This is a good idea! I really like that this would allow you to stay in one place with a slow trickle of resources, but also encourage exploration to get resources at a much faster rate.
I would really like to see larger distances between the planets, and if top speeds on space ships need to be retained, they should be much higher. In the way the game currently functions, without other systems, there's little point to making a capital ship, since your small vessel can easily cross the gap between planets. Having the planets actually orbit the sun would be really nice too. In-system flight should be a slightly taxing ordeal for small vessels, and trivial for capitals. I'd really love to see some more challenge from the planet itself also. Right now, there is really no difference between planets other than the monsters you're constantly assaulted by when you land. I'd love to see more element-based survival, like hot planets gradually heating up your ship and damaging things, or cold planets causing systems to fail sometimes (engine failure in flight, oh no!) Hostile monsters and robots should be a specific challenge, certain planets with an atmosphere should present the challenge of hostile life, resource rich moons and asteroids should challenge you with robots (because mining stations are present or whatever), but to me it's not fun or realistic to be chased by armed drones every km you travel.
I don't really see how having planetary orbits would work well with this game. You'd have to add orbital mechanics, physics, and a ton of other complicated and problematic game systems. If not, and they just added orbits and that's it, then you'd have the following major problems: Space stations would lose their planets Anything in orbit would crash into the planet (or a different planet) as it orbits Players would have to figure out optimal transit windows for traveling to different planets based on deferring orbits. This is very complex for most players. Players would be constantly disorientated due to points of reference constantly changing Add to all that, the fact that for the orbiting to be noticeable to the player, it would have to be REALLY fast and totally unrealistic. (Like 1 to 5 day orbit times) Why not just pretend they're orbiting? Real-time we'd have to play anywhere from 1 to 30 years to notice the difference anyway, so why bother modelling that?
Yeah, it'd be cool, make you have to have a navigational computer in your ship. But that is really to added décor. Space the planets out, strategically and with purpose(or random if we go the generated route) and let that be the end of it. I know traveling vast distances is fun for some, but I don't have 5 hours a day for play time, so I like to get places relatively quick.
The propulsion systems we're using are not chemical rockets with limited delta v, you wouldn't have to calculate transfer windows or anything like that. You fly straight to the planet, just like you do now. And why would you assume that having the planets move would screw anything else up? If the planets were far enough away from each other, you could just lock all the objects nearby to the planet, moons, stations, asteroids etc into the same frame of reference as the planet and not bother simulating that, and then nothing would crash into anything. But yeah, having them actually move in orbits around the sun, whatever. It would be cool because that's how it actually works, but if you at least put them into positions around the sun where it looks like that's what happened. Seems strange to me as it is right now that there is a big clump of planets on one side of the star. And as for vast travel distance, I'm not talking about making the game take forever. As I said, space the planets out and increase the top speed. I don't think it would make the game more fun to have to travel 2 hours between planets, but I do think it would be more immersive if it were slightly more believable. The level of tech in the game is such that we can basically hand wave all of that stuff, and travel from one planet to another in minutes, but I'd prefer if the play environment was semi-believable.
At this stage orbits don't really concern me. Would they be neat? Heck yea. But what kind of strain would it put on the server/game and what benefit would it add? If they manage to put a season mechanic in, hell yea it would be worth it. If its orbiting just for the sake of orbiting, then only implement that feature if it could be done with a minimum of performance impact.
Well, for a game like this you don't really need a physical simulation to add orbits. You simply can add curcular (or even ellyptic) paths around the sun/planet and let things move on those paths. It is also possible to add new orbits with ease. They are just virtual objects. If an orbit don't contain an object, the program can delete it. By the way, the math you need for an astrophysical realistic simulation of planetary movement is easy compared to the math that is needed to let a mob walk realistically. you just need ellipses and angles. Once you have the paths, it is easy to expand a functionality that is already in game to those path-objects. I'm refering to the fact that your ship always moves in relation to the nearest planet or space station. Every object has it's own coordinate system. Once, your shuttle enters that coordinate system, it adapts it's movements to that system. If you stop, you stop in relation to the nearest heavy object. As I mentioned, this is already in game. will not happen. they move on stable orbits around the planet will not happen. they move on stable orbits around the planet Survival sometimes isn't easy. All they loose when they don't use an optimal window is time, energy and oxygen. By the way, you only need to look if the other planet is not behind the sun to know that you don't spend too much resources for the trip. Welcome in space. Even Einstein preferred a static universe, but he was wrong. The content of the universe is constantly moving. The planets sizes are downscaled. Day-night cycle is downscaled. Distances in space are downscaled. Why not downscale orbiting time too? Because games can teach you things without you feeling being taught. The question is, what do the developers have in mind? They already stated that distances and sizes of planets will change.
It's important to remember that the Unity engine is the same game engine that makes Kerbal Space Program function incredibly well... with that in mind, adding orbits and having "arcade style" realism, shouldn't be impossible. I could see a problem initially with "parking" objects in a geostationary orbit or geosynchronous around a celestial body but it could be handled fairly easily with UI controls and such that the player sets before they leave the cockpit. Think of it like a parking brake that locks your CV, SV into an orbit or position. Right now, momentum (let off thruster key and you start to slow down) is not maintained in space flight which may change in the future. If it does not, player (CV, SV) orbiting won't really be possible because of the fuel supply and constant corrections unless it's handled automatically through a UI/AI system. On the other hand, the developers have set a precedence (official game category listing) on simulation. In this version of the game we only see very, very basic planetary travel and static planetary bodies. I have a feeling that this was intentional to provide a "proof of concept" rather than a final product for the steam launch. I have no doubt in my mind that full motion planetary orbits will be added later and that we'll have to plan better when traveling in small vessels. A Capital Ship, should have no problem negotiating the distance inside a solar system but a small vessel journey could be tedious if you want to use it to blaze away at 100 m/s around each planet in a system and leave your CV behind. With that in mind... I don't think we'll end up seeing incredibly complex orbital simulation which seems to be what some of you are concerned about. I'm talking about calculating orbits, transfers, delta v, etc. You can have a degree of realism without going overboard so let's see what they give us to test/play in the coming months. I've not seen anything in this game yet that is overly complex. So far, everything seems to be well balanced in regard to simulation and arcade style play.
I did find it kind of unusual that the temperature on Ningues is a balmy -20 C during the day... but the surface water is still in liquid form. "Maybe it's not H2O" some might say... but I'll bet if you drop an oxygen processor in there you'll find that it is.
My concern is not really with a given solar system, more than what other creatures and NPCS will that add once we get a full solar system. I'm really not a MP guy on these EA games due to hackers. I hate it when DEVs have to take time from developing a game to get rid of exploits and such. I like playing with friends, though. I digress. Are there going to pirates, other NPC humanoids and **** like that. Some beast mode AI alien race. That's what I'm interested in. As cool as it to actually fly out of an atmosphere or drive through one, content content content! That being said, this game is badass.
I was looking in the config files for the planets and there are coordinates. Here is an example: <DroneBase> <property DroneBaseTypeName="MainDroneBase" /> <Position X="-3430" Z="678" /> So this could give you your compass and hopefully a way to set way points.
I hope there will be eco systems that you can survive in without the use of a fully sealed space suit. This could be especially interesting if getting out of your suit comes with advantages like faster movement, less exhaustion (food, Stamina wise) as tradeoff for environmental influences like temperature, which would add to the advantage of actually building a base with conditioned environment, where a power failure can make you sweat and shiver (in sense of the wording). Also some planets should allow agriculture without the use of plant lamps, but adding things like irrigation systems (using water) and fertilizer systems (spraying nutrient solution) on your planting boxes. The lights would then only be used in space or say environments that don't have enough light. The moon for instance is quite dark even in bright daylight. Definitlely I would like longer day/night cycles (after we have actually usable work lighting), but this would be an automatic effect of larger planets. The Asteroidfield formations we have in Empyrion are, compared to the "a roid every few km" pattern in SE, much more "Sci-fi movie like". But these fields should be bigger (more roids) and some of the roids should have enough room for instance to build a base into/onto, and in these cases maybe some unexpected inhabitants . This is a galaxy populated by post FTL flight civilisations after all isn't it. Also the depth where resources are located on planets should be more variable, so for some (rare) stuff you actually have to build a REAL mine instead of just go one-man-stripmining. Maybe cavesystems to explore on planets where you can also find resources - and maybe find yourself lost if you don't watch out Also I would like to see other cosmic phaenomena like interplanetary nebulae, wreckage zones where you can find leftovers from battles long past or similar "historic" sites.
Imagine the possibilities of restoring ghost ships(CVs) that got half blown up in battle or severely damaged hull with holes blown through them due to cannon fire still drifting in space. Imagine the task in trying to fully repair and restore a decrepit derelict of a past battle. They would have cargo containers of ammo, fuel, food, and Oxygen as they could be military vessels or exploration CVs that got caught in a battle for survival as it was attacked brutally and lost the fight for survival. The ship wrecks could be in a nebula near a planet the nebula can contain gases and radioactivity that can knock out some equipment used in detection of enemies like radar and other sensor devices. These would be huge CV wrecks really enormous but not planet stranded but very slowly drifting in space with thrusters shot out and vital generators destroyed. They are still marked as CV's and not turned into bases due to them not being planet/moon bound. So you could fully restore them and take them home if you wish. The nebula would be really thick of many colors from different types of gases to choose from of red, blue, yellow, green, and purple. Also if you wanted you can put the said planet in the nebula as some nebulas have planets in them. If you also wanted the nebula can arc like a thunder cloud as some can produce violent lightning bolts that may have a chance to strike your ship and do some damage. The planet could be anything really but the planet can be home to really hostile baddies if not prepare you may cripple away licking your wounds from a bad encounter. But can have many places on it for high end loot and can have awesome places to set up a base there if wanted.
I wish planets had axial tilt, seasons, and a rotating starscape (from a planetside perspective), although having the sun, moon, and planets rise and fall at the right time is a very nice and practically unprecedented feature. My first hour of gameplay I ate some food and then just stared at the sky for a while Even more impressive is the changing angle of ascension as you move away from the equator of any world. Not only is it observable, it is more precisely correct than I can measure. I would really like to see variable lengths of planet days and years. Length of day may as well be random, although the first rock from any star and moons of large planets might be tidally locked. Years give way to many new variables. The two most obvious are seasonal weather and variable distance between planets. Year length should not be random: For any planet of negligible mass relative to its sun (every planet in the game), v=root(GM/r) and the length of the year is 2πr/v. Distance between planetary orbits? Well...if the radius of Earth is 6 million meters and Empyrion world radii are on the order of 6000 meters, lengths are scaled at a ratio of 1000:1, and even at that scale, the trip from earth to sun would be an impractical 146 million meters--if you up the speed limit from 110 to 2000 m/s, the trip from Omicron to Ningues would take all night. I speak from experience: in a modded Freelancer universe, PVP space combat becomes superfluous when ships can exceed 10000 m/s: consider a rabbiting opponent in a head-on pass with a 10000m/s closure. It takes 3 seconds to turn your ship around and fire one salvo. At this point, you and your opponent are 30000 meters apart. At this distance, the opponent's ship occupies less than a single monitor pixel. In Freelancer, 200,000 meters was about as far apart as any two objects in a star system would be, but Freelancer is 10 years old If players can sling around the sun to a world on the other side in 20 minutes--1200 seconds at 1000m/s (I'm really trying to sell the higher speed limit here) that would be a distance of 1.2 million meters. Soooo....a system radius of 1 million meters with gas giants at the outermost orbits might be appropriate--less than half an hour to be anywhere, and if planets orbit the sun asynchronously, there will be economic and not-so-economic times to travel from one world to another. Thoughts?
Planets: as large as possible, should have deep oceans and continents, so that its not the same everywhere you go on a planet, each continent has a few regions, each region a biom and has its own plant and animal life. each dependant on seasons, certain fruits/trees only grow/flower in the summer ect. some creatures act more agressive in cold or mating season., each planet can be rich in a particular resource while the other resources will be there but very scarce, making exploring and trading more interesting, and of course we need good net code so they many people can be on many planets at once with no restrictions. lots of extreme weather Solar system: 3-4 minutes between planets, 15 mins to cross a solar system, jump drives for system to system travel, a good mix between no mans sky and elite dangerous perhaps, epic sci fi skylines, but still a good feel traveling between planets .
Where? There doesn't seem to be a roadmap on the steam store page. The roadmap on the site only says 'larger' planets and more distance between them. http://empyriongame.com/roadmap/
ops i mixed this with the news on elite dangerous also why rule out huge planets right from the start tho ? rather then keeping it as a possibility later ? after all its empyrion galactic survival and it fits the scope
A journey to the edge of any system should be rewarding--gas giants with mineral rich, rocky moons which are tidally locked to their host planet (I'm thinking of IO, ganymede, Europa, etc). Tidal locking also gives rise to the dimension of player survivability: Mercury's daytime high is over 1000 degrees F, and the night time low on the first rock from our sun is a staggeringly cold -250 (about 10 kelvin)--the coldest night in the solar system is on Mercury. I said all that to say this: there should be survival-related consequences of high and low temperatures. Humans start to melt ;-) around 40C and even the most well-prepared have trouble at -40C. Fun fact: at -40C you can take a power saw to a propane can. It will not explode, and the liquid will pour out and not evaporate. Also, another note on spacing: the angular diameter of Earth's moon when viewed from earth is 1/2 degree. Adjacent planets even at perigee should appear smaller than a moon--in other words, be far enough away. Right now, the largest object in the sky of Omicron is Aestus. They are so close together that they should tidally locked and about to collide. Final thoughts: orbits should be co-planar, eclipses common and predictable. A radius of 10000 meters (d=20,000) is plenty big for any game planet--an eightfold increase in radius (Omicron r=1300, d=2600) yields a 64-fold increase in surface area. On such a world, you could disable the map and 100 players with random spawn locations might never find each other. Energy density of prometheum and prometheum-based fuel cells ought to be proportionate to the increase in planet size.
