I'm not currently in the PA Alpha, but I have recently been watching a few streams and gameplay videos. I think the game looks great, but one thing I've noticed is that moons orbit around their planets incredibly quickly. Now, I know that this is still Alpha, and extra-planetary features are only just being worked on, but I figured I could perhaps kickstart a discussion about orbital mechanics and their effects on strategy. Because the implementation of non-natural satellites is still up in the air at this point, I think I'll largely talk about the strategy involved with moons as they orbit a planet (although I talk about player launched satellites below). I think the greatest use for moons, as shown in the kickstarter trailer, is as an orbital weapons platform, that can launch ordinance and units onto the body it orbits. For ease, I think that all moons should be tidally locked, so that a particular face of the moon always faces the planet it orbits. This would also add in the ability to easily hide bases, factories, or even ones commander. I'm sure uber had similar ideas. I think the reason moons orbit so fast in the alpha is so that a moons viability as a weapons platform increases. Instead of waiting obscene amounts of time for the orbit of the moon and the rotation of the planet to line up, so that the players base is directly beneath it, passes would happen frequently, but be very brief. I feel like this is the system is the opposite of what I would really like. I'd prefer if moons orbited at a slightly more realistic pace; passes over enemy territory would happen infrequently, but if adequately prepared for, could absolutely wreak havoc on a base. I think by making moons really deadly, new implications for starting locations would arise. If a moon is in an equatorial or slightly inclined orbit, most players would move to the poles, so that their bases would never be under the orbital path. For polar orbits, the moon would be unavoidable, but players would avoid building on the poles so that the moon only passes over their base every number of orbits rather than every single orbit. Even more complex applications for orbital mechanics could be found. If a moon is in a significantly eccentric orbit (hopefully uber will implement moons and planetary bodies with orbital eccentricities other than zero), players would avoid building on the latitude underneath the apoapsis (apoannihilatron?... That is really cheesy. I'm sorry.) so that they would minimise the time they spend under a moon. Maybe this is a little selfish of me, but I feel like these things shouldn't be made obvious by the game, and that a basic understanding of orbital mechanics should come in handy when playing a game such as this. As for player launched satellites, I think customisation should be the key. I don't think the game should hold your hand through the process too much. There should certainly be pre select options for those who know very little i.e give a coordinate and the game will get you a satellite geosynchronous to that position. But I also think players should be able tailor their apsides and inclinations if they so wish, and input raw numbers As for travel between planetary bodies, I really wish it will be done in a realistic manner, through the use of multiple orbits and burns, not the 'space is liquid', engines constantly burning style space travel often portrayed in video games and other media. The kickstarter trailer seems to indicate that this will occur, which makes me greatly excited. Mavor's SpaceX shirt and his activity in their subreddit also lead me to believe he has an understanding of astrophysics, so this portion of the project should be in good hands. I know planetary annihilation is not aiming for realism but instead awesome, but I can't help but feel that realistic space travel and semi realistic orbits would actually be awesome.
I gained from the video that the asteroid missile was firing its engines the entire time.. But in all honesty it showed very little of the actual flight path (even though it was a pseudo orbital trajectory) I can't help but think it might work as intended but the engines always firing when moving along a predetermined path. Physics simulation for space travel is something they don't need to do.
Satellites will be relatively automated. I'm sure geosync will be a major thing, because everybody likes geosync, and from a strategic perspective there is no point in NOT having geosynchronous orbit on a weapons platform. What is better, having your mostly-invincible space-satellite firing on the enemy 100% of the time or only that 10% of the time its orbit crosses his or her base.
Why do I get the feeling that I'll need to complete a course in astrophysics once they implement satellites and interplanetary warfare in PA? Will my i7 CPU even be able to handle all these moving interstellar bodies AND the unlimited number of units moving and fighting on and among these planets/satellites/moons? Or will I have to invest in a Cray supercomputer?
I don't think they are going to implement anything truly exotic. Small things going around larger things isn't too hard to grasp. This still remains to be seen. Uber has stated that they would like PA to be able to scale with new hardware over the years. However current games barely use the full power of an i5 chip, never mind an i7, so I think you will be fine.
No problem, your i7 isn't doing the big orbital mechanics sims, the server is. Also, I would be amused/amazed to see a community made youtube lessons on astrophysics get made, even more cool points if they're linked too in game. On the GEO/LEO orbit for weapons platforms. If we assume roughly realistic physics (cept for the scaling, but that's a minor detail), then there will be advantages to both LEO and GEO. GEO gives you 100% time on target, and more is visible for you to target at any single point in time. LEO gives you more coverage over all time(specifically polar orbits go from "Do I have coverage" to "When do I have coverage"), also, less of the ground can see you at any one time (anti-satellite weapons), also, you're close to the target, by an order of magnitude (assuming a properly scaled earth, LEO will still be about 1/10th the distance of GEO) meaning your targets don't see the shots coming as much. Real life space is all about trade offs, I'd like to see an element of that make it into the game.
This is an incredibly cool idea for an educational mod for teaching kids basic physics and/or astronomy.
We've heard those words before from SOE regarding Planetside 2. What we got was an unoptimized game that brings state of the art PC gaming rigs to their knees with 40 frames per second during large intense battles. Hopefully, Uber will fare better with PA. Then again, Uber is planning on allowing an unlimited number of units in PA. Even SOE put a cap on how many players could be on any given server.
Eh? 40 fps is plenty high enough for any game to be playable. My rather dated box runs Planetside 2 just fine at max settings at 1920x1080. If the FPS is above 24 or so your box isn't being brought to its knees. Also you can't really use a badly optimized game as an accurate measure of hardware performance. A large match in FA will crawl just as much on modern high end PC as it does on a high end PC from the era when FA was released. That's why CPU and GPU reviews usually use several different games as benchmarks as well as a synthetic benchmark or two. That's just because Sony doesn't want to spend the money to get even faster servers. And I don't really blame them. There will be practical limits to the sizes of matches and the number of units per match depending on how beefy the server hosting the match is. This is true for all applications, not just games.
For those that are truly serious about their FPS games, anything less than 60 frames per second is not plenty high enough for any battle. No self respecting FPS gamer would play with only 24 frames per second. So can you say without any doubt that Uber will spend money to get even faster servers? Or will Uber follow SOE's lead in this regard as well?
LOL. Wow. You do realize that 60 FPS is the hard cap on almost every PC monitor ever made right? Stop lying. Also, perhaps you hadn't noticed, but PA is not an FPS game. I can say without any doubt that it won't matter because people will be able to run their own servers.
PA in the classroom, teacher starts up a server with a edu mod, get some demos to show off with students as observers and when done the students can start playing around. Do their projectile motion and on up in a team environment. (I smell no relation to Kerbal Space Program, nope, none at all) Reminds me of a robotics project I did in undergrad where the class had to do a mod of UT2004 as a robot simulator. This could be the idea that gets me thinking about modding...
And then after class you load the map up in vanilla PA and try to conquer it. Nothing makes you remember a class project more than commanding a battalion of tanks across it.
I would figure that it would use the orbital simulation that Kerbal Space Program uses actually, where it calculates it's orbit and then just puts the object on rails in that orbit so no calculations are needed until a player decides to modify its flight path. Its not as accurate, but something about realism and awesome and shooting for.
