Zeke Sturm wrote:It's also worth noting that, even if the thing is already in orbit, unless the tunnels that existed inside it were perfectly laid out for NT's needs (unlikely) there would have to be blasting or drilling involved. ANd even if an asteroid were in stable orbit (like phobos or sommat) blasting the thing would hold huge risk for knocking it out of orbit, as would disposal of excess material. Granted, the disposal problem would be equally prevalent in our current station with the trash, but on a much smaller level that would probably be easier to account for.
Personally I sorta like the idea of an orbiting asteroid base, but I can't see the logic of it. It's a bit too supervillain logic-y to make much sense. It'd be harder to construct, harder to maintain, immensely more difficult to sort out the logistics of it in general. All in all, it's a cool idea, but I can't see it being the practical choice, basically.
That said, I can concede a bigger map with more spaces for preds to nab prey would also be a good thing. Even with that in mind it might be worth making sure we have some clearer pointers to the various departments and such posted around than we do now. I know we've got the wall signs, but maybe a clickable wall map that uses the same UI as the laptops for the camera maps that instead just has the department logos displayed and such? Maybe a "you are here?" If only to help out the newbies.
First off, we don't use explosives when mining. Even if we did, the scale of such explosives would have to be more massive than anything we can reproduce in-game. Second, the asteroid orbits a massive Phoron Giant in the system, and it's not simply going to fall out of orbit because we remove some stone from it.
Gravity does not work that way. Newton's first law does not work that way. When you remove mass from an object in orbit, you're not changing its velocity unless you literally throw that mass off the object creating an opposite force. Even if we wanted to do that deliberately, we'd have to strap massive-ass rockets onto it. There's a reason NASA hasn't considered trying to alter the orbit of an asteroid just by strapping rockets to it. It wouldn't work. There wouldn't be enough fuel. All this you guys keep talking about the asteroid falling out of orbit or drifting off into space makes
no sense and you all
severely overestimate how quickly such effects would even be noticeable. In fact, where was all this complaining over our own asteroid? Why is it suddenly an issue only now? You are literally talking about trying to move the mass of an entire mountain. You could hit it with a nuclear bomb and it wouldn't care.
Now, here's my answer to "Why an asteroid?"
Why waste time and energy flying off to mine on an asteroid when you can just latch into it and mine it? What never made sense to me is we could always get to the mining asteroid even though it's in a completely different place. It's not anchored to the station and it sure as hell doesn't have enough gravitational force to keep a station in orbit around it. So how come we could always reach the asteroid on our station? That made absolutely no sense. Two objects in orbit of dramatically different mass are going to noticeably and severely drift apart.
The map being too big is a fair criticism and matter of opinion. I will not contest that. However I am sick and tired of this ridiculous discussion about orbital mechanics. I shouldn't even be humoring the debate because it has literally nothing to do with anything we are ever doing on the server.