This ELW is a moon and has a moon with a moon?

[Ian Doncaster]

I'd classify it as a "reasonable hypothesis based on observational evidence": I've never seen a pair of objects the game classifies as a co-orbiting planet which has a barycentre inside the larger object.

Likewise.

The reverse is not completely true, however, because planets can never be top-level objects, so for example a light Y-dwarf and a heavy gas giant alone in a system will always be 'sysname' and 'sysname 1' even though a pair of stars with a similar mass ratio and distance would be 'sysname A' and 'sysname B', and the same Y-dwarf and gas giant themselves in orbit around something big like a B-class star would be 'sysname 5' and 'sysname 6' binary.

This is pretty consistent with RL, though, since the barycentre of Sol-Jupiter is not within Sol, and Jupiter doesn't get to be Sol B. I suppose if it was, Mercury->Mars would be Sol A1->Sol A4, and Saturn to Neptune would be Sol AB1->Sol AB3, the way Elite Dangerous numbers objects.

 

[marx]

Likewise.

The reverse is not completely true, however, because planets can never be top-level objects, so for example a light Y-dwarf and a heavy gas giant alone in a system will always be 'sysname' and 'sysname 1' even though a pair of stars with a similar mass ratio and distance would be 'sysname A' and 'sysname B', and the same Y-dwarf and gas giant themselves in orbit around something big like a B-class star would be 'sysname 5' and 'sysname 6' binary.

This is pretty consistent with RL, though, since the barycentre of Sol-Jupiter is not within Sol, and Jupiter doesn't get to be Sol B. I suppose if it was, Mercury->Mars would be Sol A1->Sol A4, and Saturn to Neptune would be Sol AB1->Sol AB3, the way Elite Dangerous numbers objects.

This might also be because how the Forge generates systems and has to handle non-procedural stars. If large enough gas giants could become primaries (top-level objects) as well, then the game would have to roll some checks after(!) planet generation to see if it didn't muck up the hierarchies of those systems. It should be much simpler to implement things this way, while still producing rather realistic results. (AFAIK.)

 

[Stulli]

A little bit late, but I have found a moon of a moon of a moon just 2 days ago and this is how the sys-map looks like.

I wonder how rare this is?

 

[STRONTIUM DOG]

on some planets it can rain rocks, that will make your head hurt!