Hello there!

An idea I started thinking about is wether or not it would be possible to use the asteroids themselves as weapons? Basically the idea is that you build, or buy, "asteroid thrusters" to launch at an enemy fleet or planetary surface. Since this might be overused by the player, or AI, for that matter there should be restrictions to this. Such as only being able to use it once every, realtime, hour or restricted to certain missions.

I know I would like some sort of big scale weapon in the game, and asteroids, may you love or hate them, are pretty huge.

What do you think? Would this work?

it would be cool, but to my knowledge asteroids are static

~Sly

they are static, out of not changeable engine reasons

yea but adding this engine would then change the asteroid from static "asteroid" status to "ship" status.
Then it might very well be possible !

until some glorious AI general comes to the conclusion that it would be cheaper to equip a whole asteroid belt with engines than to build a proper warfleet.

You still could design a ship rocky-looking enough to look like an asteroid...

Cornflakes_91 wrote:until some glorious AI general comes to the conclusion that it would be cheaper to equip a whole asteroid belt with engines than to build a proper warfleet.

I am sure there is some way to put up restrictions. Maybe only 1 asteroid per player/hour/system? Besides, you should be able to stop the asteroid as well. Maybe destroying all the engines and the sending it back where it came from? It wouldn't be fun if you only were fighting with asteroids.

I think the problem isn't creating a dynamic asteroid (out of a static one). As Lum said a ship or space station in the disguise of an asteroid will do.
The real problem is getting rid of the old static asteroid

Gemellus wrote: I am sure there is some way to put up restrictions. Maybe only 1 asteroid per player/hour/system? Besides, you should be able to stop the asteroid as well. Maybe destroying all the engines and the sending it back where it came from? It wouldn't be fun if you only were fighting with asteroids.

and how do you enforce that without it being gamey?

Not sure, but it was just an idea. I think the game will be fantastic either with or without asteroid weapons.

So, we're playing Planetary Annihilation with Limit Theory? Awesome. Couldn't a modder could create a new asteroid object that acts like a ship but looks like an asteroid, and then generate those instead of normal asteroids, or throw some into the belts? And if that works, might it not be possible to make planets or moons that work the same way?

Yeah, modding would probably be easier and better.

Gemellus wrote:I am sure there is some way to put up restrictions.

What Cornflakes said. IMO, no restrictions unless these are real life restrictions or at least somehow explained in the fiction.

Gemellus wrote:Maybe only 1 asteroid per player/hour/system?

My vote would be 'No' for the above reasons.

Gemellus wrote:Besides, you should be able to stop the asteroid as well. Maybe destroying all the engines and the sending it back where it came from? It wouldn't be fun if you only were fighting with asteroids.

If we have asteroids with inertia it could be very difficult to stop an asteroid. You just need to push the asteroid; not need to have the engines running all the time. (It would be better to be able to detach the engines for recovering to use with other asteroids, containers or whatever.)

Periapsis wrote:Couldn't a modder could create a new asteroid object that acts like a ship but looks like an asteroid, and then generate those instead of normal asteroids, or throw some into the belts? And if that works, might it not be possible to make planets or moons that work the same way?

In that case would be very cool to have inertia at least for some celestial bodies. (But I'm hoping to have it available in the settings screen or through config file for spaceships too .)

Collision and physics calculations would be to intensive for all those asteroids, I guess.
A possibility is that you would need a "strong" force to make an asteroid move. Perhabs it would loose speed over time (by colliding with "invisible" micro debris or whatever).
If the player leaves the region, a distance-to-move-with-current-velocity could be calculated and the asteroid set to that position and made static again.

But I think the time to implement dynamic asteroids could be better spend on something else.
Moving asteroids with thrusters is not that important ... in my opinion.

Josh has said at one point that there has to be drag in the engine, otherwise it would break (he did not explain exactly how it would break).

So, no engineless asteroid projectiles. Apart from that, I don't see why temporarily redefining a static asteroid to a ship should be impossible .