Rogue planets.
- Thread starter Rea1MikePence
- Start date
The only ones known. Probably because we don't have the resolution on our telescopes to resolve rogue Earth-sized worlds or even smaller gas giants. It's likely that these types do exist, though.
but then it's not actually a rogue planet anymore
thanks for this great explanation about the history of rogues in elite.
impractical to model on a realistic galactic scale because each time you enter a system the game would need to recreate all surrounding systems too to account for possible rogues coming from there. but a late step considering the chance for a rogue to be passing through the system right now (meaning in the time window of the game's expected lifespan) would be a lot easier.
orbital dynamics could be waved away if the generation prohibited impacts and trajectories close enough to existing bodies to produce effects dramatic enough to require orbital variations in real time or cause other bodies to interact. so these rogues would need to be very far away in the system as to produce very slight and slow changes. a player remaining in the same system for days or weeks (without ever relogging) would see inconsistent data, but i could live with that.
of course there would be a practical distance limit for those to remain accessible in the system. this could match the actual limit the renderer allows, i guess it would be huge enough for people not to bother to get there anymore anyway. and i would be fine too with that rogue disappearing for good, so no need to ever see it reappear in the next system. i guess we would be all already dead by then anyway XD
with some licences (as described above) it wouldn't be that hard, and i think gameplay could be great. some of these things wouldn't even need to be hard to find easter eggs but even be announced on galnet and even have something special on them prompting expeditions or player rushes and contribute to the story. that's exactly the kind of content i would like to see in the game.
and if one can dream, at some point in the future (maybe when we have better hardware) frontier could hand pick even one of these systems and model it for extra drama, like an actual impact or a planet with stations being slung off the system. or something like this:
Dying of the Light - Wikipedia
Yes; this is my understanding of how the Type 1 rogue planets I mentioned in my previous post were intended to be found. However, it's not possible to do this right now because the FSD is now 100% foolproof. Try it yourself by flying between two stars where you know there's a third star lying in the direct flightpath between them, because you can see it sitting there on your route-line. You'll jump straight through the third star and arrive as expected at the destination, 0% chance of mis-jumping to the third star.
I suspect the main reason why this method of RoguePlanet discovery was abandoned was because it's actually really hard to get three stars to line up in a perfectly straight line. So you'd need to make mis-jumping still happen even if the rogue planet was slightly off-centre. And if you make the mis-jump sensitivity too high, then you'd constantly be getting mis-jumps from regular stars as well as rogues, which would simply be annoying rather than engaging gameplay.
Mis-jumping and "dark systems" were mentioned in the now-hard-to-find DDF forum, which dates from 2014, before the game went into Gamma playtesting and everything about how the game was played was still up for grabs. Perhaps someone can post a link to where the DDF discussions can still be found? In-system travel was switched from "jump drive" to "supercruise" during this same time. I seem to recall all sorts of discussion about how difficult exploration was originally planned to be.
My hypothesis, that these "dark systems" with RoguePlanet-class "stars" still exist in the galaxy map but are invisible, is based on the following observations:
- RoguePlanet is a star class recognized by the game, yet no such "stars" currently are visible.
- "Dark systems" as navigational hazards were an original planned feature of the game, as mentioned in the DDF, even if exactly how they worked was still vague.
- There are other things in the game that we know are rendered invisible to the players, yet still "exist" as generated game assets. Comets, for example.
- Making any changes to the Stellar Forge algorithm deletes and replaces the galaxy, so if they existed as generated-but-invisible assets at game launch, they have not simply been deleted since then.
One also needs make the following assumptions:
- The Galaxy map was already fixed before the method for interstellar travel was fixed, and has not been reset since dark systems and mis-jumps were dropped as planned features.
- The "RoguePlanet" stars in the journal files and the "dark systems" mentioned in the DDF are one and the same thing.
I assume the concept dates from a time when fuel-scooping from gas giants was still going to be a thing, like it was back in FE2/FFE. Thus, getting stuck in a system with only a gas giant for company would not have been a death-trap, merely an inconvenience. And yes, as far as I can imagine, such mis-jumping for either an explorer or an in-bubble traveller would be 99% "annoying inconvenience", and only 1% "wow, that's awesome".
It does raise one further question in my mind, however. If "dark systems" / RoguePlanets do still exist as systems in the galaxy... how many of them are out there, and do they count as "star systems" in FD's count of 400 billion?
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Maybe with any luck that will be something included in the "new era" that they'll be bringing in with this next expansion
I've run into a few of those. Thought they were odd. I wonder if we could follow the clues to backtrace where they have been and where they should be.
but then it's not actually a rogue planet anymore
thanks for this great explanation about the history of rogues in elite.
impractical to model on a realistic galactic scale because each time you enter a system the game would need to recreate all surrounding systems too to account for possible rogues coming from there. but a late step considering the chance for a rogue to be passing through the system right now (meaning in the time window of the game's expected lifespan) would be a lot easier.
orbital dynamics could be waved away if the generation prohibited impacts and trajectories close enough to existing bodies to produce effects dramatic enough to require orbital variations in real time or cause other bodies to interact. so these rogues would need to be very far away in the system as to produce very slight and slow changes. a player remaining in the same system for days or weeks (without ever relogging) would see inconsistent data, but i could live with that.
of course there would be a practical distance limit for those to remain accessible in the system. this could match the actual limit the renderer allows, i guess it would be huge enough for people not to bother to get there anymore anyway. and i would be fine too with that rogue disappearing for good, so no need to ever see it reappear in the next system. i guess we would be all already dead by then anyway XD
with some licences (as described above) it wouldn't be that hard, and i think gameplay could be great. some of these things wouldn't even need to be hard to find easter eggs but even be announced on galnet and even have something special on them prompting expeditions or player rushes and contribute to the story. that's exactly the kind of content i would like to see in the game.
and if one can dream, at some point in the future (maybe when we have better hardware) frontier could hand pick even one of these systems and model it for extra drama, like an actual impact or a planet with stations being slung off the system. or something like this:
Dying of the Light - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Why can't they just make it technically load with each system it's within x LY's of? It could have moving coordinates and on load it simply loads it like other assets and treats it appropritaly. I would imagine all they have to avoid is network issues that help detect them artifically. Maybe don't load it but keep it on the server side as a consideration and load it when you get with a distance of it. Preferebly in a way that doesn't make mysterious lag, unless RP appropriate.
To find it you would have to find gravitational clues and hunt it down.
It would probably be interesting for explorers.
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He described the multiple things in great detail you're going to have to be more specific for us to actually know what you're talkin about and think you're talkin about something reasonably believable
I assume Noobilite is talking about the Type 2 rogues, the ones that only hypothetically exist in a star system's distant past and disrupt planetary orbits.
The answer to that is "No". In the Discovery Scanner #1 video with Dr Ross, he specifically says that these intruders are not linked to any object represented in the Elite galaxy that you can go and visit, they're just probability events: "This star system is 1 billion years old, there's an 0.1% probability of an intruder every 100 million years, so that's ten dice-rolls for intruders in this system". You can't say "this star system was disrupted 200 million years ago by a brown dwarf coming from the Galactic Core", calculate trajectories and then go and find the culprit brown dwarf sitting a few light-years away in the opposite direction to the Core. You could do that in the real galaxy, but not in ED; the Elite galaxy simply isn't modelled in that much detail, in terms of the motion and interaction of star systems.
I guess that clears that up
It's hard to say how I would feel about this without actually experiencing it but I think if the probability was quite low, say along the lines of 1 in 1000 jumps, then it would be a pretty interesting mechanic. It might make people think twice about under sizing fuel tanks and not carrying FSD injections. Some people ask for a bit more danger while exploring and this could be one small step in that direction. The few times I have had an emergency with my fuel reserves it was a bit exhilarating to realize what had just happened, quickly shut down all my modules to conserve my remaining fuel and then synth a FSD injection and try to find a scoopable star within the limited range I have with my remaining fuel. Also, it might give the fuel rats some interesting rescues. They would have to follow the exact course the commander in distress took in order to locate them.
A rogue planet could also be an interesting place to stick a USS. Even it was just limited to low threat distress calls like someone requiring fuel or repairs or wrecks where you could salvage a couple materials, a black box and maybe a pod or 2. A little something to break up the monotony y'know? Just a thought.
I envisage mis-jumps to be more of a "mistake in navigation" event. For instance when I initiate a jump in a neutron system I can jump through the neutron flare and get the warning that my FSD is operating beyond design parameters, but because I have already initiated the jump I don't get the opportunity to do a neutron jump, when I emerge at the next system my FSD isn't supercharged, all that extra energy has just vanished. So that would be an ideal way to introduce mis-jumps. You could do it by mistake if you weren't careful or do it on purpose if you wanted to see what happens. You could apply the same mechanic for launching into hyperspace while still inside the mass lock zone of a planet, so a mis-jump would be easily avoidable, but possible to do if you wanted to on purpose, or by accident if you didn't take care to avoid situations where mis-jumps can happen.
IFF Rogue Planets do exist in-game then there are, IMHO, only two ways for them to appear. They might be seen inside another star system but the orbit would be hyperbolic- on the Orrery view it would start and finish on the “boundaries” of the system and would not be a closed orbit. I dont think this will be seen since there are no obvious boundaries to any system I’ve seen to date.
The second, and more likely, way for it to appear is in its own system; this is the reason for including Rogues in the Startype variable in the journal file specification. By this mechanism a Rogue could be targeted and jumped to using the FSD. However I don’t think they would appear in the galmap since they are not stars, but might be viisble by gravitational detection as a system in the nav panel. This would be tricky to spot-you’d have to check every system in the nav panel against the galmap to see if any weren’t visible and do that for every system you travelled to. If this mechanism is implemented then, since the system name is defined by the mass of the system, its system name would probably end in “A-?”. So not impossible, just damn hard to find and, to my mind, not a very pleasant gameplay experience. Might be we could get a Tip Off mission giving their system name/coordinates but otherwise I can’t see it being practicable gameplay.
The high or bital inclination of some planets (e.g. in Merope) suggests they rogues that have been captured in the past and are now bound to their new system.
The second, and more likely, way for it to appear is in its own system; this is the reason for including Rogues in the Startype variable in the journal file specification. By this mechanism a Rogue could be targeted and jumped to using the FSD. However I don’t think they would appear in the galmap since they are not stars, but might be viisble by gravitational detection as a system in the nav panel. This would be tricky to spot-you’d have to check every system in the nav panel against the galmap to see if any weren’t visible and do that for every system you travelled to. If this mechanism is implemented then, since the system name is defined by the mass of the system, its system name would probably end in “A-?”. So not impossible, just damn hard to find and, to my mind, not a very pleasant gameplay experience. Might be we could get a Tip Off mission giving their system name/coordinates but otherwise I can’t see it being practicable gameplay.
The high or bital inclination of some planets (e.g. in Merope) suggests they rogues that have been captured in the past and are now bound to their new system.
While it is theoretically easily possible to create such objects procedurally - all they have to do is give the object an orbital eccentricity greater than 1.000 - in reality, the Stellar Forge is prohibited from creating such objects. Even hand-crafted objects that are theoretically moving on hyperbolic paths - the Generation Ships - are not doing so, they're just sitting there, unmoving.
The nav panel isn't powered by some kind of gravitational detector, it's plugged into the galaxy map - as evidenced by the nav panel knowing whether or not a targetted system is permit-locked. The nav panel also cannot see the "dark systems" that we already know are there, such as the three stars within 0.1 LY of Sol which the Devs apparently created for testing purposes and now cannot delete. Y-class brown dwarfs technically aren't stars either, and they're visible in the galaxy map. So there's no real barrier towards making "rogue planets" visible on the galaxy map. I believe the original plan was to have them become visible on the galaxy map once you'd stumbled upon them via mis-jump, so you could re-visit them just like any other star system.
Several times, I have tried to deduce the existence of Rogue Planets in a certain subsector from the galaxy map, just by searching for A-mass-code stars in numerical order and watching for any "missing numbers" which the map refused to find. So far, I haven't found any such missing, low-mass stars. So if they have regular proc-genned ID code-names, they aren't in mass-code "A" (What letter comes before "A"?). Or they do, but they've put all rogue planets right at the end of the numerical order - which would go against how the Stellar Forge works for all other mass-codes, in which the masses and star types are more or less randomly distributed.
Rogue
Astellar
Xanthous
Xenolith
Legend
Apparently
Yes, this checks out.
adds more threads between the pins in the wall and reaches for additional tinfoil
Astellar
Xanthous
Xenolith
Legend
Apparently
Yes, this checks out.
adds more threads between the pins in the wall and reaches for additional tinfoil
The mind-bending science behind the planets of Elite Dangerous
Frontier reveals its secrets.
That link discusses how rogue planets are currently in play.
All things Frontier Developments at E3 2014!
Think it might be "Paradiso Outpost", then an illegible (to me) line and "Independent Jurisdiction" on the line below. Your guess is as good as mine re the build no. It is indeed Paradiso Outpost - it's a deep space exploration support station. Michael
That one post #288 has Michael talking about planets without suns.
There is another post out there about Braben talking about dark systems.
I'll get it:
"Rogue Planet"
Just to add, this is a game, there is no huge empty space between systems where what we would call rogue planets could possibly exist except in the merest philosophical sense. The only stuff that loads when you jump into a system is the system itself.
Now having said that I don't see it being an issue to introduce such a thing but it would essentially be a random instanced mini-system in itself, I could imagine a mis-jump such as occurred in the original Elite Dangerous game, dropping you in space far from the nearest star system and generating a random object of some type that your FSD used as an emergency drop point due to the mis-jump. Of course the object wouldn't really exist as part of the ED galaxy, more sort of like the random signal sources, and couldn't be targeted on the galaxy map and you couldn't fly in space from it to a nearby system without hyper jumping because no system is loaded, however for the purposes of "rogue planet" it would do the trick.
Has anyone actually TRIED to fly from star to star in pure supercruise? I know it'd take one REAL DAY nonstop, but who knows...maybe there IS something "odd" there...OR, could be a clue to Raxxla...like maybe THAT is defined as a "Rogue Planet".
For a "planet" is NOT something you can jump to, it'd need a star...but that by definition means no Rogue Planet can be found just by the fact that there is a STAR there..."Rogue Planets" in theory can only exist "in between star systems".
The downside is that this is already a "needle in a haystack" problem, even WITHOUT the ultra-fine-tooth combing required to go another layer deeper by way of "Pure Supercruise". Yet since SOME people have gone upwards of thirty THOUSAND solar systems, I'm sure there's SOMEBODY who's got that kind of time! > ; )
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Rogue planets and Comets are something that would need to be addressed with the reworking of the Stellar Forge aspect of the game -
Rogues would have to go from one system to next closest system on that Rogue's path using the determination of a ship supercruise time frame from system to system as a reference, this could probably take days to occur -
Comets, on the other hand, return to the Kyper Belt of that system and return at varied times which might incur planetary near misses or possibly strikes -
A near miss would be an event to see from a planetary view and a strike by either a comet or meteor could possibly incur an SRV destruction -
A view from orbit of a strike would be an event that would garner a lot of attention for passenger missions etc. - Especially if the strike would disrupt that planets' orbit making it elliptical instead of circular with a chance of interacting with another planetary body -
A strike with a smaller body, like a moon, could result in the breakup of that moon with possible strikes against the parent planet or other bodies as the case may be -
This scenario would involve calculations beyond the current Stellar Forge capabilities -
Rogues would have to go from one system to next closest system on that Rogue's path using the determination of a ship supercruise time frame from system to system as a reference, this could probably take days to occur -
Comets, on the other hand, return to the Kyper Belt of that system and return at varied times which might incur planetary near misses or possibly strikes -
A near miss would be an event to see from a planetary view and a strike by either a comet or meteor could possibly incur an SRV destruction -
A view from orbit of a strike would be an event that would garner a lot of attention for passenger missions etc. - Especially if the strike would disrupt that planets' orbit making it elliptical instead of circular with a chance of interacting with another planetary body -
A strike with a smaller body, like a moon, could result in the breakup of that moon with possible strikes against the parent planet or other bodies as the case may be -
This scenario would involve calculations beyond the current Stellar Forge capabilities -
It's been attempted. The distance to the other system goes to zero but it doesn't get loaded so there's nothing there. And you still need the same amount of fuel to jump into it as you did before you started (well, marginally less because your ship+fuel is now that much lighter)