Gas Giants and Moons

You are invisioning several thing that have been used in past space games.

Star Wars: Empire at War uses gas giants, but you cannot build on the surface and only can make starports.

Galactic Civilizations 2 has clusters of 1 to 5 planets orbiting solar systems scattered throughout the galaxy. You can even be terran and have Mars, Mercury, Earth, and Venus all floating around. You can colonize Mars, too.

The problems with dividing a sector with several colonizable planets is you can't do it in an RTS. GalCiv 2 is a turn bsaed game that can split up a solar system between several races but only because you can pause for each person to go and go slow paced.
In an RTS it would be neat to line some with gauss turrets and fortifications but it would eventually turn into either a boring never ending standoff, a region too spaced out to play in, or just spawning ships and waiting when to attack (or even stream it at 2 or 3 at a time in waves). The idea is good, but it just isin't for Sins.

The gas giant thing is a neat idea, though. It oculd be done and is fairly simple. Low population but high logistics and tactical slots. It would be amazing to see rings around spacious planets... im already amazed by close up views of lava planets and the stars.

They actually did try the farther the planets are, the different type of planet it is. But, the players just went to the inner and outter reaches of the solar system and it was way too predictable. So randomizing planets makes it more simpler.

i own both SW: Empire at War and Gal Civ 2, both these games are very different in mechanics and lay out to this game so im having a hard time making the connection that your trying to get at... but thats not to say you dont have a valid point, i just dont understand it



why cant it work in a RTS game... the same basic concept works in almost every other ground based RTS game I've every played (i.e. the entire Command and Conquer series)

i quote from a different thread because its pertinent



i dont see why splitting it into a battlefield is a bad thing. you should have to work for control of the grav well. and it wouldnt become a stand off till you have no ships at all left anywere in your fleet... at which point you should probably give up on the Gas Giant because you got more valuable planets to worry about.

You do make a good point in transit time. this is a legit concern the devs need to look into. however since gas giants are typically found in the out skirts of solar systems they shouldnt really be a hub for transit. there for unless your going into or out of that grav well you really shouldnt need to be going through it.

Some could very well be stars that failed to ignite. One theory is that Jupiter is one such "Failed" star. But yes, people have already asked for gas giants. I think its a good idea but it is more work for Stardock and Ironclad....

Yeah, this topic surfaces every once and a while. I think we all want gas giants, moons, and multiple colonized bodies in the same gravity well.

I doubt we'll see this in the finished version game, but hopefully the tools will be there for us to make it happen.

This was all typed right after thetravelier's comments.

Lol I remember trying to find what I said on my previous quote because the topic turned up in my post.

Although I've never played command and conquer (im a battlefield 2142 fan) i'm looking at the game right now... wow it looks pretty fun... anyways I see what your getting at. RTS's are capable of close proximity capture points (like in the warhammer 40k series and Company of Heroes), but Sins is not (remember? its an RT4X, or whatever the hell that means).


And I'm not saying that gas giants can only have moons. Most people want moons everywhere (besides asteroids).

The main reason why I think it won't work is I don't think that anyone can get the mixture right. The gravity well would certainly have to be bigger to house the moons. It would have to be small enough to keep the action going but large enough to not just build gauss turrets to take pot shots at oher moons and planets. If you think about it, each moon would have to have a construction ring smaller than the planets, but it can't overlap or be too close to the planet's ring or any others. So picture this: 1 planet and 2 moons positioned in a horizontal line (like 3 in a row). The construction rings can't touch and turret perimeter's can't go deep into other construction rings (turret on turret action won't work) AND to top it off you have a gravity bubble that will probably be a circle (due to physics) leaving large empty regions in the top and bottom sections. I'm picturing it as a little too spaced out.


About your last comment about transit time. Actually I think gas giants should be more focused near the center of the solar system, were the action is. I imagine the gas giants as a spaceport (from my expiriences with Empire at War) with civilian structures (similar to the crap you see rushing around on the surface of colonized terran planets) near the atmosphere as its hitpoints. Leave the back for the stupid a** dead asteroids.

The gameboard is about to get much more interesting
Right now I am looking at the latest planet type   

Oh YAY!!! im drulling just thinking about what you guys have in store...

craig you work for ironclad? cuz if you do, high five

Everyone with the Ironclad symbol like Craig works for Ironclad:)

When is the next release going to be out?

if the grav well was to be expanded, then ship's speeds would have to be increased by a lot, they are fairly slow already and travelling from one end to another is a little annoying, so if there were moons and they were put in then it would slow down the game, personally I don't think they should be added, unless its small and only makes the grav well a little bit bigger, but gas giants would be good, still saying that whatever the devs come up with next I simply can't wait

Alternate "gameboard" elements are really needed . since at this point the game is nice but lack luster and this could hurt Longevity of the game.

- A small moon could be a large military base OR a commerce center OR a mining operation etc. You only get one pick so pick well [and it can be leveled up over time?]
- Lots of “small” asteroids in a system could force all ship movement to slow. (simple modifier)
- A gas planet may have a primary moon, colonizeable and some minor moons. A bigger well also
- Rings could force structures to be put farther from planet.
- More variation in planet size. and type modifications . . (ocean planet may not have allot of habitable locations, Volcanic a boost in mining, etc)
- Strange planets . . some spice ( a tidally locked planet – one that does not rotate . . 1/2 frozen and 1/2 burning 2 bonuses?, Binary planet 2 of the same small size or one normal with a habitable moon, etc )
- A planet with a one way or intermittent extra jump point.

These elements could change the tactics quite a bit per system . .as it is now after you crack one system you have cracked them all and simply it can become boring rather quickly.

Also I would add more then 2 types of defense platforms - and allow them to move, too slow for tactical use but fast enough for strategic use. (for example a fleet is staging for an attack on your system and you scout it out, move your platforms into a defensive position assuming that the attack will come from that jump area . . the defenses start there slow move . . [they get there in time and help greatly in the defense] alternately [it was all a distraction and a fast raid pops in from another jump point – all of the guns are in the wrong position to save the research and mining platforms]

A moon could maybe serve as an additional source of income, say, once a planet reaches level 2, and has a moon, researching level 3 infrastructure colonizes the moon and gives you more taxes.

Certain planets with many moons would thus be VERY valuable tax wise.

that is actually a decent idea for moons... id prefer to colonize both independently but if thats not possible, haveing lunar colonization attached to infrastructure upgrades would be acceptable to me. however im still not sure how that would work for gas giants... but if they are not going to be implemented, this idea for moons is a good alternative.

When originally writing this post i thought about the logistics of how a multi-moon/planet-moon system would need to work. As I thought about it, I concluded that there was nothing really prohibitively difficult to work out. Yes they would have to work out some logistics, but it really comes down to weather or not the devs want to put the work into moons and gas giants. BUT, by the sounds of things just said... maybe they are... at the very least they have something very yummy planned

The next paragraph can be skipped if you really dont care about the lay out of a gas giant grav well.

That said, this is how i envision gas giants and moons working: you have a gas giant with a larger grav well then the average planet. Around it is 2-5 asteroid/moons all of which are colonizable, with other asteroids for mining and such. These moons “orbit” at various distances to the planet, with each moon having its own individual grav well. The inner moon's grav wells would not be distinguishable from that of the gas giant (except for its building ring). The outer moons on the other hand may have part of their grav well extend out past that of the gas giant, thus creating a slight bulge on the side of the circular grav well boundary. Around a gas giant the moons should be spaced enough so that their building rings do not over lap, these building rings would be smaller then that of a normal planet. As for a planet-moon system i can forsee the moon needing to be closer to the planet, thus their building rings may over lap. This could be solved several ways, my personal oppinion is that you should take the “average” of the strength of both wells and draw a solid boundary between them (i hope you understand what im saying there). I feel that way because if you were going to put somthing in orbit around the earth you would not be able to stick it too close to the moon, because its gravity would throw the object off orbit... but slightly past that line you could put it into lunar orbit and it would be stable. (well honestly the moon is so far out it really wouldn't effect any usable orbit of earth, but if it were closer it would)

Anyway I'm a stickler to details and realism. My excuse is I'm studying astro-physics at UCIrvine and... well it bugs me when things aren't realistic. But its a game and a good one at that, so i do cut it some slack

Past the physical lay out of the moon/planets there is a lot of economic and strategic details you would need to consider. Obviously the colonizability of individual moons is a hot topic, but its already covered so moving on. The economics of these lunar systems would inevitably be low population, highly strategic, and better at mining then a regular planet but less so then an asteroid field. I like the idea of some sort of other bonuses such as +speed because of abundant hydrogen and/or -shields due to strong magnetic field (but then again the sun has a much stronger mag field and it doesn't hurt shields) or even +research speed due to cool phonomona with the gas giant. Anyway i could go on but i wont. What do you think about the bonuses? How do you think the economics of a moon/multi-body grav well should work?

Please let it be gas giants! Even if its not, I feel that it could be possible to replace the dead asteroids with them, as I have colonized quite a few and really couldn't use them for much. Besides, there are other asteroids anyway. I would love to see a battle in front of a ringed gas giant (like Saturn). There was an older star fighter-sim called Starlancer in which a few missions took place in high orbit around Saturn (the attack on the nearly completed Coalition flagship Czar for example). The sight of Saturn looming large in the background truly made for one heck of a memorable battle (blowing up the huge supercarrier was also awesome ). Just a thought...

Note: Sorry to dig up old aurguments. It took me a while to find this post, but I didn't want to make another post of the same topic. Just remember my courtesy while many of you may read this and wish for this subject just to die once and for all!