These are not the planets you are looking for (makes hand motion)

[greatmatt]

I'll answer the questions in topics, repectively.

1) Planets would affect my entire Starmade experience. First of all i'd stop building stations on space for a long time and build cities and mega structures on planets. There i would grow crops, animals, found a city full of NPCs, build elevators to space, explore it whenever i'm not building, raise an army to invade another planet or take over a station, etc.

2) I think invading (or simply colonizing) a planet can bring many rewards, some examples are: Taming wild life either to harvest any resource they may generate or use them as a weapon against someone, some planets may have rare resources and those resources have properties that made animals evolve into monstrous killers, growing a certain crop that is unique to that planet's biome and has a high value on the market or makes your units stronger, founding a city either to show off to others or to use as populational center for money generation and faction expansion, enslaving a certain civilization that may serve as good soldiers, preventing a certain enemy faction from jumping anywhere near the planet due to a powerful inhibitor, among many other crazy yet implementable things.

3) Hypothetical scenario: I just started a new world and while flying through space i found an forest planet (that planet has high resource amounts, medium wild life threat levels and a very distant tribe but i don't know any of that), how would that affect me? First off the fact that it is a forest planet would inspire me to make my cities look as a possible future Earth, second the fact that it has medium wild life would make me act with caution in the beginning and develop advanced craft to expand with ease later on, third the fact that it has high resource amounts would allow for a prosperous start and once i decide to explore space i'll have no trouble on amassing an expensive army, fleet and stations, fourth the fact that it has a tribe a little farther from where i started would allow me to make contact with them (likely peaceful) and maybe recruit them to allow for a faster and cheaper faction growth.

That's my personal opinion on how planets could affect gameplay and that's just a part of it.

 

[Theats]

I believe better planets (larger, to some degree, maybe 'Spore' sized?) would change the way the game is played for many. I would imagine most players would spend much more time on planets than in space, exploring, crafting, building. It would made the galaxy vastly larger.

Because I have a lower end PC, I already turn my sector size up to 10,000 and max thrust to 300. I personally think massive sectors should be the default. I'd love to see planets with plates 1000 across.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I believe better planets (larger, to some degree, maybe 'Spore' sized?) would change the way the game is played for many. I would imagine most players would spend much more time on planets than in space, exploring, crafting, building. It would made the galaxy vastly larger.

Because I have a lower end PC, I already turn my sector size up to 10,000 and max thrust to 300. I personally think massive sectors should be the default. I'd love to see planets with plates 1000 across.

1000 diameter planet plates?

The United Star Axis and the Council of Intergalactic Red Shirts approve.

 

[Theats]

With larger plates, you could almost simulate NPC combat with small drones/power armor that lack much flight ability to maneuver around.

Someone had a thread with 1000 plate diameter (900 I think) for frozen planets, lots of awesome canyons and things with it.

It would make SM almost like a new game.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I'd love that but for for that to become a reality, Schine needs to do something with these crazy collision checks.

If I were to offer a way to optimize/redo planets I would suggest eliminating the collision checks for everything below the lowest point on the surface of each plate; leaving only z-axis area for collision checks. I think such a thing would substantially reduce the amount of blocks factored into the collision check equation and allow each planet plate to ignore collision checks from adjacent plates and from anything below their own surface. As the planet is mined, its terrain tunneled through and/or lowered, the collision check area would begin to extend downward to the lowest point of the planet plate according to the z-axis.

Following this method, the amount of blocks checked would be minimal and would only increase when the lowest part of the planet's surface is lowered.

Your thoughts ladies and gentlemen?

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I think it's hard to speculate on an improved collision check without knowing how the current collision check works. For all we know, the collision checks aren't even the problem. The issues could be anything from using the "wrong" type of data structure which causes data lookups to take way too long, to accidentally-nested for-loops tying up engine time with unnecessary iterations. In one project at work, I actually saw a duplicated line (simple copy-paste error) in a function that caused a button click to take millions of times longer to execute than needed.

Debugging with function timing to chart out what the game engine is doing could reveal a lot.

 

[KiloZulu]

Planets are these bright orbs hanging in space that beckon to the explorer. When I head towards one, I'm hoping to discover something cool and interesting when I touch down on it. Civilization, alien creatures, new technologies, trade opportunities, negotiations, and mission opportunities. To put it in Minecraft terms, it ought to be like coming across a village - you want to explore every home and find out what the locals have to trade. It's rare that you just pass one by. While I'm using the analogy, I'd compare an abandoned space station to a jungle ruins. You want to explore it for the mystery and adventure, avoiding traps (ancient station security measures,) fighting monsters (alien occupants, perhaps the cause for the abandonment,) and hidden treasures (hidden treasures.)

I wouldn't mind the odd xenophobic planet, either, whose civilization prefers to shoot at visitors rather than make new friends. The universe needs more potted petunia's and sperm whales.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Planets are these bright orbs hanging in space that beckon to the explorer. When I head towards one, I'm hoping to discover something cool and interesting when I touch down on it. Civilization, alien creatures, new technologies, trade opportunities, negotiations, and mission opportunities. To put it in Minecraft terms, it ought to be like coming across a village - you want to explore every home and find out what the locals have to trade. It's rare that you just pass one by. While I'm using the analogy, I'd compare an abandoned space station to a jungle ruins. You want to explore it for the mystery and adventure, avoiding traps (ancient station security measures,) fighting monsters (alien occupants, perhaps the cause for the abandonment,) and hidden treasures (hidden treasures.)

I wouldn't mind the odd xenophobic planet, either, whose civilization prefers to shoot at visitors rather than make new friends. The universe needs more potted petunia's and sperm whales.

Agreed. I found that even finding the occasional random generated pyramid or city was enough to get my RP juices flowing.


... just as I'm sure players who accidentally stumbled across my planet lost their shit and wanted to take an away team to the surface to check it out.

I was even developing a bunch of custom player-made quests (rescue, salvage, exploration, research, covert ops, etc) with alt-faction controlled units and blueprints as rewards for mission completion.

Planet lag totally ruined that.

 

[DrTarDIS]

Neat read well, I got through the OP then had to leave for work, but I'll read through the rest. A lot of what OP touched on is stuff we also agree would be ways to make planets better. To do planets well you really need to be strategic in every part of their generation and distribution, from the ground up. That's the approach we have taken, so while you won't see new planets for a while, it's only because we want to do them right for what we want the experience of them to be.

To me, that sounds like the most rational argument to "roll back" planets to diskworlds UNTIL the "do them right for what we want the experience of them to be" variant is implemented. The current ones really need to be viewed as a failure IMHO, just look at the lag-logs on the servers. :P At least pirates don't crash on them as often any more...

OP. I'd like to see a food, gravity, & "fresh air" BUFF system. Spending time on planets increasing your Max HP, giving you astro speed buffs, etc.
Have plants actually GROW on planet entities (wood is currently hilariously finite, foliage and mushrooms too)
Cities, ruins, the things we used to encounter before, but with NPC populations, functional shops and shopkeeps(PLURAL!) and whatnot. Gimmie an alien bazaar to either annihilate or subsume in empire please. Ancient treasure-troves are nice too.
Adventure and hazzard types too I suppose. I've longed for pirate nests and smuggler coves on planets for a while as well. No reason every verdant world with a city should not be a den of debauchery.
Finally: Vocanos. The "core" of a planet should generate new blocks and resources and "erupt" them to exposed locations.Even if I scrape a planet down to a molten husk, that husk should either shrink and reveal new resources as it cols, or slowly generate and "heave" new plates into view.
Pet projects, terraforming. Given a compatible radiation belt, I'd like to be able to introduce purple vines or grassed-soil and have it spread, or be "killed off" by inhospitible climates.
Orbits. We have them now, but they don't REALLY orbit because collision nightmares. be nice to see that "fixed" to a degree.

 

[Madman198237]

Orbits would require reasonable gravity. We have a trainwreck right now. By reasonable, I of course mean spherical in distribution, so that it's all based on radii. Also, gravity needs to emanate farther from a planet than it does. Otherwise, you get too close and suddenly are in full gravity and falling, not orbiting (Orbiting, of course, merely being falling while perpetually missing the ground). But yes, things in permanent orbit (Don't bump my station!) would be pretty awesome.

 

[Nickizzy]

Orbits would require reasonable gravity. We have a trainwreck right now. By reasonable, I of course mean spherical in distribution, so that it's all based on radii. Also, gravity needs to emanate farther from a planet than it does. Otherwise, you get too close and suddenly are in full gravity and falling, not orbiting (Orbiting, of course, merely being falling while perpetually missing the ground). But yes, things in permanent orbit (Don't bump my station!) would be pretty awesome.

Can you orbit with a ship right now? Shear of all the plates except a pole of cargo blocks, and head off with ~20 m/s?

 

[Madman198237]

No, the uneven, shortranged, and overpowered gravity make it almost impossible to orbit without going hurtling off into space or falling into a laggy death below.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

He's right. There were some short lived 'orbit' tests done by Mushroom Fleet in the past but the craft they used was basically a core and the pilot had to be in constant control of the craft for it to work.

As it stands now, you can't just throw a satellite up in space and expect it to revolve around the planet in a true stable orbit.

 

[Nickizzy]

He's right. There were some short lived 'orbit' tests done by Mushroom Fleet in the past but the craft they used was basically a core and the pilot had to be in constant control of the craft for it to work.

As it stands now, you can't just throw a satellite up in space and expect it to revolve around the planet in a true stable orbit.

That's not how it works in real life either, but I get your point.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

That's not how it works in real life either, but I get your point.

Metaphors man. Metaphors...

 

[Theats]

Hey Whammy,

What is that flat nosed monstrosity you have flying around? Large Rectangular prism type.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Hey Whammy,

What is that flat nosed monstrosity you have flying around? Large Rectangular prism type.

That, my friend is my medium planetary miner. They're designed to flatten the terrain of a planet for city building and come equipped with an anti-gravity system for low orbital mining, 8 point defense guns and a utility armor suit for planetary landings. I used to fly them back when I was on the Light vs Dark server. Only 2 were built; code named "Munchie" and "Omm nom nom".

They're also surprisingly sturdy for a smaller non-combatant ship. I can shield/PD tank most basic NPCs long enough to mine an asteroid cluster before either leaving the area or firing back with missiles. Also, I once tried to mine a planet that was too close to a star and took heavy damage. It ended up looking like swiss cheese but it still got me home.

 

[Theats]

Not a very sightly thing, but great concept. I liked your stationary planet flattener that you had. I wish I could explore your planet base.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Not a very sightly thing, but great concept. I liked your stationary planet flattener that you had. I wish I could explore your planet base.

Yeah. It did turn out as kind of a plain Jane design. I basically took one of these and built a giant salvager array and thruster system onto it. The modified design ended up looking like a giant TV with engines on it.


This ship works a lot like the "planet flattener" or "terraforming tower" as I like to call it. It docks to the planet using a small pylon extended from the ground, then I just sweep the terrain flat, using my salvager. The next time I'm able to build a city in multi-player, I'll drop you a line so you can come check it out.