[PTE] Epic Incidental Planet Smash Mistake

This is a really cool feature of planet smashing. Once orbit changes are back in (and asteroid belts implemented), I'd like to see people piloting asteroids into orbit as a shield from KEWs.

Gah, why is it that I impulsively love more procedural and physics based things in video games in general? :O

Okay .. so I built a system with a main planet (9 moons, all about 200-250 radius, 0 engines); there was a secondary world for me to retreat to (3 moons, also about 200-250 radius, Halley-enabled).

I set up a game vs AI; set his income to 0 so he wouldn't mess up my tests and mine to 5 so I didn't have to wait for ages! Scouted, made sure he was on the right planet and got the hell out of Dodge. I quickly sorted myself out, built Halleys on all three moons, and launched them in quick succession!

The first one slipped through the 9 moons of the main planet with ease! I cancelled before it hit and it dropped into what seems to have been a stable orbit (though it would probably have hit one of the others eventually). Now the main planet's got 10 defenders instead of 9.

The second one collided with one of the defending moons and they wiped each other out. Back down to 9 defenders.

The third also slipped gracefully through the defenders and took out the main planet.


I'm going to try it a few more times but watching it from the System view, my gut feeling is that even with 9 moons in the way, Halleys will make it through the majority of the time.

Hmm ... I wonder if the defending moons also intercept nukes?

[edit] Tried a second time and again, 2 moons out of 3 made it through the defenders (10 this time). Still not tried nukes. I must say though, watching your Halley loop through 10 moons to smash it's target is rather fun

Since it's not N-body calculated movements (anymore), couldn't the UI alert you when your smash trajectory intersects another body besides the target?

i think it's the best choice ever made at Uber after wanting to make PA, thank you.

what? what do you mean by this?

Literally cut in half. When they collide, but not straight on. When aimed correctly you are left which little more than half a moon each.

If both had been reduced to only little less than half the planet, both would be gone.

OMG that is so awesome! PTE?

PTE.

Doesn't happen with halleys, but with accidental collisions do to intersecting orbits.

I was in a 2v2v2 (not shared) match, spawned on same planet with my teammate and we killed other two commanders on the same planet and got it under full our control. There were 2 planets and 3 smashable moons. I managed to capture two of those moons, and built halleys on one of those (my first planet smash on new build), there was enemy presence on third moon, so I thought they might be preparing planet smash as well, so I was a great idea to transfer my commander to my second moon to increase chance of our survival. As soon as commander is teleported, I start the engines targeting enemy planet... five seconds later, my first moon crashes into my second moon, my commander dies.

Well I accidentally killed myself while attempting to smash a moon into the enemy... I just wasn't paying attention to it's orbit and it collided with my own planet.

Which was awesome.

The issue though is that the impact seems to have killed everything on both planets, including the halleys, and they froze into place with a bright effect permanently staying in place. Since the game ended I didn't get a chance to see further consequences.

I had exactly the same bug when my incidental collision happened. And it caused tremendous lag.

Lol, that's a great way to go out!

In the tests I've run, accidental collisions wipe out both planets and almost create a mini-sun (the bright effect you saw); it fades after a minute or two, if the game's still going.

So we can have RANDOM colliding planets but not planes that might crash on couple units or buildings, or random natural disasters or weather effects?

Talk about hypocritical UBER...

It ain't hypocritical. If you take a few minutes to check out the orbit then you won't have any problemen. That ain't random.

Planet collisions are not random. It's not like you start engines and dice is rolled.

It's entirely different things to code.. the smash code is already there, the orbit code was already there, this was just a matter of making some slight changes to make them work together.

Something like weather or collisions with air units would require a lot more coding and effort, and also performance. Just saying.

I think weather would be cool

I once tried to throw a planet into the enemy and forgot my commander was still on a moon surrouding it. Lost the game when the moon was smashed into the sun.

It is a pretty coold idea. Will we be able to move planets into around and into different orbits? There is a lot of possible depth and hilarity.