Planet collisions, why go to a lower orbit as opposed to direct intercept?

It's odd how the attacking planet always move to a close orbit to the sun before moving to intercept the target planet. Why not make a direct intercept where the attacking planet just heads straight for the target without moving close to the sun? in a lot of cases the attacking planet looks like it could hit the target on the way in.

Changing orbit is technically the easiest thing, while they are two huge objects in space the amount of precision required to do a direct intercept would be astronomical(plus you'd need many maneuvering thrusters and the entirety of gravitational forces must be compensated for).

It's far easier to shift the orbit, sling shot around the sun and hit the target.

Besides, it's a doomsday weapon, it has to take forever to hit/charge.

Don't forget that the system is not just plotting to intercept the planet in general, but also is trying to hit in the exact area you selected.

Also slingshot orbits work really well for that kind of thing, you an see it pretty well when they showed off some early code for it when talking about the system editor in one of the Live Streams.

Mike

Most of the cases a slingshot intercept takes a lot more time and delta-V than direct intercept. I think it'd make more sense for the attacking planet to take the least-time approach, going slingshot or direct attack depending on which is better.

more time - yes, delta-v - no. where u get ur science? the dark-ages?

*also, what oathalliance said

Because celestial is a 2d plane that it needs to break off of to hit. We need to do a better job of hiding the transition though.

I was wondering if you were planning on addressing that. It's very disorienting to see the asteroid/moon suddenly teleport a bit as it starts its final approach.

Still, I'll take it the way it is just because of what it is, if you know what I mean.

I've also noticed that as the moon is approaching it's target planet is glitches as it's swinging into position and actually does a quick rotation around the target planet. I've had it do this glitch in two separate cases on this patch. Am I the only one?
Also, get those Halley rockets firing! It would be nice to have a little extra effect to build the moment.

I think Halley's should be capable of traveling at variable speeds to meet an intercept.

But that's just throwing another variable into a 6-9 variable equation.

I noticed this too. If asteroids kill everything on a planet, in the air, and in the orbital sphere, why do they need to jump around to hit a specific point? Why not have it come in at the angle of approach from the slingshot maneuver and just slam the planet where it happens to land? The current implementation just feels cartoony and a little too scripted to fit with the rest of the game.

on that note, we've seen on multiple live casts you guys pan around the celestial view.

for an overall more polished visual could the zoom out bring us to the celestial view with the same camera angle? a feature to turn it off could be added in the menu the same way the pole lock has been.