please add a Z to your X and Y domention for your system creations minimal distance that a planet is allowed to have an orbit from the sun? (there was a game where a moon orbiting a planet orbited through the sun) elliptical orbits do not stick when created and then played, orbit revert to circles with fixed orbits to where they are in conjunction to the sun when they were saved.
Adding a z dimension would make it way too complicated to view. It is modelled in 3 dimensions but its a 2d view so you can actually view and understand it easily.
It would make things difficult as well in battle because of the planets moving in completely different directions rather than clock-wise or counter-clockwise.
Our planets are 3D, yet travel within/on the plane of the ecliptic. Kinda like a disc. In that regard, I appreciate how the game is already set up. ( planets do not typically orbit like an electron!!) I have also been on a map where the moon had an orbit that brought it through our base every 5 minutes or so. not great, but it showed two things. First, that this specific issue is something that should be addressed within the system creator. If the system editor detects a planetary collision as a result of normal orbits in any specific configuration, it should alert the creator in some way and not allow you to load it in normal game play until the problem is fixed. Because that just makes sense! This is a beta, So things like that, I have to believe, will get air brushed in as further updates are released. Second, planet to planet interactions in game. So until I see if a sub-300 unit size planet goes through another planet as a result of a bad orbit, or smash into it as if somebody hit the "annihilate" button; the following will just be conjecture. --Planets must not be able to interact with each other. I'm envisioning this as a matter "state" change. Which sort of makes sense, seeing as the game is built off a technology that acts like a state-machine (OpenGL). Units react to planet surfaces under some set of rules. I'm guessing planets fallow their own unique set of rules -> which are to probably ignore other planetary objects....until someone hits the annihilate button, changing the state of perhaps the two planets ( the one doing the smashing, and the one about to get smashed). --Just thinking out loud... This could change, for example, a sub-30 unit planet hits the planet and causes destruction just because it was in a bad orbit, which would mean there are unique rules for sub-300 and for greater than 300 size planets. Which is already the case (sub-300 lets you build Haley drives, and shows you in system view how many engines are required to drive it) versus >300 planets.
