Passing Asteroids

[Ranah]

Asteroids that pass the cluster and are only available for a limited time.

[Unfawkable]

What would happen to your dupes on it once it leaves though?

[babba]

Perhaps we could install some interplanetary 1MW ( reactor powered ) space engine to the asteroid and make it land or crash on to our existing "home" asteroid, making all its content and resources rain down as "collectibles".

14 hours ago, Unfawkable said:

What would happen to your dupes on it once it leaves though?

[zuklaak]

This got me thinking, you could have different scenarios for this:

 - Orbiting asteroid - Build a sustainable colony. Allows dupes to survive while out of touch.
 - Fast Orbiting asteroid - Would first need a sustainable rocket for in orbit scanning and research, then build the colony.
 - One time asteroid - Get what you can while you can.

Other thoughts:
For all of these, asteroid is only visible while in your cluster space.

When they  pass thru your asteroid cluster, they should available from any cluster asteroid.

Have a scanner from orbit that shows the first x number of tiles down, then after that just the shadows of structures and voids for the next x tiles.

For the one time asteroid, you would need posthumous memorial to allow home dupes to grieve.

[AndreyKl]

On 3/18/2021 at 7:21 PM, zuklaak said:

- One time asteroid - Get what you can while you can.

"Craft The World" has an 'instance' mechanics where you can visit time-limited instances to complete missions and get resources. So such thing can work but there are potential problems:

1. Balance. Even a small asteroid provides a lot of resources and a rocket with command module potentially can transport whole asteroid back.
2. Automation. Visitable asteroids essentially lack automation and some kind of 'rocket ready->send a rocket' won't work as it did in base game. In "Craft The World" this mechanics becomes 'old' fairly fast, so full endgame automation is vital. 
3. 'Time to live'. Asteroids that live long enough to get a small base are more likely to annoy players - you built all that only for it to get wasted. Repeatedly! Short living ones probably aren't going to be all that fun - mine, mine, mine that as well, fetch, fetch, fetch.
4. Liquids. The opposite problem compared to solids, you just can't take much unless you are creative with emptying pipes.

 I think that a mechanics from base game, with some adaptations, would have worked well here: a scanner detects a passing asteroid within reach -> rocket with 'mining lander module' launches -> rocket reaches asteroid, dupe goes into mining module and launches mining module -> dupe in a mining module (or bulky mining suit?) appears on some tiny rock and just mans the module which pumps, mines e t c until module is full, then returns to rocket. Dupe can't leave the module, construct e t c. Purely 'cosmetic'.