'Luck factor' with planet smashing

Given the planets are rotating on their axes, I figure there will be a lot of luck as to whether your own base gets wiped out vs your opponent. I'm sure the engine could predict what part of a planet will be smashed when a collision occurs, is this something that would be made clear to the people on the planet with some warning?

It will be interesting to see the radius of damage, what will happen to units and buildings on the same planet but not near the impact zone, etc. I'm not sure what the answer is - but given the beta release is scheduled for 10 days from now, I figure the dev team have at least made a first pass at how this will work!

Refer to the Pre-Visualization, pick a target and the game calculates what's needed to hit that location.

Also consider that past a certain asteroid side, it doesn't matter where you hit the planet, it's gonna explode.

Mike

Mike, I'm not referring to targeted rocket-propelled asteroids - I should have made clear I was talking about planets actually colliding. There was talk of some systems with an implied time limit to go interplanetary, because planets were on a collision course.

If planets hit each other, then I would think both would be destroyed.

I guess it pays to be specific then. Regardless, Tontow got it in one, 2 Planets with essentially destroy each other, and setting up a 'sudden death' scenario using an asteroid and a single planet that only might end in sudden death is pretty much counter-productive to the entire idea.

Mike

well still, If you nuke the asteroid far before it enters said planet's atmosphere the pieces could hit your own base.

If they maintain momentum as seen in the Pre-visualization they'd only hit your base if the original asteroid would have in all likely hood.

Mike

Mike's statement is still correct. If the asteroid did all the propulsion it needed to when it started moving (kinda like how real rockets are used) then breaking it into pieces wont change where it lands. If the engines are used the entire time and you hit it way out, then you are correct and it will then miss.

As of now it appears to be going with the burn once and done model (from the live stream where the asteroid stuff was shown off, also there is more preexisting math to support this model)

I guess it would be cool if you would only be able to see it's projected trajectory and have to manually fire the thrusters which will use enormous amounts of energy. Releasing the thrust too soon, too late or running out of energy might just make it hit something else or nothing at all!

It is already quite expensive to build the trusters adding energy costs would make it even more annoying.

I'm against adding chance to asteroid mashing. If you putt that giant amount of recources in something and it misses it wouldn't be fun any more. Why else use an asteroid except for fun? they are way to expensive to be a normal gameplay option anyway.

Currently you it doesn't matter where you hit on the planet, everything dies anyway.

That's actually the point, it's to much of a gimmick than actually useful.

The expense of building the thrusters should be brought down of course, the time it would take for it to change it's orbit so it would hit the target should be much longer and would allow for enough time to alter it's course if needed, my point is actually that it should work like in real life. Send pulses of thrust out to alter it's course, depending on it's location it could take hours for it to be actually in the right orbit to be on a collision course. The larger the object (asteroid, moon or planet) the more time and energy it would take to change it's orbit and the more damage it would do.
Smashing a moon into a planet would indeed kill everything on it.
Smaller asteroids might just cause the same devastation as 10 nukes would, but would be simpler to send on there way.

Another cool feature to this is that you as the targeted side would be able to build a planetary observatory who would be able to detect incoming celestial bodies so you would have the time to build a counter attack by sending units and destroy the thrusters / build new ones to alter it's course, smashing another celestial body into it or by getting the hell of the targeted planet.

How cool would it be to build some thrusters on your opponents planet in his fog of war, slowly but surely altering it's course into a collision with it's own star!

Perhaps it would be cool if asteroids would hit your solar system randomly as well like they do in real life. Some defense against them would be cool. Armageddon like..

After thinking about this concept, it's actually an awesome addition into macro management and long term tactics!
Shouldn't his deserve a thread on it's own?

I couldn't resist.. https://forums.uberent.com/threads/macro-management-on-smashing-celestial-bodies.54574/

asking to do that would require more micro ... micro that most players dont want ... your so called asteroidmacromanagement isnt macromanagement at all
macromanagement is all bout economy and production
not controlling a single unit ... size in that case realy doesnt matter ... it is still a single unit overall
it also takes focus away from the more important thing which is controlling your surfaceunits and buildings

I started off by thinking it would be cool to control the asteroid manually, but concluded, as you clearly stated, it would be to cumbersome. I mentioned in my follow up thread that the trajectory of the planets should be calculated for you. You should still just have to specify a target and it will show you how much time it will take, and what trajectory it will follow with the thrusters you have build assuming they will be able to fire as needed without someone interfering. Making more thruster would speed up the voyage time, leaving less room to counteract.

I you don't have enough power or if someone destroys a thruster the trajectory will be altered automatically. You will only get an alert if the specified target is out of reach because too much thrusters are lost.

Be cool to have to calculate your own trajectory, or have a building that gives it greater accuracy by doing more calculations.

If I wanted to do that I would've played Kerbal Space Program. You shouldn't need to sit down and calculate orbital mechanics for this game.

Even in Kerbal Space Program do you not calculate trajectories (while you still do manipulate valid trajectories).
It's also pretty trivial to get the calculation exactly right.