What happened to Phobos, Deimos and Ceres?
- Thread starter drew
- Start date
That would still be millions of years off.
You will notice that all the other asteroid-moons in Sol system in FE2 are also omitted from the ED system map: Amalthea around Jupiter, Hyperion around Saturn, Miranda around Uranus and Nereid around Neptune. FE2's stellar forge could procedurally create such "asteroidal moons", but never created similarly-sized "asteroidal planets" or "free asteroids". They decided in ED simply to not create asteroid-sized moons at all.
The omission of Ceres is, perhaps a bigger "blunder". Back in the Great Planet Nomenclature War, the pro-Pluto faction generally agreed that, if Pluto were to be defined as a planet, then in fairness Ceres ought to be reclassified as a planet too (Ceres was originally classified a planet way back when it was discovered, but lost that status a few years later once the other large asteroids were also found). Ceres apparently died in ED when the "no asteroids in ED" policy came about.
When they added Quaoar, Persephone and the other trans-Pluto planets to Sol system, they couldn't add Ceres easily at the same time. Tacking new planets on to the end of a star system is "easy" compared to trying to insert a new planet in between two other planets. That's because each star, planet and moon has a number, and adding a new Planet 7 to Sol system would have meant re-editing all the other planets from 8 outwards.
Analysing the journal files shows that Sol system does in fact have a "missing planet" according to ED's calculations: Planet 20, in between Saturn and Uranus. Since there's no significant objects orbiting out in that region, and since Halley's Comet has a semi-major axis that lies exactly in that gap where Planet 20 ought to be, it is generally assumed that Halley's Comet is that "missing planet", a "currently invisible comet" present in Sol System. But there is no such gap in the numbering between Mars and Jupiter.
The omission of Ceres is, perhaps a bigger "blunder". Back in the Great Planet Nomenclature War, the pro-Pluto faction generally agreed that, if Pluto were to be defined as a planet, then in fairness Ceres ought to be reclassified as a planet too (Ceres was originally classified a planet way back when it was discovered, but lost that status a few years later once the other large asteroids were also found). Ceres apparently died in ED when the "no asteroids in ED" policy came about.
When they added Quaoar, Persephone and the other trans-Pluto planets to Sol system, they couldn't add Ceres easily at the same time. Tacking new planets on to the end of a star system is "easy" compared to trying to insert a new planet in between two other planets. That's because each star, planet and moon has a number, and adding a new Planet 7 to Sol system would have meant re-editing all the other planets from 8 outwards.
Analysing the journal files shows that Sol system does in fact have a "missing planet" according to ED's calculations: Planet 20, in between Saturn and Uranus. Since there's no significant objects orbiting out in that region, and since Halley's Comet has a semi-major axis that lies exactly in that gap where Planet 20 ought to be, it is generally assumed that Halley's Comet is that "missing planet", a "currently invisible comet" present in Sol System. But there is no such gap in the numbering between Mars and Jupiter.
I blame the Slayer. I mean, look what he did to Mars!
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-u1H0gltsbw
They were shot to pieces by players grinding combat rank. Nothing left now, i did this shamelessly to grind my rank to where it was on E2 on my Atari. (star dreamer + mining laser btw)
Not with Dave Lister behind the cue.
Didn't that have a bad PAX 23 issue and spawn Reavers?
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The lower limit is 130km radius, so Ceres is plenty big enough to be modeled, the problem is it isn't circular enough to be generated by the SF so it would need to be hand crafted, there are also many bodies between Ceres and the smallest possible body that are missing, Vesta for instance, I guess they just had to draw the line somewhere. We probably assume Phobos and Deimos were removed because they made the orbit of Mars to dangerous, they do move quite fast. But FDEV can't model every object in the solar system, there are far to many.
There are quite a few “potato” moons in Elite Dangerous which appear to me to be far less spherical than Ceres - but the real reason was mentioned in post #19 ~ introducing bodies between already existing orbits causes problems for the Stellar Forge.
Anyway, this thread is more about thinking up fun Lore explanations for their disappearance in the 5 (in-game) decades since the previous game - like Ceres totally not being used as a base for the development of Frameshift Drive technology wink wink
Ceres was eaten by an enormous mutant star goat, not long after it polished off Golgafrincham.
Of course Phobos and Deimos are much easier to explain, Phobos is actually approaching Mars already, getting 2 meters closer every century, so if you put a lot of people on Mars you aren't going to leave that sitting there and they aren't large enough to be useful for anything except being navigation hazards so why bother, you get rid of them.
I’d quite like the idea that they’ve both been removed by using their material in the construction of a Martian space elevator - they’d both get in the way of a geostationary tether and Phobos is believed to contain lots of carbon, handy if you’re going to be making lots of carbon nanotubes.
The space elevator model is already done - though only in the CQC map “Elevate” and as a stand-alone structure in main-game space. I’ve always hoped we’d see them in not-CQC sometime.
could have swore I visited phobos in elite dangerous beta when the play area was 50ly ask Jaques I am sure he will remember
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Stolen by Goids obviously!During the Lore Tour over the last couple of weeks we noticed that Phobos, Deimos and Ceres were conspicuously absent from the Sol system map in Elite Dangerous in 3306.
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However, a quick check of Frontier First Encounters, set in the year 3250, reveals them all to be intact and where expected. There's nothing in the lore about this. So... come on, Fdev, what happened?
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Did someone remove them from the archive memory?
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Your friendly lore curator.
Cheers,
Drew.
It's possible they had objects in the solar system that were removed, but phobos and deimos would have to be hand made since they are well below the radius of any object that can be made using the stellar forge system, so they would have been crafted like the asteroid bases, and that does seem rather a waste to throw that away.
ya possibly I have my wires crossed with space engine or oolite, could have swore it was just an elongated asteroid in the beta on its own though...….
the mandela effect, but more than likely a faulty memory as memorys can actually be altred slightly apon re access with a similar event.
RIP steve beko
cant be bothered to trawl my logs for a maybe I am just glad if feels like I have been there b4 and not just from playing and reading the doom books
the mandela effect, but more than likely a faulty memory as memorys can actually be altred slightly apon re access with a similar event.
RIP steve beko
cant be bothered to trawl my logs for a maybe I am just glad if feels like I have been there b4 and not just from playing and reading the doom books
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It is a mystery for sure