Planetary Orbits?

Will or should the planets, moons, and asteriods have orbital paths? I think that having orbital paths could be awesome, imagine a map where to enemy planets cross each others orbits every five minutes and suddenly artillery can suddenly bombard the enemies planet, rockets, and nukes would require exponential less fuel, transports would drop troops,and the planets open fire on each other. If planetary orbits are included, how big of a factor should they be? Should planets have a day and a night side? Should KEW, be able to distort the orbital path or better yet, send them spiraling into the sun? I would love to see what your guys opinions on this and perhaps the direction the team is moving in.

Sounds cool, but I can imagine that accurately simulating actual planetary systems with gravity and newtonian physics is kind of a little beyond the scope of the budget and goal of this game...

I am realistically imagining the planetary gameplay will be just pictures or simple 3d object representations of "areas/battlefields" you can go or zoom in to. Sure, they might spin around but don't expect them to be simulations imo.

If they do then I hope it takes like 5hours to have planets orbit the star and moons like 2hours.

Just so you don't really get crazy from orbiting so fast :lol:

Keep it subtle but so that you don't notice it

It doesn't exactly have to be newtonian: I'm sure perfectly circular orbits would be acceptable, in this case, or other, specific shapes, like an oval. One simply has to assign a planetoid to follow a set path. I don't know how complicated that is, but hey.

You know, I see you are a Cybran, I like the UEF :lol:

Want to fight for who is the best when PA gets inserted in my PC? :twisted:

Planets and asteroids are so big, yet tiny compared to stars, that it doesn't need to be a Newtonian simulation. You only have to worry if you have lots of moons and they get close.

Something I would like to see is a skirmish option where you have 2 planets in decaying orbits that crash into each other after some amount of time, and of course you start on one.

You guys are talking about the n body problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem

The math isn't too bad if you just want an approximation, which should work fine for a video game. There are plenty of orbit simulations that already exist out there, look at "Universe Sandbox"

If you want a simpler model you could just do 2 body orbits around it's next largest gravity well. So for example all the planets orbit around the sun and ignore the other planets and moons, then each moon orbits around it's planet and ignores everything else.

For the game I imagine that the engine is split into 2 parts, the on planet TA style fighting, then another system from getting from planet to planet (moving units between maps).

Having working orbits wouldn't effect the TA style fighting part of the game. But it would effect the getting from planet to planet part of the game. When the solar system map boos up all the objects floating in space would have an initial trajectory (otherwise they'd all just smash into the sun) Then we calculate orbits and start everything going. Then when someone blows up a planet or moon we just take everything's current trajectories and recalculate orbits.

For me this would make or break the game, like you said it doesn't have to be real physics but the ability to push things into new orbits or send them crashing into the sun or whizzing off into the icy depths of space would just be awesome. Imagine you build a large base on the moon, a production hub with a massive army and giant artillery; then fire up the massive array of boosters to move it from orbiting your planet to orbiting the neighbouring planet to achieve a staging ground for invasion and bombardment on the enemy's planet. Or another example, you put an asteroid into orbit to lay down bombardment. And the most epic idea, you stop the rotation of a planet cooking one side and freezing the other leaving a narrow band around the day night boundary where you can still fight and build. Push a planet into the sun creates a ticking clock for everyone to abandon it before it goes up it flame and push it out the system for a ticking clock to leave before freezing. (burnt up units and buildings are destroyed but if frozen they can be returned to stable temp and fired back up like being put into stasis since they are machines).
Night and day requires the units and buildings to be lit which would be very cool.
Also the orbiting units and gas giants where all game play is with orbiting units is a thing I really want to see, they shouldn't add the extra resource of helium though it should just tell you that's what is going on and the fusion just go straight to energy, cut out the middle man.
Artificial satellites would also be very cool, DEATH STARS!!!!

This might be a good way to balance smashing asteroids into planets.

When someone puts engines on an asteroid and starts it heading for a planet everyone on that planet gets a "Collision Course Detected" warning, just like Supreme Commander's "Strategic Launch Detected" warning. Then a timer starts up for 5-10 minutes or however long it takes to get the asteroid tot he planet. And the defending player has that amount of time to get units onto the asteroid and blow up it's engines.

Now the attacking player has to invest resources defending and building a base on a map that is going to be destroyed. And the defender has only a few minutes to win a fight on a tiny map before it smashes into their planet. This would force people into small skirmishes, which would break up the monotony of people turtling all game.

Also on a side note with orbital physics in place there is no reason why we couldn't take a moon or planet, cover 20% of it's surface area in rockets, and smash it into something.

I totally agree, collision detected warnings, decaying or outward bound orbit warnings and timers would be the way to go to make this all balanced.

Oh boy. Cybrans, bro. And yes, you're on

I have experience doing this math. Most of the time you just treat it as a 2 body problem because the one object is so much larger than the others. There are exceptions in certain spots or over really long time periods, but usually a 2 body, or at most 3-body is usually fine.

Making the orbits hard in general and math intensive does not add to the awesome. I'd suggest making it a modable or expandable option to make the orbits more complicated or hard. Especially since in most cases I think their wont be any significant accuracy loss by not doing the full dynamics.

I actually assumed there would be orbits, simply because in their concept video, it shows the moon bombarding the area immediately below it. Therefore I assumed that you'd have to wait for the moon to orbit to the other side to bombard the area over there, which would sort of take the edge off of not having control of the moon.

As I said in the other thread, even a ground-based indirect fire unit could reasonably be expected to bombard anywhere on the planet. An orbital unit will have even less trouble.

I think it would depend on the technology being used. Obviously a laser is only going to be able to hit a limited arc of the planet's surface. I'm not a mathematician, but it has something to do with the tangent on a sphere intersecting a point at a distance from the sphere.

Guided missiles or other powered craft are, also obviously, going to be able to go anywhere on the planet.

The question is, what kind of gun are we shooting at the planet? Is it a ballistic projectile? There is probably a firing solution that will hit anywhere on the surface, but it will take a while. Is it a mass driver type weapon? At that kind of speed a solid slug would behave more like a laser than a bullet.

Same here. Makes the mini-map problem even more of a nightmare though.

I would have to study up on it to refresh my memory on all the equations but I think people are vastly underestimating just how powerful modern computers are. Planetary motion is pure math and number crunching. Your computer does these things very very well.

Also, we don't need a perfect simulation accurate down the the millimeter that can track a few thousand objects in orbit. We're tracking a relatively small number of objects in space and we don't even mind if the numbers are off slightly as long as it's good enough to look right to the end user.

I really don't think it will be a problem guys.

Not your PC is the limiting factor, but your comprehension when getting a complex 3D arrangement presented on a flat 2D screen.

Having the planets move and not stand still would add a lot of atmosphere. It would make the game seem less stiff.

And the strategic effects this have is a cool addition.

I'd rather see rough orbital dynamics with awesome unit dynamics instead of awesome orbital dynamics and alright unit dynamics. Mainly because I feel improving the orbital dynamics, while a little cost at any moment, it's a constant cost over time (there is no nice solution for 3+ body problems) that does not add much.

I support it only if they actually plan to make use of the improvements they could get. I.E. moons interacting with each other and throwing one into an unstable orbit. You'd also need to warn the players that would happen, which would mean prediction too.