Kinetic push and gravitational drag?

Wait wut? You spoke words of truth without my prior guidance!?

You've just earned 'Epic Bro' Status.

Mike

Epic Bro status - I am on a roll today :lol: WINNING.

I agree totally.

Props to everyone who voted no.

There are some ridiculous ideas being suggested around here. I can't even see how this feature would benefit the game at all.

EDITED: Because I don't like to be negative about something without justifying myself. Plus my post sounded a bit harsh. So...

For all the reasons already listed by the other users. For example, asteroids are made of rock and ice - not play dough etc.

Plus - I really don't think it matters a great deal about the mass of said asteroid and how a few little chunks of mass could potentially increase it's mass by an insignificant amount. As someone said, it would likely do more damage to your asteroid.

For all intents and purposes it's just a big rock that is going to do an allotted amount of damage to it's target and really I'm not sure - apart from speed of movement perhaps how mass would effect the over all outcome. To make things easier I would simply make all asteroids the same mass and just vary the shape. Then the mechanics behind it are all the same. Different mass asteroids make for an unfair game if damage is going to be calculated in this manner.

I don't even understand why anyone would think that colliding asteroids should combine. They're not magnets or water droplets or... well... I can't even think of anything else that could randomly collide and then gain mass...?

This idea doesn't fit into real physics, or game physics, or common sense, or anyone's interpretation of any the above that I've ever heard of before. I'd wager there are people who sincerely believe that they are Napoleon commanding a battleship who would be able to tell me what happens if two lumps of rock hit each other.

Thing is, they could combine, under limited conditions (low speed difference, low sources of disrupting gravity), otherwise you don't get planets, but if you are trying to be 'real physics' about his you also need to have all the case, including them blowing each other apart when they smash.

Not really. The work I am talking about is already there. Thank God!!

That's my point!!! That combining masses of asteroids should take place if they collide with low relative velocity. If your commander can be attracted to asteroid and walk on it, why not other small asteroid that is very, very close to it?

I agree. However the truth is no science theory is 100% realistic or complete. Every scientific theory has flaws. Everything theoretical is somewhere between 100% absurd and 100% realistic.

Just, no.

You are wrong. It does a lot of sense from both perspectives. In astrophysics there is planet formation theory that says that planets come from asteroids that attracted themselves gravitationally. In game, you could try to mount rocket on the outer ring asteroid in the asteroid belt. Then you push it thru asteroids belt towards planet. And it kicks and “glues” to itself smaller asteroids (if collision meets proper conditions) on its path so more small pieces start to go towards the planet or it gets higher mass and therefore impact damage may increase.

How do you know it hasn’t become? Astrophysicists think the opposite –many of them think that planets were born in asteroid belts due to gravitational attraction of asteroids. Basically they collided with each other to form bigger ones.
Exactly – you put it very succinctly Mortiferusrosa.

Because this game is about colliding asteroids with planets hosting huge armies!!! That’s the main idea of the game!!! Watch this!!!

So tell me how planets were formed? How do you know that my idea doesn't fit into physics? You didn't even finish junior school level physics course, and you are telling me my idea doesn't fit into real physics? Who the hell are you, you dare to say that?

Thank John Mavor he designs this game my way, not your way!!!That would be a disaster if all asteroids had the same mass. I really don't want it because it would be too unrealistic. It would be so terrible that it would take the fun away from entire game. If all asteroids had the same mass it would be exactly the same difficult or easy to push small asteroids towards the planets as big ones. And small asteroids sent to planet should make same damage as big ones or vice versa. The idea of entire game is to find proper sized asteroid in the game. You choose small one (with smaller mass) -it is easier to push it but it will make smaller damage to the planet it hits. You choose really big one and it will take plenty of effort (plenty of engines) to change its orbit to hit the target you want, and difficult too maneuver it, but it will provide much greater damage to the planet it hits. Idea of the mass in the game is a great idea. Besides that, very small asteroid piece is not going to attract you as much as big one, thanks to its mass. Guys!!! This is 6th grade physics. What grade are you in?

Ok, under very specific, rare conditions asteroids may occasionally be able to collide and combine, I concede that, and over the course of millions or billions of years this may result in planet formation.

Fancy playing a billion year match of PA?

In game, reproducing the conditions for accretion would require the gigantic engines on the back of an asteroid to allow fine enough control of that asteroid to contact another moving asteroid at exactly the right relative velocity (without damaging the engines).

At which point you would have... a slightly bigger version of a weapon that destroys planets anyway. Hurray. Good plan for wasting man months of developer time on a Sim Astrophysics feature with virtually zero gameplay utility or fun value.

How about we just let this thread quietly die and we won't mention it again?

You are at least 100% right!!!

Sokolek,

You seem to be wanting to essentially accelerate the accretion process of planetary formation by crashing asteroids together, or at least that's my impression. The shear number of asteroids you would need to make a planet would make this unrealistic I think in game time. Yes I know that we don't have to follow real physics, but to run away from it too much will break things.

Also, the time period for asteroids merging into one cohesive whole is non trivial, it's not an instant process and if the rocks just "glue" together, it would result in some really funky shapes.

Attempting to be constructive:

Also, if you have anything on the colliding asteroids, it should be lost. The forces involved in remolding two asteroids into one should break all your toys.

You need to make it clear to the players what's going on. What is the mass of that rock about to hit me? What damage will be done if it hits, etc. If this is not clear and simple, it's just more hidden mechanics that drive people crazy.

It is almost a good idea. Almost because if you send big asteroid though few smaller ones what is going to happen to the big one? Is ship size asteroid going to be destroyed (lost) by a little tiny chunk? That would be stupid. I would rather to have that small one to join the bigger one and go further with summed mass.

It is clear and simple if you make few simplifications to the engine (and I believe this simplification will apply to the game world):
1) Density gradient thru asteroid =0
2) All asteroids of the same type have same density

I did see one type of asteroids in the video (brown ones). But if they introduced for example metal ones they could have different density that should follow rule 1 and 2 across all metal asteroids too.
If all asteroids followed the rule 1 and 2 then basically mass of an asteroid would depend only of 2 factors: their type and size. Bigger the asteroid the bigger the mass (linear (direct) proportionality with proportionality constant = 1).

Damage due collision with planet/moon other asteroid etc. should depend on relative kinetic energies of colliding objects. To make it easy for kindergarten kid, the greater relative velocities of colliding bodies or the bigger colliding chunks, the bigger the damage. How to judge combination of these 2 factors? From player experience. you will figure it out after you smash 12 planets with different asteroids moving at different speeds or after you got smashed 12 times, or some combination of both.

assuming the interface for sending asteroids on their way is represented by the style shown in the video, I don't think we have to worry too much how an asteroid collides with objects on his path to it's target.
From the look of it, it's a relative high level point and click, with an automatic route, not an user chosen route. Probably, only collision free trajectories would be offered/used.

(if the in game UI allows more than shown in the video it may be another matter)

Apologies for the length of the post I felt I needed to address some of the points I see being made here.

Because there is a controlled decent of the commander utilising a skycrane similar to what the Mars Curiosity probe used. From the same video we could see that the engineers hardly applied any thrust to get off the asteroid to the other smaller asteroids. Looking at the giant thrusters slapped onto the asteroids, finer movement (say the kind required to intercept tiny asteroids at a slow enough pace for it to touch down on the asteroid without bouncing off or causing damage) would not be feasible or desired when the asteroid was more than capable of destroying the planet.

I did mention this in an earlier post. Those events also happened at the formation of the solar system. The sun had just begun fusion and the remaining mass became the solar system we know today. This took billions of years, and the material itself was hot enough to be somewhat akin to play dough. Once masses reached protoplanet/planet size then yes, they could attract smaller masses (even once cooled) and not be smashed apart by them. The mass is added to any planet through collisions with smaller bodies is negligible. Anything large enough to add significant mass would do significant damage. This is VERY different to what you are suggesting.

1) Why bother? You have the pick of the whole asteroid belt. Pick one large enough for the task and don’t risk collisions that could damage your projectile before it hits your target.
2) The levels of gravity involved aren’t high enough to “stick like glue”. This is proven by virtue of the fact that in 4-5 billion years the asteroid belt has not yet formed another protoplanet/planet; The bodies large enough to do so - have done so.

See point 2 above.

You are missing the point. I’m not against asteroids in the game. I think that the idea of fusing masses of mini asteroids to larger asteroids. The concept makes no sense.

I think it is a bit presumptious to assume that they are making the game exactly your way. It would be for any of us to make such an assumption. We can suggest and discuss but we are not in charge of how this game is made, they are.

Okay getting a bit petty here but you earlier pegged me for being too realistic and that realism destroyed fun. Which is it?

I think this is a gross simplification. I am sure you have misinterpreted wolfdogg’s intention. Also there is far more to the game than making asteroid missiles.

Please lets not resort to insulting eachothers intelligence, we should all be discussing ideas in a constructive manner so that the best most refined ideas may be included in the game.

Thanks again for this OrangeKnight, just getting round to reading it now, awesome thread

According to the video I agree with you 100%. I hope they will keep it this simple way.