I checked the tracker but this was dismissed as untrue however I have a feeling that if I were to zoom out from earth the moon would not be orbiting our planet as fast as it does in the game. Last I heard it took 27 days for our moon to orbit the Earth, surely this would give of a much slower look when zooming out, at the moment it looks like it's going pretty fast. I understand every situation would be different because it will be determined by the planets gravitational pull or what not but this seems a little off to me.
The moon is orbiting fast as a necessity. The idea is that not only will players be able to launch things to land on the moon, but they will also be able to fire ordinance from the moon back at the surface of the parent body. Thus, allowing the moon to orbit quickly means that a moon-based weapon platform will be able to hit any point on the planet in a reasonable time frame. It would not be much fun if unit cannons and long range artillery were only able to hit an enemy base for a small window once very 27 days.
Gameplay > Realism. Considering there will be things like Unit Cannons and maybe artillery that you can mount on the moon/other orbiting bodies, having them on long realistic orbits would make then very hard to use and/or have a lot more 'time on target'. Among other gameplay effects as well. Mike
I look forward to creating craters and the battlefields changing and getting more and more messed up. That's going to be pretty cool! ^^
I'm no orbital mathematician, but isn't it possible to hit just about anywhere on earth from the moon, if you fire at the right angle & speed?
This is one of those Realism > Gameplay things, but we'll see, we could try both ways yet in Alpha/Beta to see which works best. Mike
Engine-wise, interplanetary ballistic weapons should be able to fire from any one body to any other that isn't obstructed, so I would assume yes I'm definitely in favour of non-realistic orbit times; I'd prefer not to have a "1 month in every 4 years" bombardment window in a PA game, a couple of minutes every 30 seems far more reasonable, even for a "long" (several hours) PA game
Careful about using the word realsim here. We could have realistic orbit times with not realistic scales. I.E. the scale we see in game so that things takes minutes instead of months/years. all you need to do is fudge the numbers, so for example, since the planet is at most kilometers from the star, that would result in really fast orbits if the star had the same mass as the sun, even though it's so tiny. Example: With the Sun and earth with 10km distant it takes .5 ms according too http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astro ... anet_orbit This is before we play with the mass of things (smaller star makes it slower, planet size does not change much until it starts being a big chunk of the star in mass) earth-moon at 10km is 313ms. And Star-Planet and Planet-Moon is the same problem, just need to make sure we pick the right values to get the number we want. The only place this starts to matter beyond orbit times is when we start putting engines on asteroids, but we also control the thrust numbers from those.
I was meaning "realistic" in the sense of assuming similar distances / masses and periodicity with known actual orbital bodies. Since the planet itself is not currently "realistic" (a radius of a few km is not enough to be spherical using "real" physics) I'm perfectly happy to apply some arbitrary scaling to values presented in game to better fit expectations. For instance, I'd say that anything from 5-60 minutes orbital period for moons, planetary bodies and asteroids would be usable (and useful) in-game, as a game related feature. Trying to explain why orbits are so fast would require a liberal dose of handwavium, or just gloss over the fact entirely
Which is what I was saying, it's a scaling issue. I will also admit to not finding the comment I thought I was responding too... I think I need my vacation now...
Fast orbits seem like a great default for alpha/beta testing. Even faster planets might ultimately result in many interesting bugs with weapons and trajectories and graphics (and perhaps performance issues) manifesting themselves. Ultimately, I figure like almost all things related to designing / generating a map, planetary orbit speeds just being a numerically configurable thing in an editor will be the best choice. (Someone will probably want to make a map were a "death star" will slooowly circle another body before it can shoot at its target... or something like that).
If physics were realistic, the star wouldn't have ignited at the entirety of the system would be a cloud of inert dust. Yay. Real life.
*imagines an IPBM trying to hit a planet whose orbital speed is the same as the missile's top speed* "Stop moving! STOP MOVING! STAHP IT! STAAAAAAAAHP!"
