Static Asteroids? What is this, Space Engineers?!

[CyberTao]

As some people may know, I think the current asteroids suck in a few ways. Upon reading a suggestion yesterday/today (damn you time) I thought of something, and now I suggest it.

Basically, Turn the asteroid belts into asteroid belts, have asteroids move from 1 side of the sector to the other. I honestly dont know how to make the motion, maybe upon entering a sector as an asteroid type entity a line is drawn to the center of the next sector on the asteroid's path and the velocity is then reset/set (maybe variable?), making a clunky but notable ring-like path.

Before anyone says anything about the calculations needed to move asteroids off in unloaded sectors, you don't need to. Asteroids honestly should Not be saved at all, have them spawn at the edge of loaded sectors and then delete them as they leave those sectors. This creates "infinite" resources, as the current respawning asteroids aim to do without having the issues that the current method causes (half eaten spawns).

It also makes mining interesting without adding any arbitrary randomness or "encounters", all while making the universe feel more alive and less dead and still. It would probably cause lag, due to the number of rocks that would be flying around, so the server would probably need a way to limit spawns of more than X rocks are loaded in the universe, but I really think this might be worth the short-term performance issues for long-term interest.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? I probably missed something, so feel free to poke at any wording choice or missed loophole that might be here.

Edit 1; Acquisition.
This idea also involves changes in how systems are generated. Fewer asteroid belts per star system, as well as chances for no asteroids/planet spawns inside a star system, as well as tweak production costs. Mining will probably never be 'hard' imho, so the way to prevent insta-titans upon starting out would be tweaks to the production chains.

(Poll is just for fun, does not indicate support or anything about the suggestion, just poking fun at the other game)

 

[Paddywacko]

Cyber, I think this is a neat idea, though I dislike the prospect of randomly appearing and disappearing asteroids. It would inspire some creative salvage ships and give a new purpose to the motion effect modules, but crossing a sector and having (what seems like less precious) resources disappear or have another asteroid spontaneously appear beside you would be extremely immersion breaking.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind if some asteroids (or maybe even moons could be implemented) revolved around planets. That way we can experience some local motion and interesting exploration options without a server having to infinitely track a rock's movement through infinite space. Creative though, I like the thought.

 

[Zaphord]

Yeah, asteroids should move in belts, not random clusters. Mind you random clusters aren't bad if your out in far off sectors, but if there are planets near by then they should orbit around the local star at least.

 

[Raichor]

Why not have asteroid belts instead of single asteroids, This would be a sector sized entity that makes up the asteroids and rotates. That way, rather than having multiple entities for an asteroid field, you just have one, that when goes below a certain mass, will reload.

 

[CyberTao]

I dislike the prospect of randomly appearing and disappearing asteroids.

Perhaps I didnt explain it properly, but asteroids would only despawn at the edge of loaded sectors, which is roughly 3 sectors in all directions? Beyond navigation range anyways, so you'd never see them spawn or despawn at all, as they would be outside your range of seeing them.

Only time that would derp up is if you logged out, then back in on a belt, would be an empty patch of nothing and then asteroids slowly starting to trickle through.

without a server having to infinitely track a rock's movement through infinite space. Creative though, I like the thought.

I did address that. I said asteroid would not be saved at all, and would be deleted once they left loaded sectors (since they need an entity file to reload on loading). It creates a constant creation and removal of resources, and doesn't let the database bloat over time.

Why not have asteroid belts instead of single asteroids, This would be a sector sized entity that makes up the asteroids and rotates. That way, rather than having multiple entities for an asteroid field, you just have one, that when goes below a certain mass, will reload.

The problem is that is that you'd have rocks spinning around an empty point, which would infuriate the realists and even causal realists. Asteroid belts orbit the sun due to gravity, having them orbit a random point along solar orbit (on which it wouldnt move) just seems weird. Maybe I read that comment wrong, but I dunno.


While thinking some more afterwards, there would have to be more than just setting velocity to the center of the next sector for the pathing, since that slowly pulls them into lines which a tunnel-shaped ship could just chew up. But is just a rough thought that I had before bed, so merp.

 

[jayman38]

I love the OP idea, if only for refreshing half-mined asteroids and replacing them with brand-new ones. The idea can probably be tweaked to generate rare circumstances and isolate precious resources (E.g. This belt is the only source of blue asteroids for 20 sectors in any direction!)

 

[Ithirahad]

The idea of asteroids constantly generating might be... a little laggy? If there're no technical issues, though, I wouldn't mind this.

 

[Visitor]

I am of two minds regarding this idea. I do like the fact that there would be always some resources somewhere, but I dislike magical spawning/despawning and like Ithirahad - I am a bit worried about performance hit such operations, especially on bigger servers would entail. I also have issue with what seems liek those asteroids appearing anywhere and everywhere. If I have some sector-spanning project, I wouldn't want random chunk of rock from nowhere appear and require 'cleaning' or risk cluttering.

Maybe if all asteroids generated would be tracked and replenished (somehow without any performance hits) through some global event or some such (white hole opening in an empty sector and ejecting some rocks before closing?).

To be honest I don't feel strongly about it so if people would be really all for it, I don't have much of an issue but I personally don't think that it'd really be worth much to implement it or make the universe any more alive. Chunks of rock following some patterns, getting stuck in gravity wells etc may seem like things of potential but I sincerely doubt average miner will give any care at all - they'll just see a rock, they'll mine it and go away with no thought of whether it's flying anywhere, how long it exists and so on. Probably they'd be rather annoyed if they'd have additional lag because of that, though.

 

[CyberTao]

I am of two minds regarding this idea. I do like the fact that there would be always some resources somewhere, but I dislike magical spawning/despawning and like Ithirahad - I am a bit worried about performance hit such operations, especially on bigger servers would entail. I also have issue with what seems liek those asteroids appearing anywhere and everywhere. If I have some sector-spanning project, I wouldn't want random chunk of rock from nowhere appear and require 'cleaning' or risk cluttering.

Maybe if all asteroids generated would be tracked and replenished (somehow without any performance hits) through some global event or some such (white hole opening in an empty sector and ejecting some rocks before closing?).

To be honest I don't feel strongly about it so if people would be really all for it, I don't have much of an issue but I personally don't think that it'd really be worth much to implement it or make the universe any more alive. Chunks of rock following some patterns, getting stuck in gravity wells etc may seem like things of potential but I sincerely doubt average miner will give any care at all - they'll just see a rock, they'll mine it and go away with no thought of whether it's flying anywhere, how long it exists and so on. Probably they'd be rather annoyed if they'd have additional lag because of that, though.

Part of the suggestion was to follow a asteroid belt, hence;
"maybe upon entering a sector as an asteroid type entity a line is drawn to the center of the next sector on the asteroid's path".

The idea is they would follow a belt, but the overall number of belts would be reduced. The change in velocity would be the attempt of getting to to look like they are moving on the belt. It wouldn't be random spawns anywhere, they would only spawn in designated "belt" sectors like where they spawn now.

 

[Visitor]

The idea is they would follow a belt, but the overall number of belts would be reduced. The change in velocity would be the attempt of getting to to look like they are moving on the belt. It wouldn't be random spawns anywhere, they would only spawn in designated "belt" sectors like where they spawn now.

Alright. If the thing would be limited only to certain locations, that'd be a bit easier even if I can suspect it'd encourage some groups to camp the belts.

I hope that you can address my other points raised, too.

 

[CyberTao]

Alright. If the thing would be limited only to certain locations, that'd be a bit easier even if I can suspect it'd encourage some groups to camp the belts.

I hope that you can address my other points raised, too.

I honestly don't have a solution for the mass spawning that would happen, maybe by having a few dozen pre-sets and spawning a few at a time? I know small groups of fighters spawn rather easily, but the spawning is where I don't know. The deletion is easy, as if no entity files exists then you merely need to unload it, but I honestly don't know enough about coding to know what could lag or not with the spawning. I know that jumping into an asteroid belt in the current game for the first time requires the game to generate and load a couple dozen asteroids at once if it's a busy area, so there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of lag to start with. Maybe a cap on asteroid spawn rates settable by the configs?

As for magically appearing rocks, I don't know how to get around that either. Maybe attach a Density number to the belt sectors that lowers the spawn rate of rocks as more and more are mined, but slowly replenish over time (collection rock debris and such). It's hard to do any realistic way of restoring asteroids, since it's just going to be [Event] 'Magically rocks popping up!'.

So in short, they are good points, but I don't know how to exactly deal with them. Spawning will probably be an issue until the game is optimized enough to handle the mass spawning with ease (as they would be small and done in batches, wouldn't get too many at once).
With the replenishment question, well I find it's better than the last planned method of restoring asteroids (just paying FP) in terms of suspending disbelief. Something I'd have to think about more when I'm not pissed off irl, see if I can come up with anything.

 

[Zaphord]

Seeing as how planets don't orbit their star yet, just having the asteroids cluster in belts as opposed to random sectors through out the system would be good enough until they get planetary orbits working. That way, the belt would behave similar to how planets spawn, just spread out over their orbit.

 

[Lecic]

I would love it if asteroids were restricted to the belts, and actually traveled around the belts.

I also have serious doubts this would cause much lag. Some asteroids moving through a sector would almost certainly not cause much lag, and the spawning of new asteroids wouldn't be much of an issue either, since old asteroids are being removed at the same time.