Suggestion: barycentre support

[Kazitor]

I managed to get circumbinary planets working, but it's a lot of hassle.
Basically, I just had to use trial and error to set the velocity of the planets. Funnily enough, I altered their orbits using the same method as in KSP, i.e. changing the velocity at peri/apoapsis to change height.

So, my idea is to make the game support barycentres better. This includes a few things:

1. When adding objects in orbit mode, it targets the nearest barycentre rather than single object
   
2. Objects' orbital parameters (in motion tab) take into account the fact that there might be multiple significant sources of gravity
   
3. When displaying orbits rather than trails, they should work similarly to the above point

This applies beyond stars: a few times I've had multiple planets and getting moons around them isn't stable. It also happens with Pluto and Charon: you can't get something in a stable orbit around them. In fact, adding the pluto system doesn't take long to throw the other moons away.

This is a feature I'd really like to see, because binary systems are just cooler (and also that getting one working took many attempts).

EDIT: I just opened the "Binary pulsars" simulation, and right there was a barycentre! How does one go about adding that, or calculating it automatically; basically how does it work?

[Exo]

If you select multiple objects with shift click you can create a barycentre!

[OuijaMawl]

Holding down Shift and Click dragging around multiple objects to select them is the first step. Next you need to click on one of the boxes that have appeared on the right hand side of the screen after selection. A new menu appears with one of the options being to "create a barycenter" clicking this will define a new object with the name "barycenter" in a position that corresponds to the center of gravity for the various objects you had selected.

While you can make a barycenter for two objects, I'm not sure the game supports handling more than that just yet. I would like it personally if you could have any number of objects attached to a defined center of gravity. It would make creating trinary and higher muliple star systems possible.

[Kazitor]

Thanks for the info, hopefully making my system will be a lot easier now :)

[Eldresh S.]

Originally posted by Kazitor:

1. When adding objects in orbit mode, it targets the nearest barycentre rather than single object
   
2. Objects' orbital parameters (in motion tab) take into account the fact that there might be multiple significant sources of gravity
   
3. When displaying orbits rather than trails, they should work similarly to the above point

It'd still be nice if items 1 and 3 on this list were in the game. I know that the first one has been severely slowing down what I've been trying to do, and if anyone knows how to force the Orbit Parent for something to be a barycenter then please let me know how.