Starting with ice giants

[pat]

The first few games I played, I started off orbiting a gas giant. Then for some reason, all of the rest of the games I've started orbiting an ice giant. I'm sure it's some change I made, but I can't figure out what it is.

[Coops]

I have started 8 new games, The first seven were Fire Ice / Hydrogen giants
The last one was Hydrogen / Deuterium.
Its just random but it seems like there are more Fire Ice planets than Deuterium planets

[kris44dad]

I'm a bit undecided which is better to start. Hydrogen has more MJ but. the webbing is useful and you can always find a gas giant soon enough.

[Nekogod]

Originally posted by kris44dad:

I'm a bit undecided which is better to start. Hydrogen has more MJ but. the webbing is useful and you can always find a gas giant soon enough.

You rarely need raw hydrogen for power, plus using fire ice to make graphene has hydrogen as a byproduct.

That said it's possible to start in a system with a gas giant and an ice planet, either ashen gelisol, ice field gelisol or scarlet something or other which will have fireice on it, so you can have both!

[Kyrros]

I personally have always preferred Ice Giant starts. Graphene is a PITA, normally, and excess orbital Hydrogen easily converts to Deuterium with multiple Fractionator loops.

Win/Win in my book!

What you get is random. Unless you get a large enough sample size (several "seed" viewers out there) there's no real way of knowing, except anectdotally, what the chance of getting a Gas or Ice as your starting giant. Some rare starts even have multiple giants in the home system - which honestly sounds super awesome. Until you get a large enough N, it's all speculation. Though, I would not be surprised if it was a roughly 50/50 distribution, given a large enough sampling.

[pat]

Ok. Odd, because my first three games were all gas and the last 8 have been ice.

[kithron2]

I would like to not always be on a moon of an ice/gas giant.

[Nekogod]

Originally posted by kithron2:

I would like to not always be on a moon of an ice/gas giant.

Not possible currently without mods, I quite like it personally. I even have some seeds where all 3 starter system planets are around the giant makes moving between them early game a breeze

[kithron2]

Originally posted by Nekogod:

Originally posted by kithron2:

I would like to not always be on a moon of an ice/gas giant.

Not possible currently without mods, I quite like it personally. I even have some seeds where all 3 starter system planets are around the giant makes moving between them early game a breeze

Having all three around the giant is nice for logistics. I had one seed with that but the iron was very constrained for some reason. (1.0 resources). Still, it was nice. Sometimes, I just want my home world to have a regular rotation and orbit around the star, without a giant getting in the way. Mainly aesthetics. Of course, I could just build enough to get space flight and move. It's a minor thing, really.

[pat]

I want all three starting planets orbiting the giant, but tidally locked to the star. Is that too much to ask?

[josmith7]

Originally posted by pat:

I want all three starting planets orbiting the giant, but tidally locked to the star. Is that too much to ask?

Unfortunately yes. The game won't tidally lock a satellite planet to the star; only to the Gas/Ice Giant it's orbiting.

[pat]

I was kidding. That would break a few laws of astrophysics.

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by pat:

I want all three starting planets orbiting the giant, but tidally locked to the star. Is that too much to ask?

LOL

Well, there's ~59k starting seeds with all three planets around the giant.

There's an additional ~44k seeds with 2 around the giant, with the 3rd as a solo planet which is also tidally locked.

[pat]

I haven't noticed any yet, but ARE there orbiting planets that are tidal locked to the giant? I imagine that'd make for some pretty long days (and nights).

[Kyrros]

Originally posted by pat:

ARE there orbiting planets that are tidal locked to the giant?

Yes. All orbiting bodies have a resonance or ratio of orbit to its rotation, such as 1:4, or 1:2. Tidal Locking is just another name for the special ratio of 1:1, which is also available to planets orbiting a giant, though I don't know if the game would label it as such like it would if it were a 1:1 star orbit...?

As for getting a planet orbiting a giant also being tidal to the host star - mathematically, I suppose it's a possible scenario, but, again, it wouldn't necessarily be labeled as such in the game. It would simply be a coincidence of orbits such that a planet orbit just happens to match the orbit of its giant, which would also, as a side effect make it also tidal to the host star.