Planets... or billiard balls?

[Wydraz]

I am impressed with the smoothness of the models displaying planets, and the graphics are good, but when you get close, you realize these 'planets' are rather small compared to your ship. They resemble billiard balls more than planets.

When a planet is between your ship and a star, it becomes hard to spot because its so dark. Perhaps not unrealistic, but then they become invisible death dealers.

I'd like to see planets change in three ways.

1. Make 'em bigger!

2. Give them an atmosphere! Visually representing an atmosphere will make them easier to spot from the dark side, and also make them look more like planets.

3. Have the interaction between planets and your ship a little better. There should be some kind of warning or buffer zone between being close to a planet and suddenly exploding. In reality you'd have plenty of warning. Gravity, atmosphereic buffetting, heat... your on-board computer would trigger the klaxxons and give you a chance to steer clear (if it didn't do it for you)!

On a similar note, if you run into an asteroid that is smaller than your ship, and you had powerful shields, and you went really, REALLY slow, would you explode? Maybe - if your ship was made of paper and you had nitroglycerin in your cargo hold.

[DeadZone]

I do agree with all these points

[Suicide Junkie]

1 and 2 are moddable.

I have survived an asteroid collision before, just barely, and in a heavily armored battlecruiser that took severe internal damage.

[Wydraz]

I'll buy that. I guess you could fiddle with the planet size in the data files and create hi-res skins for them too. I look forward to doing that.

Do you have an example of how you'd add an atmosphere? I've got no clue on this, aside from some vague comments in another topic on adding some visual effects.

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm no graphics artist, but the halos seen around stars would make great atmospheres, IMO. Coloured to match the type of atmosphere, of course.

You could always simply add blinking nav beacons to the map around planets, just like you have buoys on lakes to indicate rocks & stuff.

Unexplored or undeveloped systems without such nav beacons would of course be more hazardous.

[Captain Kwok]

If you've got the power to run the game faster, than just increase the planet sizes. It makes it more interesting not knowing what might be behind a planet...