Orbiting Planet Poll!

Should planets orbit around the sun, and moons orbit around their planets?

Will orbiting planets make the game too complicated for people to figure out when stuff will be close by or far away? Will your AMIGA 500 be able to calculate orbits?

Or will stationary space be too boring? Are moving planets essential to space combat?

Ah, good. Had the first vote for simple orbits. Got a little worried. Refreshed the page and everything's okay

Seriously, why not? They're going for awesome. If I can take control of a planet's moon, I'm going to want it to orbit around the planet so I can use it offensively (and defensively)

Also, it has an interesting effect on gameplay (I assume). You can either wait for the planet's to align and stage an attack on your neighbour, or surprise them with a long range attack across the system.

Overall, simple orbits really only benefits the game. Anything more complex (such as destabilized orbits due to distant massive bodies), would be hardly noticeable until you realize your planet is crashing into the star, albeit very slowly. The addition of complex physics doesn't help the gameplay. Simple physics, on the other hand, would definitely have a benefit.

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Something that needs to be discussed is rotations. Will everything in orbit always have the same side facing inwards, or would they rotate as they orbit.

TBH, I think rotations may be a little too complex/annoying. If I capture a moon and establish some artillery, but then the moon rotates so that I only get to use it sparingly on the enemy, that's a lot of trouble for something of not much use.

Then again, if 2 players build on a moon, then the alternating near positions may be interesting.

For rotations, my vote is a hesitant no.

oops! Apparently adding another option clears out all the previous votes. Not doing that again.

Definitely yes for orbiting, but for rotating, would be weird for a planet no to. but it's a pain in the *** for moon artillery, so i'm gonna say yes for planet rotation but no for moon rotation (or maybe in some kind of hardcore mode), wich is totally possible ex: the moon* wich is not rotating (we always see the same face of the moon*)




PS: *here talking about earth's moon

I would say yes, simple orbits, but make it optional! Stationary planets, moving moons and movable asteroids and death stars (think rockets) could be good enough for me

Hah, looks like tide-locking isn't such a popular idea. I'd like to see some arguments against it. I think it'd benefit gameplay more than allowing rotations.

In addition to my above reasons, it adds a few more layers of complexity. Each planet and moon would need to have different rotation speeds. Would they by synced, so that every location has a certain relation to the thing it's orbiting, or would it just have some random speed, so that you couldn't rely on any side being where you want it when you need it.

Also, what if you move something in orbit to another planet. All your previous work in positioning weapons and defences would become useless due to the different orientation.

I think rotation should be locked, but you could adjust it with rockets. This preserves the usefulness of things in orbit as strategic assets, while also allowing players to sabotage them by secretly landing on the moon and rotating it, making the enemies structures much less useful.

Everything would have a 'default' side that faces inwards, which could then be changed through the use of thrusters. When you send something to another orbit, it would keep the same orientation relative to the planet. This way, your 'battle moon' would be able to move from planet to planet and remain useful.

What do you mean by simple circles and ellipses? Patched conics? If so, then yes, that's the best option. However, it should also allow for things like escape trajectories and sub-orbital stuff, though patched conics implementations support that stuff already.

Well you could work with tactics that took rotation timing into account. So for example if your enemy had a giant death laser mounted on a moon with a 10 minute rotation period then when the moon is out you'd have 5 minutes of peace and 5 minutes of moon laser death time. So if you got the timing right you could try to ambush them during the 5 minute window of safety.

Yeah just having a few check boxes and sliders in the game set up screen will probably solve all of this.

I imagined simple circles and ellipses as just being tracks in space that the planets and moons would always travel along. That way it's be easier for players to keep track of what's going on and easier for people using the map editor to make orbits. The only time it'd be updated is when you have to figure out what happens to a moon when it's planet explodes, or when people strap rockets to something and change it's orbit.

I thought Uber confirmed that they were going to try for more physics already? If that's the case, I want to see what they make before we decide that it's "too complicated".

This could get overly complex.
If you have ever played universal sandbox you can see the true scale of modeling a solar system.
An example of this is the Earth takes approx 365 days to orbit the sun...... and saturn approx 29.5 earth years to orbit the sun.

I doubt that they are attempting to go with a full realistic time scale. Do you really want to wait days/hours to get to the moon or circumnavigate a planet?

I'm not going to repeat the idea of realism over awesome as that would be tedious and miss the point.
Looking at the gameplay trailer, it was obvious that the solar system of the game was of a much smaller scale than any real solar system. By carefully noting the relative sizes of the planets, the sun, the distance between them, and the force of gravity at the surface, I spent some time calculating from my knowledge of physics what the orbital period of the planet would be, for that configuration.

The answer? 90 seconds.

I doubt the orbital frequency would be this small if planets did orbit, but it's just to point out that fast orbiting planets would be realistic and would seriously influence gameplay - for the better, I think.

Could be okey if the orbit very slowly.

It's sufficient if it orbits over 5-120 minutes. Besides, you can't calculate the duration of the orbit without knowing the mass of the sun, because that decides how fast a planet has to move to hold an orbit. So you could just scale the duration of the orbits by scaling the mass of the sun.

We don't want full newton mechanics though, that means planets have no effect on the sun, no multi-body-simulation, just simple elliptic orbits (at least for the large celestial objects like planets and large moons, meteors on the other hand NEED at least slightly more complex curves if you want to drop them onto planets!)

oke lots of info but if the planets rotate how are we going to smash asteroids on other people's bases ?



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Beware i'm not in my rightr mind now !!


Edit :: oke thanks Garath

The calculation that decides a astroids path to the target would have to include the planets rotation. Im assuming (Not realy into advanced mathematics, but still quite sure) that its not at all impossible or even that complicated compared to everything else included.

It isnt.

Also, if you saw in the concept video, the plants, moons, and asteroids were orbiting. It is safe to assume at the moment they plan on keeping that.

Oh yes, another one... Please tell me again just how IMPOSSIBLE it is to properly simulate a solar system. How terribly taxing it will be on the CPU.

And then try downloading one of these free APs onto your android and learn just how WRONG you are.

http://www.spaceastronomer.com/en/softw ... ndroid.php

I like the static planet idea. If the planets aren't continually moving around on you It will be easier for new players. More experienced players would be able to crash an asteroid into a planet at an angle that causes the debris to fly into another plant. It would be a little like playing pool with a chess set on each pool ball. Everybody has fun, nobody needs a calculator to find out when the best time to attack is.

I'm still on the fence as to which combination of static/rotating planets and orbiting/not orbiting plants would be best but I do disagree with this assessment.

Timing the launch of an attack would be a pretty straightforward exercise with orbiting planets, you can see the whole solar-system, so eye balling when a planet is nearing its closest point to another doesn't strike me as something requiring advanced calculation. On top of this I could see contextual UI information being implemented in this regard. Say a player selects a unit cannon/rocket gantry/KEW; UI elements could be overlaid on available target asteroids/planets along with the ETAl. Player then decides to launch at one of the options and the ETA timer shifts to follow the rocket/units/KEW, counting down till they arrive at their destination.

I think it would be harder to score glancing blows with asteroids in order to shower debris over another planet than it would be to manage launching things at moving planets. The former requires the ability to alter trajectories (and have the possibility of missing), where as the latter is an interface where the player contextually selects targets, the only variables being the time of arrival based on the timing of the launch in relation to the orbital cycle (and possibly the level of orbital defences if that is a thing)

I should note that I am assuming a simplified orbit system here with a kind of flybywire system for sending things between planets. I am not convinced at this stage that that having fully simulated orbital mechanics would be the way to go at this stage. I would be happy with something more akin to what was seen in the kickstarter trailer.