Gas Giants

[lochenspace]

ALERT!! Skip the first paragraph if you don't want to hear a huge nerd-lecture on this!!

Gas giants, in case you don't know, are enormous spheres of mostly gas, surrounding a small-planet sized core. They are all several times larger and more massive than the Earth, and most are found far from their parent stars, because they form out here due to the lack of heat from their stars. Some migrate inward, creating a class of planets called "Hot Jupiters," some of which can whip around a star in less than 24 Earth hours! Some have sets of rings, made out of rock, dust, soot, or ice, and many have fleets of moons (Jupiter, for example, holds a grand total of 67 known moons).

If gas giants were to be implemented, they would be significantly larger than regular terrestrial planets, maybe the size of a whole sector. (for reference, terrestrial planets range from 800m to 1600m in diameter, and one sector is 5000m in diameter, so gas giants should be anywhere from 4000m to maybe 6000m in diameter)

Gas giants would be divided in three classes, based on distance from their stars;

Standard: large gas giants with exotic colors of greens, blues, purples and whites.

Ice Giants: smaller gas giants far from their stars, with blue, purple and white colors.

Hot Jupiters: gas giants very close to their stars, yellow, orange, and red, or even black if you want to be a sicko like me ​

Gas giants should have moons, and they could have their own sub-classes; barren, icy, or Titan.

Barren moons could just be plain, cratered worlds with zero atmosphere. They could have large amounts of ores beneath their surface.

Icy moons could have large plains of ice with jagged snowy cliffs and ravines, possibly with a liquid ocean like Europa.

Titan moons would be very cold and alien. They would appear orange or tan with large lakes of natural gas, like methane or ethane. They would also have thick orange, purple or orange atmospheres, and if precipitation was ever implemented it could rain methane instead of water.
​

If ring systems were added to planets (terrestrial or gaseous), then they could be large clusters of asteroids trapped in orbit. Due to the size of the rings, the asteroids would need to be much smaller than regular asteroids, as this would generate a lot of lag. But if you were to build a base within an asteroid in a ring system...just imagine the amazing view! There would be a large field of asteroids followed by a massive gas giant, possibly with a moon or two in the background.

The most useful things that gas giants could be used for - besides making a badass looking base - would probably be fuel scooping...IF THEY ADDED FUEL!!

If you have any suggestions for how gas giants could be implemented that agree - or disagree - with mine, please let me know! And if the developers ever add gas giants, I thank you! (even if you don't use any of my ideas)

 

[Sachys]

You made a new account for this?

 

[lochenspace]

You made a new account for this?

Pretty much ._.
I'm a huge space geek, and this is the game I've been waiting for for a good several years. I'm just here to try and make it better in any way possible.

I hope that isn't a situation D:

 

[Lecic]

Gas giants, moons, and rings have all been stated to be planned or as likely features to be implemented.

 

[lochenspace]

Gas giants, moons, and rings have all been stated to be planned or as likely features to be implemented.

That sounds good!! Hopefully at least one developer will take a look here and see some ideas to implement into gas giants, rings and moons :D

 

[PLIX]

cool i like the idea but for now not very useful

now on a serious and irrelevant note
should i make an account called Vaygyr lover to observe the patterns of the strange living organisms

 

[Nickizzy]

Avoiding the explosive and flamey substance known as "fuel", these could be great capture points for faction warfare. Imagine a system where you build a station to mine the giant, sucking from it's unlimited resources. A new gas collection system would collect resources slowly but constatly, and of a single type.

Spoiler: Wall of text of gas collection

Because high material cost just makes it harder to catch up, and power limitations are really straight forward, I want to use complexity as a limitation. Costing only as much as regular weapons modules, there would be several different options for configurations, where knowledge and tradeoffs govern how much you get rather then how big you can build or how much you have.

 

[lochenspace]

Avoiding the explosive and flamey substance known as "fuel", these could be great capture points for faction warfare. Imagine a system where you build a station to mine the giant, sucking from it's unlimited resources. A new gas collection system would collect resources slowly but constatly, and of a single type.

Spoiler: Wall of text of gas collection

Because high material cost just makes it harder to catch up, and power limitations are really straight forward, I want to use complexity as a limitation. Costing only as much as regular weapons modules, there would be several different options for configurations, where knowledge and tradeoffs govern how much you get rather then how big you can build or how much you have.

Maybe at the center of gas giants there could be a solid core, but the pressure and gravity would be so strong it would be nearly impossible to lift off if you land. Still, there could be valueble ores present at the cores :O

 

[Edymnion]

Yup, gas giants have been talked about for quite some time, and are generally code talk these days for some kind of renewable resource generation.

 

[NeonSturm]

I think moons are not so difficult to implement after planets are already in place - just decrease gravity.

Gas giants should have gas without real HP. Gas, ocean, … all these things are purely visual and might harvest from a single variable (like weapons drain the single planet-hp-value)

If gas giants make it into the game, planets with oceans could reduce lag too (less chunks to load - if underwater is only visible from underwater).
Sand might not even have hp/orientation as it flows similar to water back into the hole you just made.

This is not just visual, but a huge optimisation opportunity!

​

Rings can also be made with background graphics. Real rings still have huge distances between objects.

 

[lochenspace]

Perhaps gas giants could be used for more than just beautiful cinematic shots. They could be rendered with "gaseous blocks" like regular planets, but the player cannot collide with the blocks and would instead pass straight through them. At the center of the gas giant could be a planetary core that may be layered with an outer, almost indestructible layer, and an inner core, which would behave like the core of a regular planet; just with a LOT more health, meaning you could destroy it! Also, fuel scooping :D