Hi all! I just read the report from @jables, and I especially like the fact that he mentionned they still do consider them for a more or less distant future. He says they are trying to make them fun so they can be an interesting gameplay addition, so I made this thread so we can help them finding the sweet spot for them. I invite you to tell everyone how could the asteroids make the game more interesting (or less interesting) and how would they work. I'll start : - Asteroids must be easier to manage than planets, so we can deal with tenths of them - Maybe make asteroids small pieces of rock and ice where we can build one single building such as an extractor to get extra metal or a halley type thruster to fling it around or a radar or a ion cannon thing - Asteroid gameplay should be faster than moon gameplay. Such as no anchor balling, no locking. Exploiting an asteroid instead of using it as a weapond must be rewarding to compensate. - Maybe be able to nuke the asteroids to dust, especially when you are getting one down on your head - Maybe have some larger asteroids that have greater damage potential and/or yield more that cross the system and thus are not available trough an entire game.
pick your inspiration in here (it's not like we should burn all that's been written) https://forums.uberent.com/threads/ui-suggestion-and-asteroid-belts.56043/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/asteroid-field-idea-discussion-thread.57835/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/asteroid-belt-implementation-idea.61854/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/what-ever-happened-to-asteroid-belts.66110/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/will-asteroid-belts-be-feasible.61414/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/asteroid-belts-how-will-they-function.68189/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/a-new-unit-or-deployable-for-mini-kew-conversions.55856/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/asteroid-mechanics.42605/ https://forums.uberent.com/threads/intercept-asteroids-with-other-asteroids.37162/
When I read asteroids I was thinking of little rocks that automatically respawn, are quite numerous, have space for nothing but a single halley (or maybe a smaller version). They hit with damage similar to a nuke... and that's where I start to really not understand the point of them. We have nukes, so why add more nukes. Bigger than nukes? Well planets hit bigger than nukes. I don't see a big point in asteroids. Unless you make them hit for less damage than nukes, make them less expensive to use and give them pretty graphical effects. Then I guess they might have the purpose of "constantly throwing around pretty explosions". But more game enders? No need.
No there is a way to make them different than just nukes. First, they can have a diferent kind of damage such as smaller size than nuke but leave an unbuildable crater like moon smashes. They can also be totally different from a strategic stanpoint. This is why i insisted on the fact that they can de either mined, or used a a weapon, because that would give players who go orbital easily accessible eco options or destruction option. I also said they need to be nukable so they are not too OP EDIT : this is off topic but id like wreckage too
If in a belt, pelters, holkins, and catapults could be used to attack other asteroids. Too small to support orbital units aside from astraeus drop. Supports a few mex, miniature halleys. Could use existing defenses en masse to stop collision.
I really feel adding "asteroids you can walk around on and build and fight and shoot from one asteroid to another asteroid" will really completely overload the players mind. Managing multiple planets is already hard enough. It would need some pretty innovative UI things to make that work.
Yeah agreed, or make each asteroid have a single slot for a building so you can manage them from the system view. We can mod in 50 radius moons in the game alerady and having 20 or more of them is insane !
I first want there to be an explosion for equal mass bodies and some kind of lava effect in the crater. Doesn't have to be super special, but that would add so much to the planet smashing, which is what PA is about.
add reclaimability to asteroids for orbital fabbers ... remember neutrino talking bout asteroidmining? that way asteroids can be both super nukes when large enough to build halleays on or shorttermish ecoboosts but unlike regular planets they dont have metalspots for extractors
I can think of an interesting way for them to do so... :> what if crashing a big-sized KEW on a planet generated these smaller rocks in a ring around target planet (or both if the other survived) , much like the creation of our moon.
This is kind of cobbled together from previous posts of mine, but here it goes. I can't speak for everyone else, but when I say I want an asteroid belt, I mean I want a section of space that visually looks something like this: And has 2-8 (configurable) smallish useable asteroids with probably 3 sizes, small medium and large, (with many more that are not useable, they'd need a different look). When you use one for smashing and it is destroyed, a new one from the field becomes useable. I'd like to see jigs move more towards energy production than metal, maybe note a complete lack of metal but greatly reduce the amount they make. Maybe even make it so you can toggle on metal production but at the cost of the energy they would normally produce (self sufficient metal maker) Then asteroids could fulfill the metal orbital eco. Make an asteroid only mex that has a high metal output, that alone would give reason to fight for them. Maybe even give that mex a high energy use if jigs are energy only, so a good way to pay for it is with jigs. Next up we need some changes to the planet smashing system. Tie the mass of a planet / asteroid is tied its radius. In general, larger planets should have more mass (no need to force a specific number, but a range would be nice). Maybe even give different planet types different ranges, example the valid range for metal planets would have more mass than a similar sized lava planet. The minimum number of hallies needed to move a body should be tied to the mass of the body. Exceeding that number will give a body a higher impact velocity. The blast radius done by impact of of a body should be based on the mass and velocity of the projectile vs the mass of the target. Scale the blast radius so that the smallest asteroid with the smallest number of engines is slightly larger than a nuke's blast radius, add an extra 10-15% for every extra engine. Lastly give us the ability to intercept incoming bodies of up to a certain size. (like in the kickstarter video). Just to toss some rough ideas out there, if we have 3 size asteroids, small medium and large, do the following. Anti-nuke missile hits a large asteroid, it splits into 1 medium and 1 small asteroid. Anti-nuke missile hits a medium asteroid, it splits into 1 small asteroid and 1 tiny asteroid. Anti-nuke missile hits a small asteroid, it splits into 1 tiny asteroid and a bunch of no damage super small chunks Anti-nuke missile hits a tiny asteroid, it explodes into super small chunks that do no damage (having them burn up in the atmosphere on planets with atmospheres would look neat)
Really like the idea of this. Im not sure yet how this will work out in the end but i probably am going to like it a lot.
No need? No need?! Asteroids obliterate the possibility of orbital stalemates on systems where they exist.
So don't build such systems. Really I'd rather see more interesting gameplay options on well done systems.
holy ****! WHERE are these illusive stalemates ppl keep talkin about?? even theoretically, unless the two adversaries are a physiological clone of one another (already an impossibility) and the two are on the EXACT same resources (rare chance) the possibilities of it never finding a resolution are slim at the very best. Are we just calling long games "a stalemate" now? Is that the new hip youngster term I'm unfamiliar with? cuz in my books a long game isn't a stalemate, and doesn't exist either way PA, is way too erratic, WAY to erratic (which would be great if we could fix) , to allow for any sort of longevity in the game-time. yes, game-time, not real-time. I'm hoping we can refrain from counting lag as a nature of PA and design the game consequently. It deserves to be designed around the assumption that the lag will eventually be fixed.
Back in beta i remember a scenary where me and cumsume where in a fight that became an orbital battle. It literally took 2+ hours of doing nothing but avenger battling but eventually i think the game ended in one way or another. I think those games are just so long that its easier to call it a stalemate and play another game then to play and see who wins.
