Author Topic: Tidal Lock  (Read 1404 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline tobijon (OP)

  • Warrant Officer, Class 1
  • *****
  • t
  • Posts: 91
  • Thanked: 11 times
Tidal Lock
« on: January 02, 2021, 08:46:27 AM »
Mercury is marked as tidal locked in game, except it's not tidal locked it has a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance which is different. This is especially important because of the maximum population. Since with tidal locking we assume that there is a zone in between the two halves of a tidal locked planet where it is (more) habitable, reducing population and the temperature part of colony cost. For mercury this is not the case. It shouldn't be labeled as such. This has been brought up before and Steve is aware of it and marked it that way on purpose, however this got me thinking.
It seems that in aurora basically all planets close to the star are tidal locked, while in the solar system none of them are, which is weird. Doesn't that mean that based on what we can tell from the only real life examples we have that it is much rarer for a planet to be tidal locked than aurora suggests? For example there are no extrasolar examples of 3:2 spin–orbit resonance, might be something that could be added.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2021, 08:56:59 AM by tobijon »
 

Offline Zap0

  • Captain
  • **********
  • Posts: 401
  • Thanked: 502 times
Re: Tidal Lock
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2021, 09:23:42 AM »
I brought that up once. Think it'd be too much effort to try and distinguish a tidal lock and resonance, but I guess having a high chance for tidal lock on close-orbit planets instead of always having them locked would be a way to model that.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2021, 09:26:48 AM by Zap0 »
 

Offline Twilight Sentinel

  • Leading Rate
  • *
  • T
  • Posts: 10
  • Thanked: 1 times
Re: Tidal Lock
« Reply #2 on: January 02, 2021, 12:31:00 PM »
Part of the problem is orbital eccentricity.   Mercury's orbit is too eccentric to become tidally locked, so it forms the resonance instead.   However all planetary orbits are currently perfectly circular in Aurora.   I'd say this is something to bring back up if/when orbital eccentricity gets added to the game, since then you'd have a way to tell if a planet/moon/whatever should be tidally locked or in resonance.
 

Offline tobijon (OP)

  • Warrant Officer, Class 1
  • *****
  • t
  • Posts: 91
  • Thanked: 11 times
Re: Tidal Lock
« Reply #3 on: January 02, 2021, 02:16:59 PM »
The problem there is that orbital eccentricity is a massive change to add, resonance is relatively inconsequential.