Weird solar systems?

If you ever looked at the streams, you'll notice a lot of rocky planets have small rocky planets orbiting them, or Gas Giants having a few planets orbiting them, and maybe a rare occasional moon.

Now, I'm not a space genius but I thought most planets had moons, and only Gas Giants had the gravitational pull to have small planets orbit them. I've never really noticed much moons, and that's kinda... Unrealistic. There are so many things we don't know about space, but most planets usually have moons, instead of small planets orbiting them.

just sayin'

 

It's a science fiction trope to have enormous planets looming in the sky, even if they'd almost certainly smash into one another in reality. It's like asteroid fields, in reality the asteroids are so far apart you probably couldn't find two with the naked eye at the same time. It's not like there's a massive swath of flying boulders cutting through the system, they'd almost certainly coalesce into a planetoid.

 

I am sure 100% of the monsters are unrealistic as well.

But I did make a thread a while back about the faster than light travel and stating somethings myself. So I can't be a hypocrite, all I can say is its a fictional sci-fi game. For all we know the game takes place in a different dimension than us.

 

I think something to also consider is that the game isn't even in Beta yet - everything we see in streams is subject to change! But even so, I doubt these sorts of thing will change too much. I don't really have a problem with it, because as people have said - sci-fi game. There are millions of other things we could nitpick about, like being on a 2D plane despite going down onto spherical planets with backgrounds that suggest depth.

 

Whats all this then? Facts in MY Sci-Fi! I don't think so! But seriously, its a game. I think people try to hammer reality into games too much as it is. Don't forget Starbound is made of 1 part science and one part fiction. (margarine or butter is optional.)

 

I've lost count of the number of gravity simulations I've watched. When it comes to orbits, as long as the right conditions can met; any two bodies can orbit one another harmoniously.
And the contrary to that is that if the wrong conditions occur, the orbit decays or looses cohesion and the bodies fly apart.
The time of this depends on the conditions.

If you get into it, it's a fascinating subject. Especially when you can get crazy orbits with 3 or more bodies of similar mass.

 

Wait wait... I thought the "smaller planets" were moons, just habitable moons?

 

Starbound is not a simulator.

 

Or collide ~_^

 

I just want to see some binary stars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_star

 

Planets orbit their stars. Moons orbit their planets. Moons can have atmospheres. It doesn't make them planets.
If the planet is a super-earth or something, it could have pretty large moons (but not bigger than the planet, unless the smaller of them somehow strangely has more gravity).

 

^That would be cool but it would likely be hard to manage because if they incorporated such a thing they'd have to fix their day/night cycle accordingly. Speaking of which, how complex is their day/night cycle at all? I assume it's just random how long a day lasts on each planet? I wonder if they'll include eclipses and such as events?

 

Except Starbound doesn't have hard science-fiction lol.

 

Well my point was more that if they had a binary star system then they'd have to start worrying more about day/night cycle complexity, and then I was wondering how complex it currently was.

 

Oh, I was talking to the OP, not you lol. That's more or less a cool game mechanic that would be interesting that you described, I wouldn't consider it hard-fiction in your context.

 

Ah, my mistake then, apologies.

 

Moons can have atmospheres. So the "planets" you see orbiting the Gas giants, are most likely moons, but with atmospheres.

 

That's no moon that's a space station.

 

That's no moon, that's a giant Gas station planet.

 

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You're right about the terrestrial planets and th asteroid fields.. but if we orbited a gas giant, it would take up a good chunk of the sky.