Proper Solar Systems

Currently, the game generates most planets in relation to the star they orbit. I find this mildly annoying.

In space, red stars are ones that are nearing the end of their life. They are typically cooler. In Starbound, they are portrayed as being hot, typically with hot planets around them

In space, a blue star is young, burning bright and hot, and dense with new fuel. In Starbound they are "frozen" and cold, typically having frozen planets around them.

This is bass ackwards.

This image illustrates how it should be:



The type of star should dictate the average number of planets orbiting it. The main biome of a planet should be based on how close they are to the star, as follows:



To keep in line with the first image, red stars would typically have fewer planets, and they would be usually closer to the star, thus their main biome would be lava/magma/death. Blue stars would have a much further reach with their higher gravitational pull, so they typically have more planets, and a higher chance for planets to be further out, and thus cold/frozen/popsicle. Planets in the mid range have a higher chance of being life filled as normal. Some randomization can be introduced as well. IE a red star with outer rim, and cold, planets.



Now this leads me to another point of irritation. The way planets are aranged on screen:



This is just unacceptable. The planets, which should be called moons, are haphazardly placed. From the universe view to the solar system view, to the planet view, we have 3 very different visual representations of what is where. So to keep things in a logical progression, I think planet views should be redesigned as such:



It just makes sense, and it looks much better, IMO. It follows in line with actual space, looks clean, and moons can be labeled properly rather then a moon as its own planet.


Anyhoo, that is all I have at this time. Thanks for reading.

 

I agree, the system we have right now is illogical to the point of absurdity.

 

This is a game. How would what you describe make the game better?

Being true to Physics can, and often does make games/movies, etc.. worse than they should be.

Speaking as a Physicist and a Gamer. I have no issue whatsoever with how the solar systems are currently structured. I like that they are grouping certain planet types by star type even if it is not Physically accurate to do so. It makes finding the type of planet you want to explore easy, as I think it should be in this type of game. That it is physically inaccurate is besides the point, this game isn't meant to teach you anything about real world Physics.

The suggested changing of how a Planets moons are displayed though is something I could get on board with. I don't think it's a big deal at the moment, but structuring things that way would be a slight improvement.

 

Because it make sense. It allows for the possability of a system having all, or most all of the biome types. Or if you want a smaller system with only a few planets, you know what kind of star to look for.

It just makes sense instead of the haphazard mess we have now. you have to click trhough every planet to see what it has, and this can cause the universe save file to skyrocket. I had mine reach 200MB the other day. Now you can tell the types of planets you would expect to see.

Im not asking for realistic physics, just sensible sytstem structure.

 

Expect optimizations to include reducing save file sizes, just before they are ready to release the version 1.0 build.

 

But what would you do with radiation, i mean, how would you generate them, for me it would make sense that a dead planet close to a star would have maybe alot of radiation depending if there is a high magnetic field. Also, gas giant would maybe be at least in the good/cold area and not in the hot one. Or maybe they could add some coliding planets and supernovas that would happen randomly and well, it would not be fun.

 

Simplest way would be leave them as is. Any planet in a radioactive star's orbit would be radioactive.

Another idea would be make the environmental skins separate and allow the player to equip 2. That way you could have, say, a hot and radioactive planet, or a cold and airless planet, or a simple radioactive planet and you have the O2 skin so you can breath underwater, etc. Honestly, once you unlock one of the last 3 skins, the O2 only one becomes useless.


Gas Giants would indeed be suited for the outer rings. I hope for the ability to have stations on them as has been suggested before, so I won't get into that.

 

Good idea.

 

I would also include a proper universe structure, but I'm not sure as to the practicality of that. I don't want to suggest anythingg that would limit the scale of the universe.

 

+ more realworld-like planet distribution (lazarus's ideas)
+ separate environment skins (maybe equipping a few too many could have some disadvantage like weight, also?)

I also find the current planetary model disorienting, especially when zooming in'n out a dozen planets with horrible speed in multiplayer. Because this is a little different problem, I came to a very different solution.
My two proposals:
1. The First Flag set anywhere on the planet sets the name of the planet. Dislocating it doesn't remove the set name, but setting a flag after that gives a rename-prompt.
2. The Interplanetary screen has a search- or listing-function for all sentiently-named planets.

tldr; The "set Home planet" just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

 

I can get behind those ideas.

Also note, it wounds like youve not played the Unstable version, home planets are hone and replaced with bookmarks. Also personal teleporters can port to any other teleporter you've bookmarked with your own name.

 

Everything doesn't have to make sense. Does it make sense that we fire unlimited ammo as long as we have 'energy' that isn't contained anywhere? The colors are coded for reasons other than the reasons they are in reality. It's a game that you are reading way too much into. What you are asking for is something a modder would add, I seriously doubt this would ever get added to the vanilla game.

 

Futuristic tech implies an energy pack small enough to carry, and armors boosting energy imply they too have a power source of their own.

The game was also coded to have 10 different sectors at one point, but that changed. Much of the game is not set in stone at this point, and I don't think the basics of this idea would be overly difficult to achieve.

"Its a game" is a piss poor excuse to negate a valid idea, this is the suggestions forum after all. Just because it's a game doesn mean things have to NOT make sense. I'm not asking for a realistic simulation of the universe here, just some sensible organization of system structure. Obviously if the devs see this and disagree then that is the end of it. Im just putting my idea out there for whatever its worth.

 

"It's a game" Is not an excuse. It's to remind people that gameplay comes first. Realism second. because sometimes realism gets in the way.

 

And I suggested a way to expand diversity of solar systems in a logical and organized way.


But alas, it is likely going to be lost, so thankfully I found where solar system generation is controlled, so a mod is likely possible for the first half of my suggestion.

 

I found the bit of code that controls the planet orbits, as well as the one for satellites. Respectivly as follows:

Code:

"orbitRings" : "/celestial/system/orbitallines/<level>_<topbottom>.png",
  "orbitPathScale" : 0.5,

  "systemOrbitScales" : [0.06, 0.1, 0.14, 0.19, 0.23, 0.27, 0.31, 0.35, 0.40, 0.44, 0.48, 0.52],
  "systemOrbitPositions" : [
    [273, 0],
    [241, 26],
    [160, 45],
    [-160, 45],
    [-241, 26],
    [-273, 0],
    [-241, -26],
    [-140, -48],
    [-50, -55],
    [50, -55],
    [140, -48],
    [241, -26]
  ],

Code:

"planetaryOrbitScales" : [0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0],
  "planetaryOrbitPositions" : [
    [90, 0],
    [75, 30],
    [55, 60],
    [-55, 60],
    [-75, 30],
    [-90, 0],
    [-75, -30],
    [-55, -60],
    [-30, -70],
    [30, -70],
    [55, -60],
    [75, -30]
  ],

It seems like the only real difference between them save for the actual values, is that the planets have settings for their orbit rings. I would imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to extend this into the satellites as well (Maybe not from a modding standpoint maybe).

The values seem to be the number of pixels in an X,Y distance from the center of the planet which is at 95, 75

 

I really hope your ideas can be made into a mod. I for one would love to play with well balanced solar systems.

 

Save for the satellite orbits, it can, and I tried messing with it, but I am terrible with balancing, and it involved a ton of probabilities.

Universe is 1,000,000,000 by 1,000,000,000 "pixels"
- 1% chance for a star
- 100% chance for a star of any color (Equal odds ultimatly, so evenly distributed)
- 50% chance for a planet per ring.
-----Each star can have up to 12 orbital rings. 11 and 12 are always moons and gateways, and ring 1 is never used.
- 80% chance the planet is a tier appropriate one, 12% chance for a gas giant, 4% chance for a barren world, 4% chance for an asteroid field
- 15% chance for a tiered world to have a maximum of 2 satellites. 50% chance for gas giants to have up to 4 satellites. The rest will never have satellites.
- Satellites have a a 20% chance of being 1 tier lower than the star, 60% chance for being the same tier, 20% chance of having a one tier higher sattelite, and a 5% chance for a moon, save for tier 1 planets which could have a tier 1 (30%) or 2 (70%) satellite.

As you can see, ive basically drilled out all the specifics, but its a LOT of code to manipulate to do anything with.

 

That is A LOT of code to mess with for something like this! I wish you (or anyone else who works on it) the best of luck. I think the end result would be well worth the effort though.

 

If someone wants to help with dealing with the probability and whatnot, I'd be willing to put more effort into making a mod. Though I fear CF isn't done with the universe generation just yet, and I don't want to start tinkering with changing basically a large portion of the game "world" if they are just going to change it.