so that they're well anchored.

I dunno though, are there going to be randomly generated asteroids, like mini moons? Or just a set number of asteroid meshes with hardpoints for engine/building attachments? The screenshot in the first post suggests the former, but the notion of a larger body with tons of engines seems a little wacky. The weight of a body increases exponentially with its diameter, so it doesn't scale well. Unless of course you had giant T2 thrusters or something.

Is there actual planet 'gravity'? Like.. not something that would affect unit movement, but something that limits how far unit cannons can shoot, bullets can go, thrusters can push, etc.

Because x thrusters on a small asteroid should propel it faster than x thrusters on a large asteroid, based on the size. It would just be a scalar modifier that would allow or prohibit certain units and structures, based on how big the planet is. So no unit cannons or thrusters on super high G worlds.

Realisticly, none of this would work, since asteroids would just crumble into a cloud of dust as the engines speed up and drill trough the asteroid

95% of asteroids are just heaps of sand and rock held together by their super weak gravity, if you are lucky they are covered in frozen ice and form some kind of bound trough that

We've been assuming for a while that the asteroids used are monoliths or sufficiently held together by gravity so far. I think it's a fair assumption.

I was thinking the engines would raise up a bit and then pivot on a mount to point in the correct direction.

I actually like how this looks, it looks dynamic. and it makes how to rotate/spin a planet in a direction more feasible too. of course this picture is a bit grainy and they look a little noisy which will hopefully be fixed, but I like the idea of engines that can, perhaps, change their direction.

Think Rocket propelled thrusters is the only way to go here to be honest adding any more sophisticated method would just seem silly and out of place in my opinion really. The issue I think is whether or not you have the ability to actually physically turn the planet/moon/asteroid or if you can only go in a forward motion, forward motion only seems better, and you have to aim your shot perfectly if you plan on crashing it into another planet which is where skill comes into play, of course the obvious downside just forward or backward motion is it might prove too difficult to actually hit anything.

Actually, an orbiting body can do wonders with a single direction of thrust (especially one that is spinning). With planets and moons traveling really quickly and spinning, it isn't a matter of aiming; more like telling the game where you want to hit and it calculates a valid solution of differential equations that gets it there.

Try throwing darts on a carrousel and then you will see why this whole "aiming" thing is not how it works

The unit cannon will be fun to play with. Technically it could act as a planet artillery piece if Mavor implements the crawling robot bombs he shortly mentioned he wanted to include. You could just spam-shoot these bots at the other planet and have them land in the base to blow up! There we go, we have inter-planetary artillery!
I can also imagine building engines among your base while fighting the other guys on the planet and slamming everyone into something else. Though, if two commanders were doing that and their engines were both trying to fire in somewhat opposite directions I do wonder how that will affect the physics engine? It would be something interesting to see.
And yes, I know. Putting engines on the planet you are fighting on is illogical. I was just brainstorming interesting scenarios.

Well,

The unit cannon won't be able to shoot from one planet to the other, because of gravity. You will be able to shoot units down from the moon to the planet, but not the other way around. That was mentioned a few times in the forum or in live streams. If you want to transport units from planet to planet you might wanna use the rockets transporter or later on the teleporter.

That's a nice planet you have there, it would be a shame if anything happens to it.

But where's the cutoff for that? I mean 'moon' isn't so much an indicator of size as it is a biome type.

There should be a limit to how big any planet with a unit cannon should be. How far units can be shot should depend on the size of the planet, until the gravity is too much.

My guess is that you won't be able to create super large moons (planet size) in the planet editor...

You shoot from low to high gravity worlds.

Moons in PA can only orbit heavier planets, so as long as the moon is smaller.

No, no! I think you should have planets of any shape and type, but the bigger the planet, the shorter the unit cannon range.

Ok, I think we are missing some definitions here. I guess you will be able to use the unit-cannon on every planet, but you won't be able to shoot units out of the orbit, no matter how big or small the planet will be, after all, it is a planet.
The moon is a natural satellite, circling around our planet, because... its gravity (weight) if far lower than the gravity of earth, if it would be the opposite, earth would orbit around the moon.
Every celestial body that is orbiting another one has lower mass/gravity, thus it is a satellite. This said, you will be able to shoot units down to planets from its satellites but not the other way around.
That's why I mentioned earlier that likely you won't be able to create moons larger than a planet... would not make sense, but you might be able to create a moon biome having planetsize...

Well, I don't have access to the planet maker, but my understanding is that you can have a body of any size orbiting around a body of any size, so you can a giant planet orbiting a small one, or a large planet orbiting another large planet. Can someone confirm this?

It doesn't physically make any sense, but if that's the way it works, then you can launch units from a planet sized moon to a moon sized planet. Even if this weren't the case, consider a moon sized planet with a smaller moon orbiting around it. Should it be able to launch units even though it's a planet and not a moon? That's why I suggested a unit cannon range based on the size of the body its on.