ARM Update - We need an alarm and automated tracking please?

[nats]

The ARM update looks really good, I havent had time to get into it properly yet but I have started off tracking about 40 or so asteroids. Makes me wonder how many asteroids there actually are in the game. Seems to be quite a few though. Certainly the aheer amount of them makes it rather disorientating when you show them on the tracking view, perhaps being able to get rid of the orbit lines temporarily might make things a bit easier to understand?

The other thing is - there is no warning as to which of these are large asteroids and which are actually going to hit the planet. I mean NASA will surely have markers on all the large Earth orbit crossing asteroids (the ones that would survive it through the atmosphere). This is the kind of thing we need here, perhaps shaded lines to show the asteroids sizes first, and then perhaps a different colour for large asteroids that will actually hit the planet - red or something. And then I would also love to see a warning that comes up on the screen whenever one of these is detected so I can mount a mission to get rid of it. Maybe this might be the kind of thing coming with the astronomy part of the game I dont know?

Also I would say that, considering the amount of asteroids that are obviously in the game, its a bit labourious to have to manually track all of them. I would hope that this could be automated at some point. Otherwise you could spend all of your time in the tracking view!

Will any of these asteroids be able to destroy your buildings in the future I wonder or perhaps even end the game if a truly massive one hits the planet? - although what you could do about one of those if you saw one heading your way, I dont know.

Anyway certainly this update changes the game somewhat, cheers.

[mellojoe]

Don't track that many. If you don't track them, they won't exist. They continually populate, so if you try to track every one, you'll eventually crash your game. Pick about 10 that look interesting and stick to that. And until you get good at rendezvousing with asteroids (a slightly different prospect than other types of encounters), I would stick with only 2 or 3 at a time.

[spikeyhat09]

1. it does tell you the size. just click on an unidentified object and it will say class A (tiny), class B (small), class C (medium), class D (large), or class E (huge)

2. you can already tell when an aseroid will impact. track it, and look for the kerbin intercept. if there is no periapsis, that object is on a collision course

3. IRL, IIRC, whether or not an asteroid will make it through the atmosphere is determined mostly by its composition and angle at which it enters the atmosphere, not sheer size so much.

[AmpsterMan]

While I like these things on general principle, they really aren't necessary to juggle the 'roids. Just try tracking a few at a time to ease it on yourself. These missions often take a long time and are very complicated to fully execute.

[blizzy78]

Asteroids will spawn all the time. As long as you don't track them, they will despawn after a while (you're losing the signal.) Once you track them, they don't. So in essence there is an infinite number of asteroids in the game.

[nats]

Asteroids will spawn all the time. As long as you don't track them, they will despawn after a while (you're losing the signal.) Once you track them, they don't. So in essence there is an infinite number of asteroids in the game.

Ah I didnt know they respawned constantly, I thought there was a fixed set of asteroids in an 'asteroid belt'. That isnt as cool than I thought then if they just spawn and despawn. What a shame, I thought that they would be in permanent orbits. Bogs.