Very tiny barren, resources very sparse.....Ok yea we all have these crappy good for nothing planets and if you were unfortunate enough to colonize some your first few days, well I'm sorry for you. But once you become educated enough to avoid these type of planets (any bad ones, i.e. small, tiny, very tiny, very sparse etc.) All they do is clog up your planet list until you get enough star chart purgers to remove them.

So, why don't we put them to use. Here's the plan, you turn these small crappy planets into moons for your planets. Your primary planet would have a device you would build on it ( we will call it crappy planet attractor) You put this on your planet it takes x amount of space, then select whatever planet you wish and it will gravitate towards the original planet until it is in orbit.

What does this new satellite/moon do?? Could be a couple of things, storage for the planet it's orbiting, adds space to the planet, so say it's normally a 51 slot planet, and you had a tiny moon, now it's 69 or whatever. Maybe only certain artifacts could be placed on the moon since it isn't actually in contact with the planet itself. In any case it would have a very good use which is a far cry from what they are used for now...nothing.

+1

sounds like a cool use for all those crappy planets that are taking up 85% of my planet scan list

*imagines a dyson pulling another dyson into orbit...*

or two metallic planets. balls of steel. literally.

Freeman Dyson actually said that a societies advancement would be shown through the size of it's Dyson sphere, the more advanced society of course had one the size of a galaxy...Don't need any moons for that one lol

still a pretty good idea but the planet to moon size ration would have to be set as well
like a large can pull in a tiny a very large a small a massive a average so forth and so on
although if it werent set then whos to say ya dont grab a tiny make it the planet and a very massive the moon .
could make for some interesting combos especially when you factor in % of defense or attack that the moon would be allowed to supply to the primary .

Yea I was thinking of just saying the limitation is "small" or smaller, but I thought it might be interesting if you could add maybe bigger planets with bad planet resources. Realistically of course the moon has to be smaller then the planet it is orbiting to be classified as a satellite....for obvious reasons.

Thank you for clarifying that Dr. Sagan...

I like the idea. +1 Bob... It would give me a use for the overabundance of Tiny's i have scanned...

Not true a bodies gravitational pull is based on mass and density ,

a small very dense metallic rich planet could have a satellite larger in circumference with a lower mass and density .

Yea but planets don't form this way.

your only frame of reference is our solar system so you cant make that statement and be 100% positive its true , and there is also the possibility of gravitational capture .

Actually it does expand beyond our solar system. Also Gravity is only based on mass, density is simply derived from mass. What your saying works on paper, it just isn't likely to happen in the real world.

This, from someone who doesn't like real-life analogies in a video game... tsk tsk Bob...

Let's put the astrophysics aside, and just say that the satellite must be a common planet smaller than its primary.

would they add the resource value to the primary planet in addition to expanding the size? or would it just be a size increase? or would the moon be a 'new planet' that dosnt count as a planet, but as a 'moon slot' on the primary planet?

Actually no, I like the realism of the game, I just didn't connect well with the particular analogies being used in the other topics. These aren't analogies, it's just trying to get everything as close to realistic as possible. While trying to get the realism true to form, it's also important to stick with the concept, and the concept thus far is moons/satellites. A lot of the modules and technologies in the game are true theoretical pieces of work, thats one of the things I really like about it. I'm not sure what Dan's background is, but someone is doing their homework.


I think it's important not to make the moon idea to overpowered, so you have to watch adding too much, like just doubling the resources of a planet or something similar. But it would be nice to have options, make the game more personalized.

personally I would rather use a moon as a defense platform but I can see the use of a second source of materials or research could make a planet and moon a research facility or mining colony

Just going to expand upon the idea here. Multiple moons is perfectly feasible also, so say the earlier mentioned device takes up 3 planet slots, why not add two for two moons or more. Now for the new tweak on the defense idea. Say you have to disable the moons first before you can invade a planet. Now you have more of a reason to have several moons. I mean realistically right now no one wants to put a bunch of soldier outposts on their planets when they could be putting harvesting structures on it instead.

Moons would be your first line of defense. Right now I can conquer, invade and flux a planet in under 15 seconds, this is completely unfair, a person has no chance of defending it even if they were starring at their computer screen. If you had to go through 3-4 moons first, at least it would give the person a chance to defend.

i figure

average planets - 1 moon slot
large planets - 2 moon slots
very large - 3 moon slots
massive - 4 moon slots
very massive - 5 moon slots
colossal - 6 moon slots
mega-colossal - 7 moon slots

*moons can only be unoccupied small or smaller planets
*captured planets that are small or smaller require an artifact to 'bring them into orbit'
*moons have the standard planet size and resource values
*moons have an automatic -50% production bonus (because their 'smaller')
*moons can be destroyed and would amount to a 'ring' around the planet.
*rings would provide a +1 to each resource value of the primary planet
*rings can be removed with an artifact or reassembled into a barren moon with a random resource value, but the cap would be at 'very rich'

Lol i like the ring idea, it's pretty cool. You can make an artifact called the Roche limit device that pulls the moon in too far.

I still think the artifact should just be a certain size, and if you wanted you could load up a planet with them, but there has to be a downside to doing that. So something like the -50% production rate would have to be calculated in order to figure a diminishing returns on adding moons for resources.

Instead of moon slots, how about making a total size limit? that way a dyson could pull a single very large into orbit or pull 7 very tiny planets.

Also, I believe that a moon doesn't provide a separate level to defense, but has cumulative. So a moon's 200 attack, 100 defense, and 150 cloak would add to a planet's 500 cloak and the planet/moon system would get 200 attack, 100 defense, and 650 cloak.

This also means you can load up a moon with cloaking and it will hide your planet!

I also think total production should add together as well, so the production of 2 minerals and 1 research of a trash planet could still produce after the orbit is established.

well, i thought that the whole point of the moon post is to get rid of the small/smaller planets clogging our scan database. but i like the cumulative attack/defence/cloak thing. but for adding the cumulative of the planet/moon, that could get kinda unfair, considering ive found several extremely rich tiny planets. and if you have a very sparse barren in orbit then it would be subtracted from the planet total. i would rather keep resource values seperate, so i could have a crap barren planet in orbit and load it up with cloaking buildings, and an extremely rich desert tiny planet that i could load up and harvest. this way the crap planets dont screw you over.