Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I did a quick search and didn't see this idea pop up anywhere.

Why do none of the solar systems have proper celestial mechanics to them? I.e. why don't the planets move?

This might be an oversimplification of the idea but since a number of the game mechanics are updated daily (e.g. asteroid replacement) why shouldn't the planets / moons also move in their orbits?

It would be kind of neat if you could build in actual physics into the mechanics of the game for at least a few items even if they are not implemented in real-time (i.e. items like customs offices whizzing around planets every 90 minutes)

Any possibility of this?

Because it creates a lot of additional work for pretty much no benefit.

Why does everybody always vastly underestimate computers so much? "Hundreds of thousands" of calculations is NOTHING. Could be accomplished in like... less than 1 second on any half decent modern computer (much less a crazy professional mainframe)

It wouldn't be that hard at all, and it would be really cool, to have celestial bodies update their positions once per day.

Clearly you wouldn't update the locations of celestials EVERY TICK, or anything like that. That would indeed cause lag. But you could easily do it just during the daily downtime, once a day, and it would have zero affect on anybody "lag"-wise.

Also keep in mind that they have all day to calculate it... The calculations don't have to be done during the actual daily downtime. That's just when the results are uploaded.




As for bookmarks, it's pretty easy: if the bookmark is withint 5000km or something of an significant object in space (moons, stations, planets, gates, etc.), then its location is stored and updated in relation to that object every day (so that insta-undock bookmarks and the like will be fine). Anything not within 5000km of anything does not update.

I agree that it doesn't add a ton to the game, but it's probably (depends on how they have it set up) also not a difficult coding project, and it does add SOME things:

1) Coolness
2) A wider variety of possible safepoints in a system. If you call the same system home for more than a couple months, you can set up safepoints in it that are impossible to reach by any temporary residents (unless they scan you while you are at one of them).
3) Systems would gradually change over time in regards to how good they are for bubblecamping. At some points in the year, one might have a single bubble that will drag in anybody from any of the other stargates, and at other times, the approaches will all be different (and thus safer)

Shrug, seems like a fine idea. Low-ish effort, very doable during downtimes, and moderate rewards.

I like this idea. I too think it's daft that planets, moons etc don't orbit. Seems like a pretty basic requirement for a scifi game.

Agree with other posters that the "issue" with bms is a non-issue; you just need some kind of tag showing what celestial the bm is "relative to", with default being the sun.

I like the possible use of orbital motion for creating better safes too.

+1

Z3

I like the idea behind celestial mechanics, agreed it has no real game benefit but it would add to the feeling of immersion. WHilst were speculating about idea, why cant we have realistic asteroid belts.

A typical real world asteroid belt has large rocks separated by roughly 1.5 million km in a ring around the parent star. I like the idea of scanning down a large free floating roid and warping to something that is perhaps 5 to 30 km in diameter and contains enough ore to last you months of mining.

You could share such bounty with your friends or keep mining it in secret for total profit or in low sec you might even want to defend it against others who might find it or scan it down when they are looking for you.

I know it's highly unlikely we'll see anything like this so there's no point any of the 'we hate change' crowd shooting down my idea anytime soon, but it's fun to muse.

Honestly, while i like this idea...

Most planet's would rotate in a fairly slow slow orbit. Mospeople wouldn't notice.

I'm always on the same system and I never actually felt as if things were that static, i don't stay still long enough to actually see things move.

I do have a situation/problem with the way lightning affects the moons/planets, but its an entirely different story to this one, so without moving away of the subject...

i don't think you'd actually notice planetary movement outside planetary rotation (I'm not even sure that exists, but I think it does...), so while yes, the calculations only needed to be done "once" (Or rather, once for every single system in eve's normal database, and once per day to all player-located bookmarks, since they'd rotate) it wouldn't really change anything...

Your bookmarks would need to be either then static, or fixed to a celestial, keepign its relationships as best as possible, and I still don't see why this'd help since anyone who probed it once would probably receive it as also being static or fixed to a celestial body. At best you could have small deviations, but in general, extra complexity for too little gains.

I just made a thread for this. Glad someone else also wants it.

As someone said above, calculations would only have to be generated once and be based off a timestamp. Current bookmarks, if they are a coordinate in space would not have to change. Current locations would be based off their celestial. Permanent deadspace and other areas in the middle of space would be treated like planets, and get an orbit.

Then all that would have to be done is write a wrapper to get the current location of target said object. I think adding large nearby celestial data to each packet sent to the client wouldn't be difficult though, this way we can watch a sunrise on our home station, or see the dark side of a planet, or the rare alignments of the moons around a spot.

No need to make the entire universe spin, just the planets and other celestials. I love this idea.

Like the mining botters don't already do this...

I gave you multiple reasons why it would be worse with your suggested asteroid belts, none of which you responded to.

"Oh but there are bots already!" is not a valid excuse for making things much much EASIER for them. The number of bots matters, you know. Not just a binary "exist/don't exist" value.


Yes, of course it calculates destination when you activate it... the destination as it will be when you arrive. It then plots the shortest path from where you are now to where the destination will be when you get there, which is a straight line.

You realize that people had the necessary math to predict celestial bodily movement ahead of time (and thus draw a line to intercept correctly) as early as the dawn of the 17th century? Using paper, ink, and quills?

Obviously all celestials have long since stopped moving due to friction with eve space water...