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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); In-development patch notes for Starsector 0.98a (2/8/25)

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Author Topic: Orbital Period of Planets  (Read 3252 times)

Jackundor

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Re: Orbital Period of Planets
« Reply #15 on: March 22, 2023, 05:29:16 AM »

The thing is that typically planets don't have very eccentric orbits (in comparison to dwarf planets, comets etc.) and in the scale that the systems in starsector provide it may end up looking stranger than intended. For example, if a gas giant strays close to a small planet's orbit a player might expect the gravity of the gas giant to affect the smaller planet, especially if the gas giant already has moons.

Speaking of gas giants, is it just me or are the gas giants in most systems a bit too small? Perhaps I'm just expecting them to be bigger because Jupiter is my go-to for visualising a gas giant?

Anyway, elliptical orbits don't seem like they would be particularly easy to implement, and even if they were you'd probably have to implement full simulation of orbital physics to get everything cohesive enough to not raise questions.

I still think that the small change of ensuring generated planets have periods that increase with distance wouldn't be difficult to make. Even if it is completely unnoticeable.
we already can get planets unrealistically close to each other, for example sphinx and orthus in Samarra can sometimes almost overlap

also about the gas giants: the game is not to scale, like, in the slightest. a terrestrial planet would be a speck of dust compared to a supergiant yet ingame it looks as if the terrestrial planet has a radius that is a significant fraction of the supergiant.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2023, 05:40:10 AM by Jackundor »
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David

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Re: Orbital Period of Planets
« Reply #16 on: March 22, 2023, 05:44:58 AM »

Speaking of gas giants, is it just me or are the gas giants in most systems a bit too small? Perhaps I'm just expecting them to be bigger because Jupiter is my go-to for visualising a gas giant?

Absolutely!

Imagine if the moons were realistically sized relative to their parent gas giant - you'd have tiny little circles zipping around. They'd be hard to see, hard to click on, and hard to present information about what fleets/stations are orbiting them. So you need to re-build the UI system to take into account density of information/zoom level and re-present info so you don't get a cramped little blob of fleet icons rapidly orbiting. Then either change the timescale conceit of the game, or revise the UI further so that having a human-perceptible orbital period for the gas giant doesn't turn the moons into flies circling around at hyper-speed...

It's like how the spaceship fights are between big colorful sprites that fall within a certain size range that can be displayed easily on most (reasonable) monitors: this is a game about driving the pew-pew ship around and watching the lasers and booms. Similarly with the star system maps: you get the drive your fleet around with arcade-like controls and everything important is visible within a scale that doesn't require radically changing the camera scale, or taking an hour to fly between planets.

Some games take on these sorts of problems in a way that chooses to try to avoid the arcade-like abstraction, eg. Terra Invicta. And I'm watching their progress in tackling these design questions with popcorn in hand, cheering them as they go! These are design problems I like to fiddle with in my non-Starsector time.

The question is, (and it is an interesting one) where do you draw the line between ease/comprehension and verisimilitude, given the player experience goals of Starsector?

(And more annoying second question is: how do you allocate finite developer time to this vs. other needs? And no, outsourcing everything to volunteer modders, or even paid additional teammembers, does not give results without serious overhead cost if the same focus of quality and, ah, vision is expected ... )
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jerri

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Re: Orbital Period of Planets
« Reply #17 on: March 22, 2023, 06:23:47 AM »

Fair enough! The compromises to be made in a game will always depend on what the final vision of the game is. And, in my opinion, Starsector treads its line very well. Realistic applications of physics in games are always neat to see, but it seems to me that they'll nearly always be relegated to a niche class of easter eggs - at least in games where they aren't the sole focus.
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mortache

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Re: Orbital Period of Planets
« Reply #18 on: November 05, 2023, 08:49:03 AM »

Well, the orbits are all circular even in a multiple star system so only gravitation from one point is considered. We probably shouldn't ask Alex to add a more detailed simulation of say the three body problem so that is fine.

That means each orbit exactly defines the mass of its central point. For example, if you have a circular orbit around Askonia, and this orbit is 600 days at a particular radius, and no other gravitational interactions exist, that defines the mass of Askonia. In fact if we knew what the units were you could use your observations to calculate it.

Anyway, that means that no actual changes to how orbits are specified would really be needed, just that whenever you specify one orbital period around one object then all other orbital periods are inferred from the implied mass of the central body rather than defined separately.

It wouldn't necessarily be a waste to spend a little time working on planetary motion. This might open the way to for example elliptical orbits, including comets etc. Elliptical orbits exist in the 2d space adventure Transcendence and look very cool compared to just circular orbits.

Like this:



That would make an amazing mod concept, even if it isn't perfectly realistic in execution
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