For Debug Science: Has anyone tried to...

Smash a planet before the game even starts?


Before the game starts, when you pick your spawn location, the planets are simulated. That used to be not the case before Gamma, but now that it is, we can have an experiment with incidental smashing...

For debugging science!

1. Set up a system so that a starting planet collides with another starting planet equal it's size before the auto-spawn time*. It should then destroy both planets completely. Make sure that there is a third starting planet that is not involved when testing the first time.
2. Test it in an AI game, don't select a spawn and see what happens.
3. Do the planets properly collide? Do spawn points update?
4. What happens if you select a spawn on one of the planets just a few seconds before the collision?
5. What happens if there are no other planets left to spawn on?

*When the game automatically spawns players if they still haven't selected a spawn after a while ( I don't know how long that while is).

Now it might be tricky to set this up without making planets moons of each other, but if you mess a bit with mass and size, you should be able to do it, since there is (or used to be) a max number of mass a moon can have before it is always considered a planet orbiting the sun.


Now go and test, for the sake of debugging PA!

They do properly collide, the planets get deleted from the planet-menu and spawning should be like normal, dunno if numbers update. Dont know what happens if cant spawn though.

I tried it and filled few bug reports:
PA#4063 - If chosen starting planet being destroyed before commander landed it's end up inside the sun
PA#4064 - It's possible to choose landing planet when ChronoCam active

Nice! I'm very curious to see what happens if there are no other planets left in the system ( or maybe a gas giant which you can never spawn on). I have a feeling the game will either crash, or the simulation terminates. Or it keeps going. Whichever, I will try it out today if I can find some free time.