[Idea] Maybe Orbital Units Need Be Bigger?

If you think about it, a planet's surface area is so big, and if expanded outward grows multiply, not linearly.

So, a radius of 200 has a surface area of 1000 (piss poor estimate), but one of 400 has one of 6000 (actually pretty accurate in terms of ratio)

This applies to a planet and it's orbital shell. Each square meter of land on a planet, associates with six square meters of surface area on the orbital shell.

Thus, it makes sense orbital units, structures, factories, ect, need be 6 times bigger, as possibly do their strategic icons.

The reason I say this is entirely because they would appear an obvious size, if they were bigger, compared to the units below, given the area orbital units have to exist on. They are only hard to find right now, because it is finding a similar sized unit, on a bit of area that is magnified highly compared to the unit it is on.

If it was possible to easily go into models, increase a size by 600%, then paste it into the game, I would try that, just to see if orbitals become more easily seeable. If they were, that would benefit orbital usage greatly honestly.

4πr²

It's proportional to the square. If you double the radius of a sphere, you quadruple the surface area.


Orbital unit's distance from the surface is a linear distance, which looks normal on large planets and very far away on small planets.

Sorry but someone was going to call you out on it. Your point is somewhat valid, larger orbital units might help. However Uber is working on visibility of the orbital layer which currently you can only really see if you look at off center.

Not only that but it makes zoming in and out jerky. I have found out that zooning in and out on larger planets is much easier than on smaller onees (for radius 400 planet whay happens is you are zoomed in and for the first quarter of mouse wheel turn you the zoom woks correctly then if you turn a mouse wheel for just a milinetra the whole view jumps outwards way beyond orbital shell similarly when you zoom in it first zooms in normally then after you hit oebital shell it again jumps in all the way into the planet surace to maximum magnification)

Orbital units need to be way more expensive. Simply putting materials into orbit costs like crazy. The ISS alone cost 150 billions USD

This is because our space technology is primitive.
Look at Cubesats, they are very inexpensive satellites. It's nearly as if you could send yours in orbit. (On a space launch having spare cargo space, obviously.
In Pa, they are robot so they don't need all the shenanigans humans need in space. (Air, rooms, food, biological processes, etc)

Also, when humans will be able to gather resources directly in space, the costs will drop down dramatically.

I kinda agree, a SXX is more expensiv than a Halley, so why it´s so tiny?!

whole lotta nope.

I'm not entirely sure about what you're saying but zooming is subject to scroll acceleration, if you move 7 scroll clicks slowly then the camera will barely move, if you do it quickly then the planet will be a tiny pinprick in the distance.

once we stop throwing away expensive rockets after every launch, costs will drop dramatically.

I think that someway of making the underlying planet grayed out or a transparent outline would help. Also, a dotted line extending down from the orbital unit to the ground would be nice.

I believe they retrieve them and reuse them. The boosters this is. I believe. For once, I can't be bothered researching that.

The lion share of the cost in sending stuffs in orbit isn't the stage rocket itself. It's logistic, research, planning, stuffs that goes in orbit also cost a fortune, and fuel. Those stuffs consume fuel like crazy.

Off topic. Every time I see improvements in this project, I almost cry for the joy for how beautiful it is. Perhaps the Orbital Launcher in PA could take inspiration from it?

Aha! Thank you

yea but the point of that project is to not throw away expensive rockets at every launch. i'm not disagreeing, launching stuff into space is expensive at every turn. re-using rockets is just one important aspect. (note: re-using can also reduce the other costs you mentioned, like logistics).

no 100% of rockets in use today are non-reusable. the space shuttle was reusable but only the shuttle part, and it was still replaced a bunch of times, it's not in use anymore, I don't think the future will reveal that reusable rockets are better, on the contrary.

Being at an angled camera at the orbital layer is a neat idea.

Also, Bigger sized orbital units also fixed chunky camera zoom, where there is an exact zoom distance you can see them without them being too small or too big. However, if the camera knew where to slow it's zoom ratio, at the perfect height above orbitals, that could help too.

What are you talking about? The solid state boosters are fished out of the ocean and used again.

mea culpa, they are? in anycase, still talking about the shuttle, once again the shuttle isn't in use anymore.

True. The fault is mine. I read all that stuff about how spacecraft work when I was a kid. My belief was all modern launch systems used that multistage and reusable booster system.

American bias at its best

The visibility of orbital is a contrast and blur issue, as well as a problem with them having shadows which also throws your brain off.

Introducing clouds and having a toggle so you see at any zoon aside from system zoom orbital and planet clouds with everything beneath blurred, or you see blurred orbital and clear land units, should fix most issues. Sadly not moddable ATM.