[Poll] Orbital wreckage yes/no?

Hey everyone,

Work was kinda slow this morning so I started daydreaming about this mechanic. The options are mainly aesthetically, but I think they would allow orbital to become a lot more involving

Option 1: orbital wreckage only in orbital layerThis option vouches for an orbital layer functioning just like the ground layer. When your satalites are destroyed, their 'corpses' will still be present in the orbital layer (stationairy or mobile) until reclaimed.
An alternative option B would let orbital wreckage to enter a declining orbit around a planet, eventually burning up and leaving the orbital layer somewhat clean

Option 2: orbital units crashing down & leaving wreckageIn this scenario, orbital units come crashing down onto the planet when they die, burying themselves into the planets crust. Damage to surface structures is optional, but would allow for some interesting gameplay, but shouldn't allow for CZAR-like strategies where you position your orbital army above a commander & press delete. , as this would allow orbital warfare to become more visible when you're zoomed in more.

Option 3: orbital units crashing in the atmosphere & burning up, leaving no wreckage
When orbital units 'die', they will come crashing down, but burn up before they can hit anything on the surface. This is actually just an alternative to the explosion mechanism we currently have. Still, seeing fireballs coming down across the globe would look neat.

Option 4: Just let'em explodeActually the option we already have. In the future, explosions will become more fleshed out, so the downfall of an orbital unit will likely become somewhat more impressive. But still...

What do you think?

The way it works now is quite good. Although it worked sort of well in Beta, it ended up being cluttered and confusing.

So no.


#pointlesspoll
#discussitinstead

Wreckage falling into the atmosphere and burning from the friction would look awesome.

Burn up.
Oh man that would look awesome.

(Maybe the largest of structures [orbital factory] wouldn't burn up completely and might cause damage when they hit the ground, but for all units to do that would probably be overkill)

Oh no, not Kessler Syndrome! It was bad enough in Kerbal Space Program!

*Cough*rentryeffectsareprimarilyduetothermodynamicshockheatingandNOTfriction*cough*

Googled thermodynamic heat shock, didn't come up with much.
I was under the assumption aerodynamic heating was the cause (and aerodynamic heating can be attributed to friction). Care to elaborate?

It's mostly a terminology mistake. I am always eager to learn from my mistakes. Friction happens between solids, I imagined it was the same thing between solids moving at high speed in a gas.

The heat isn't caused by rubbing/hitting partials (friction), it's caused by the air in front being compressed.

So the key word here is primarily.

In aerodynamic heating, (aka shock heating), a thermodynamic process occurs in front of the re-entering body. The re-entering body is moving significantly faster than the speed of sound in the fluid. Sometimes more than Mach 20. The air in front of the vehicle does not move sufficiently fast that it can shift out of the way, and flow around the vehicle. As a result, the passage of the vehicle causes the air in front of it to become compressed, significantly. It is a basic thermodynamic effect that compressing a fluid causes it to heat. You can see this yourself by simply operating a bicycle pump for a while. It is this isoentropic compression which causes the heating of a re-entering vehicle.

Now to be fair, there will be a small amount of entropic friction based heating as well, but compared to the amount of heat generated by the compression, it is borderline negligible.

I can't believe i was so wrong about it. Thank you based scientist.

Ah, right. T=(P*V)/(R*n) and all that.

the point is wreckage in space the way wreckage currently is would just disorient us and look terrible, it would look good if it had a kessler effect feel to it and all wreaks orbited, but since there's no orbiting ....

I guess the safest option is cool flames and smoke trails as it falls and perhaps a wreak on the ground and small damage dealt upon fall just for the sake of gameplay. (i mean common you get to reclaim none of your opponent's billion dollar SXX?)

I remember when the boosters falling back down dealt a tiny bit of damage to the structures it fell back onto, made so much sense! would make you want to leave space around the dangerous launch pad.

the booster blowing up feels terribly unrealistic, it's just back to kid's toys all over again, I feel soooo distant to it, I can't even touch it with a ten-foot pole. Plus how come the unit it's carrying get's away from this explosion with 100% health, the way it looks makes it look like it should have died in the explosion. And that's the way it would be were we to have fun decoupling that way.

You can make your lower stages crash into each other in KSP to have no falling parts. Good luck keeping a stray booster from coming by to give your main stage a goodbye hug.

We need orbiting satellites, drop ships, and the Kessler effect.

I have to agree, I liked the old method where the boosters from rockets fell back down and dealt splash damage, making it risky to leave a thousand fabbers assisting a launcher.

Although I do like the idea of orbital wreckage, it would make it more difficult to see the ground, so I would prefer a nice quick falling and burning animation for dead orbital units. I imagine this would look quite nice with an orbital factory, to see a larger structure burn up as it falls to the ground.

I wouldn't mind some wreckage to stay in space, but most of it would have to come down in a GIANT BLAZING BALL OF FIRE! YEAH! About the same amount of wreckage we get on land right now is fine IMO.