To add some intrigue to the game, I'd like to see planets actually rotate on these otherwise useless rings they sit on which are supposed to represent their orbital path.

Now, my assumption is that it would be too much strain to move them frequently, but how about at the end of each month? Or every half a year if thats too much? As often as possible would be great, but again I dont know howmuch that would drag out down time, or what kind of algorithm they could come up with and how efficient it would be to move the planets X distance around their orbital path and to re-locate the customs offices and other items anchored to the planet/moon.

It would make for more interesting game play though, bubbles would have to be re-positioned, certain gates would be great tactical areas to camp certain times of month/year depending on what lines up with what and howmany AU shorter or longer the warp becomes, putting people on or off directional scan. Im sure there's a ton of other things it would subtly affect, but those were the first to come to mind.


Any game breaking effects anyone can think of?

As a space fan, I thought of this already and appreciate the suggestion. However i think this is a rather big thing to implement :/

the issue with the bookmarks could be solved relatively easy. To create a new bookmark you would have to add a "point of reference" which must be a celestial or a station. Default reference point is the sun.

(converting old locations shouldn't be that difficult to automate)

Bookmarks within 5000 km of a station would need to rotate with the station facing (for Undock Instant bookmarks to work.)
Bookmarks within say 1 AU of planets, moons, etc would need to rotate with the solar body facing. Bookmarks beyond these limits would need to rotate at a rate equal to a planet at that range around the star. (The Up/Down axis would be ignored for bookmark movements beyond being dragged up or down with planets, moons, asteroid belts, etc.)

The problem with making them move in real-time is that our ships would be left behind without having a speed equal to the nearest body and our engines varying that.

Well that was part of the intrigue to me, not being able to have age-old bookmarks for things like insta warps and gate camp spots in line with certain planets/stations.



Maybe for the pos bookmarks, they could change it so that if you bookmark a structure like a station, pos or ship maint array, you will warp to that specific structure ID wherever it's current XYZ location is, rather than fixed co-ordinates.

Furthermore, what about floating ships in a pos? they aren't really anchored. A decision would have to be made as to whether they get left behind or not.

Well that was part of the intrigue to me, not being able to have age-old bookmarks for things like insta warps and gate camp spots in line with certain planets/stations.



Maybe for the pos bookmarks, they could change it so that if you bookmark a structure like a station, pos or ship maint array, you will warp to that specific structure ID wherever it's current XYZ location is, rather than fixed co-ordinates.

Furthermore, what about floating ships in a pos? they aren't really anchored. A decision would have to be made as to whether they get left behind or not.

If the planets moved in real time and you found Mars, then to follow Mars, your ship would need to fly at 47.9 km just to chase it.
If you warped to where your bookmark is at one moment near Mars, and it took you 10 seconds to get into warp and 10 seconds of flying, you would be 500km away from your bookmark when you landed.

(Pretending that things moved in game)
Clearly, the computer has to figure out where you need to go before you go into warp and aim ahead of the moving target, and when you land, the warp drive kicks you out going in the direction of the local frame of reference when landing. Which is pretty cool when you fly to an incoming celestial. (IE, you get kicked going 50km/s backwards upon landing.) And all speeds are then based upon the local frame of reference (the nearest celestial). Which makes that label telling you what the closest thing at the top left under the system name really important.

It would be an amazing feat of math to move the Eve Universe. It would be cool to watch too.

And all that is without taking into account gravity force, right?

It's an interesting idea, I like it. The movement could be made daily during downtime I guess... that'd be less drastic.
It would affect bookmarks though... so they'll have to rethink the bookmark system.

I get sick of seeing games impliment meaningless stuff as a way to add eye candy to games... Like trees waving in the non-existant breeze in various other mmo's.

Well gravity would keep you next to "mars" a little and reduce the need to move so fast. But you guys are straying from the, or my, original idea, which was to move these planets at downtime only and maybe not even every day but every week or month. This would make all your concerns go away and wouldnt be full on realism but it would atleast make it so that the orbital bodies arent always in the same place, forever.

But we dont want downtime moves, we want live moves, tied into the server's clock I want to see sunsets in space! (I guess it would technically be an eclisp from orbit.)

That, as someone argued previously, is way too much strain on the servers.

And besides, the distance from earth to sun is 1AU and we take 365 days to rotate. So doing it live would be kinda useless anyways, the movement would be barely noticeable, if at all. Some planets move faster, yes, but still unless its a planet less than 1au from the sun that moves retardedly fast somehow without falling into a farther orbit, you wouldnt notice it within a day. For us, Mercury has the shortest "year" or revolution around the sun and that is 88 days. So throughout a day you will see 1/88th of a revolution on a tiny orbital path. There really is no need to do it live and it would cause too much strain. It should just be done at downtime.

Sure the programming isnt that complex as I can well understand, but sending that information to all the clients is going to add load. And as it WAS argued, by Mary Mercer, more server load during active run-time for, as I said, an imperceivable movement throughout one day, is a bad idea.

Moons move faster, but Earth's for example, is 29.5 days to orbit. You think it's really going to make any kind of difference to have it in real time rather than the (as you state, very simple calculation) done only one time and very briefly, during downtime. 1/30th of 360 degrees is still only 12 degrees of movement. Not very significant.

actually, depending on the moon's distance from its center of motion, the perceived distance of that 12 degrees can vary greatly, as to move 12 degrees its moving 12 degrees through ITS ORBIT, and the longer the orbit the more distance it must travel for every degree it moves.

If its further out and has a longer orbital path, the math wont be the same nor will the orbiting time likely be the same. Thus the angle wont be the same.