Asteroid Fields

Bambi

Bambi
In a lot of space games, if not every space game ever, asteroid fields feature mostly as a fairly static affair with large rocks sitting motionless in space. Maybe they are slowly rotating.
This is fine, there's some obstacles to avoid. It adds something. A sense of speed and depth from having reference points is not the least of that.

But when I look back to the original de facto sci-fi asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back, it's a dynamic place that is incredible dangerous. Asteroids of all sizes are flying every which way, some fast, some slow. They collide violently and debris goes flying everywhere. It's chaos, it's dangerous. Not a place you'd want to actually go into.

Well, maybe the original Asteroids captures this feeling. But I haven't seen any other video games really do it justice. I speculate it's because it would be much more difficult to simulate than a bunch of motionless rocks.

I think there could be room for both types in the same game too. I just want to see the second kind for once.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Bambi said:
That's not really a good example. One asteroid was moving really slowly.
Click to expand...

It's all relative. That slow asteroid has some serious velocity from a different frame of reference.

Imagine driving in a car at 50mph , and your passenger drops her phone. It hits the car floor and is undamaged.

Now imagine she drops the same phone, out the same car, at the same 50mph, out the window. For arguments sake your car has been lowered so the difference between floor and the earths surface is minimal. That phone is going to break ;)
 

Bambi

Bambi
They're all relative to each other, and in that context they are stationary. The only other frame of reference is the ship which is not all too quick itself. And I understand there is a hard speed limit on that.

It's not fast, it's not chaotic.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Bambi said:
They're all relative to each other, and in that context they are stationary. The only other frame of reference is the ship which is not all too quick itself. And I understand there is a hard speed limit on that.

It's not fast, it's not chaotic.
Click to expand...

As far as I remember in such system no ship wouldn't survive longer than few days (system's 'early bombardment' period). In most stable systems asteroids doesn't move with any kind of speeds you see excitingly in movies.

Peteris.
 

Bambi

Bambi
That is the idea with an ESB style asteroid field, it's a dangerous and active environment where nobody in their right mind would want to go. And if someone did go there, you'd be crazy to follow them.

I certainly think there's room for both the passive and the more chaotic style and probably anything inbetween.
 

Erimus Kamzel

Erimus Kamzel
I'm sure the Elite galaxy will procedurally create all kinds of asteroid fields from really diffuse slow moving ones to highly concentrated ones that are akin to a shooting gallery - deadly for anyone who ventures within them. There are going to be multiple billions of them. It'll be tragic if they're all identical to the one we saw in alpha.

I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see fan made websites spring up with info and hazard gradings of all known/discovered astronomical phenomena and environments. I'd hope as we explore the galaxy around us news of no-go areas will spread amongst the players charting where these death traps are.
 

>WP< Troublepilot

>WP< Troublepilot
An asteroid field as described in the OP won't be a localised field for a long time.
When there is a lot of movement it would spread rapidly, and then it won't be what is asked for anymore.

Fur sure in-game this may be handled by some routines (spawning / despawning asteroids / turning their directions / ...), but that was just what came into my mind when reading the OP.
 

Bambi

Bambi
Good point. But some concessions like that could be made for the sake of having these interesting locations.
A field that is cohesive enough for you to even see from one rock to the next is unrealistic to begin with.

Even so you could justify a high density, high motion field as the result of a recent cataclysm. This type of location could still be large enough to stay chaotic for a significant amount of time.
 
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chris5281

C
This is quite an interesting subject. As has been alluded to in this thread, the type of chaotic asteroid field as seen in films like ESB is physically unrealistic. However, asteroid fields as portrayed in almost all science fiction, including the Elite alpha, is also unrealistic.

The asteroid belt in the solar system represents a slight overdensity of objects, compared to the rest of the system. The chances of a collision are still tiny, and if you were to fly through it you wouldn't even know the belt was there. About a dozen man-made satellites have flown through the belt, taken no special protective measures and made it through fine. Asteroid-asteroid collisions of any significance happen on the order of once every few thousand years. I could fly around and around the sun in the belt blindfolded and have a near zero chance of hitting anything in my lifetime. In summary, space is big, and even the regions with lots more stuff in than average are almost entirely empty :)

The reason of course that we have more dense asteroid fields in science fiction is because that is more interesting than reality. Fields which are so dense that there are lots of violent collisions will break down and disperse on very short timescales, as has been pointed out. However, even a moderately dense system which appears stable to humans, such as in the alpha, will be extremely gravitationally unstable due to the perturbations caused by having that many objects so close together, and will break down on short astronomical timescales of the order of a few million years.

That might seem like a long time, but its a twinkling of an eye when you consider that when you visit the system it is of the order of billions of years old. This means that the chances of encountering the system in this short lived phase is exceptionally unlikely, so such encounters will be exceptionally rare. It's like me going down the pub tonight with the aim of meeting someone who is 37 years, 49 days, 4 hours and 3 minutes old. Most people I meet will be of a different age, because that one minute phase is a small fraction of an overall life.

So in conclusion, any asteroid field in science fiction which is recognisably a field is somewhat unrealistic. However, in a game environment we probably want to relax realism for reasons of fun. ESB type fields are going too far though because every field would break up and disperse within a few hours of someone encountering it for the first time. The second visitor to the system would not know the asteroid field was ever there. The fields as portrayed in the game are probably about right, since while they are unstable, they should survive longer than the lifetime of the game.

The other argument against too dense fields is that non-one sane would enter them, since the odds of successfully navigating them has been calculated to be less than 3720 to 1...


(Some caveats: most of what we know about asteroid belts is based on observations of our own system. As with exoplanets, observations of other systems will change our ideas completely. The timescale arguments against very dense fields is virtually impossible to avoid, however. There are also other possibilities for dense rubble fields in space, such as a tidally disrupted planet being accreted onto a massive object. Again though, such events will be short lived and relatively rare.)
 

Arbanax

Arbanax
Very interesting comments re the asteroids in the Alpha build. And with the mention of ESB here is a link, that features that very clip along with the story boards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHEFkHm20KQ

What this highlights isn't the science but the fiction and what makes for a character in a good story, in this case the asteroids, doesn't always 'fit' with known reality. But then again most of us are willing suspend disbelief in order to have some fun. But its good to know what the science says, as unlike ESB, I love the way the Alpha Asteroids appear to be much more sedate but no less troublesome an obstacle to fly around.

Ab
 

MxM

MxM
Space is empty and that gives it a risk of becoming boring. Asteroids by nature are one of the only realistic things you would find in space, and in large numbers and complexity. They represent a key aspect of gameplay and the possibilities as described in this thread should be explored at depth.

There should be a huge variety of asteroid formations, flight dynamic, density and all other possible factors considered for this game. This opens up more dynamic gameplay, nailbiting moments and overall enhances the risk/reward aspect of flight and combat.
 
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