Gaseous planets yet?

[Ace-Educator]

So many planets and all of them are terrestrial? DO THEY EVEN SCIENCE?

[BaneBlackGuard]

gas giants could be interesting, but there'd need to be more to it than just a planet you die if you fly to far into the atmosphere. have gas mining facilities in the parts of the atmosphere you CAN get to. have new kinds of lifeforms flying around. It would be interesting but there wouldn't be a whole lot you could do with them.

[uraniumhexoflorite]

I like the idea of gas mining and new life forms

[Wyrm]

Most of of planets are "gaseous", as nearly all have atmosphere.
And if you mean gas giants, then no, and likely won't be. How you suppose to explore those?

[eternity]

edited - wrote too hastily:
Evochron Mercenaries and/or Evochron Legends has them, and they are fun to fly around in. I would love to see them come to NMS and be diversified like other things in the game, and receive some special usability as well. It would be fun to have a base in a beautiful part of a gas planet atmosphere, where there is some visibility and stability. :)

[Wyrm]

Code-wise, as well as game-play-wise such thing will be too hard to implement.
NMS just too different kind of game for such game-play, i heavily doubt there ever gonna be gas giants.

[micha]

Originally posted by Wyrm:

Code-wise, as well as game-play-wise such thing will be too hard to implement.
NMS just too different kind of game for such game-play, i heavily doubt there ever gonna be gas giants.

Why would it be too difficult?

Instead of a solid surface you just dive deeper into the atmosphere until you go *boom* (have your ship warn you before it happens).

Game-play wise you can have floating cities (quite a staple in Sci-Fi, Bespin is probably one of the more famous examples) or "mine" rare gases using a scoop.

I do agree that it's unlikely to come.

What I'd be more interested in is having basic orbital mechanics (planet orbits and rotation), but again, that's highly unlikely to happen. HelloGames is on record as stating that this seemed to be too confusing for players during focus-testing. Personally I call bawlocks on this - people adjust to new game mechanics all the time. I think it was probably too much work for too little in-game benefit.

[Wyrm]

Originally posted by micha:

Why would it be too difficult?

Instead of a solid surface you just dive deeper into the atmosphere until you go *boom* (have your ship warn you before it happens).

Game-play wise you can have floating cities (quite a staple in Sci-Fi, Bespin is probably one of the more famous examples) or "mine" rare gases using a scoop.

I do agree that it's unlikely to come.

What I'd be more interested in is having basic orbital mechanics (planet orbits and rotation), but again, that's highly unlikely to happen. HelloGames is on record as stating that this seemed to be too confusing for players during focus-testing. Personally I call bawlocks on this - people adjust to new game mechanics all the time. I think it was probably too much work for too little in-game benefit.

Have you seen EVA in this game?
Have you seen exocraft in low gravity or no gravity?
Game physics are super simple in this game, and making it more complicated is insane amount of work.

Alas something that many ppl just refuse to understand. Game development is not a magic, gamedevs doesn't just "make it happen". Nor they goes on ebay to buy "cool code with exact type of gameplay we need for our game".

Hello Games is fairly small studio to expect extensive game development from them. Nor they had chance to expand their studio due to unfortunate scandal NMS still lives through. Fact that Next DLC will be free is self explanatory.

[micha]

Originally posted by Wyrm:

Have you seen EVA in this game?
Have you seen exocraft in low gravity or no gravity?
Game physics are super simple in this game, and making it more complicated is insane amount of work.

Alas something that many ppl just refuse to understand. Game development is not a magic, gamedevs doesn't just "make it happen". Nor they goes on ebay to buy "cool code with exact type of gameplay we need for our game".

Hello Games is fairly small studio to expect extensive game development from them. Nor they had chance to expand their studio due to unfortunate scandal NMS still lives through. Fact that Next DLC will be free is self explanatory.

I'm a developer (in the games space); and I have a working appreciation of how much effort it is (or isn't) to code stuff. Adding a gaseous planet type should not be that difficult given they've already got all the building blocks: planets, atmospheres, floating rock platforms, atmospheric flight. There's certainly no need for new physics. Just make the planet tiny, the atmosphere huge, and add a depth limit in the atmosphere at which the ship explodes.

Most games programming is about cheating - achieving the desired effect in a (relatively) simple way without actually modelling the real world.

And I'm not talking about adding rings here either.. which -would- be a new thing for their engine.

[Wyrm]

Originally posted by micha:

I'm a developer (in the games space); and I have a working appreciation of how much effort it is (or isn't) to code stuff. Adding a gaseous planet type should not be that difficult given they've already got all the building blocks: planets, atmospheres, floating rock platforms, atmospheric flight. There's certainly no need for new physics. Just make the planet tiny, the atmosphere huge, and add a depth limit in the atmosphere at which the ship explodes.

Most games programming is about cheating - achieving the desired effect in a (relatively) simple way without actually modelling the real world.

And I'm not talking about adding rings here either.. which -would- be a new thing for their engine.

Well they have no proper EVA mechanics. So how you think they will make out of vehicle experience? Providing that right now you have to leave starship first and then enter exocraft.
Likewise hardly any "entertaining" gameplay.
Sure, games like Star Citizen suppose to have mini-games to scoop gases. But thats absolutely different type of game, not mentioning that it full MMO game (which is also no way near completed, despite having over $200m budget and very-very large development team).
Elite on other hand, despite been most realistic space space sim nowadays, still don't have any gameplay for gas giants at all. Even though been released for several years already. And so far they haven't even promised any gameplay related to gas giants in future.

[micha]

Originally posted by micha:

Just make the planet tiny, the atmosphere huge, ...

The "just" is a bit facetious here. Depending on how their game engine works and interacts with the data this "just" may or may not be difficult. It shouldn't be, but you never know.

Apart from that it's adding meaningful interactions with gas giants; not much point adding them in if you can't do anything with them. Adding meaningful interactions (examples of which I posted earlier) will also take time and effort and again, depending on how their code is set up, this may or may not be easy.

[eternity]

I also was wondering about meaningful interactions. Hoping for beautiful gas giants, wondering about interaction. Someone above mentioned floating rocks, such as are already on planets. That would do it. Not every gas planet would have them, I suppose, but when they do, a user could make a base, and fly (explore) or (if there were clusters of them) ride exocraft from one floating area to another. I read at https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/jupiter/en/ that Jupiter might have a solid core; if a gas giant coudl have a solid core and a huge atmosphere, the above comment might not be far from the mark, "Just make the planet tiny, the atmosphere huge, and add a depth limit in the atmosphere at which the ship explodes." I think the atmosphere would need a bit more work - areas of intense cloud/lightning/wind, and areas of milder weather and more visibility. At least that seems to be what we see in photos of Jupiter and Saturn.

About programming, the game does have weather effects, degrees of atmospheric haze, push effects (e.g., when exiting a craft or when bouncing a ship off freighter entrance tractor beams) that could be turned into wind or gasseus currents, and underwater movement effects. I suppose the trick would be to combine these in a new way in a (mechanically) slightly complex gas giant atmosphere. I think procedural visuals would be the most challenging part.

Could be great, I think.

[tkwoods]

Gas Gaints don't fit the vision of NMS... IMO... So I don't see them ever becoming part of the game.

[eternity]

I wonder, if we took a planet with the sort of swirly gas in this screenshot: https://pm1.narvii.com/6567/03c2f14b5e499d62cf3e5b24850a5c5118169859_hq.jpg, which in my experience grows and shrinks and can already cover large areas on these kinds of planets, removed all the glowing rocks, then shrunk the solid part of the planet down to almost nothing, and finally increased resistence (as if in water) and damage as the user entered lower and lower atmospheric layers, would that work passably as a gas planet?

[Wyrm]

Originally posted by eternity:

I read at https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/jupiter/en/ that Jupiter might have a solid core;

Jupiter certainly doesn't have "solid" core. Its a highly radioactive planet, which pretty much says about state of the core. It surely extremely dense core, but nowhere near solid/dead.
Neptune and Uranus as ice giants have significantly colder core. Although even those not dead.

[GDomo]

Devs said they didn't want the game to be super accurate with science so it would make sense if they never added it. Flying into a planet like Jupiter would just result in death.