Your Meteor Experience/How They Work?

I Read through some of the meteor protection threads, but I wanted to start something where we can get a sense of how the meteor system works. If people could post with the experience with meteors and some details about the planet/scenario, that'd be awesome. Still have no idea how the mechanics of the meteor system work.

Here's some things to consider

1. Does every planet have meteors?
2. How often to they occur?
3. What is the planet atmosphere like on the planets that DO have them?
4. What is the planet atmosphere like on the planets that DON'T have them?
5. Did you start on a planet with meteor strikes?
6. What is the biome type of the planet that has/does not have meteors?

 

I started on a planet with some thin gravity (forest biome) and meteor strikes happen about every 20 minutes or so. It's definitely an annoying thing to me. I haven't had any strikes on another planet yet, but I also have only been to 2 others and hardly spent any time there. I am really hoping that not every planet has meteor strikes. Anyone on a planet that has never got them? If so, share the coordinates I'd like to find a place to start building, and we also would like to set the home planet on our multiplayer server somewhere that doesn't destroy what we build.

 

Does every planet have meteors?
While I can't rule out possibility of every world having a CHANCE of getting them. But most planets that do have them, have them very frequently.

How often to they occur?
Frequently, as often as a classical world has rain or snow. This makes me suspect they count as the world's weather type.

What is the planet atmosphere like on the planets that DO have them?
What is the planet atmosphere like on the planets that DON'T have them?
I've seen them on a wide range now, from tiny desert worlds, to huge Earth-like forest worlds.

What is the biome type of the planet that has/does not have meteors?
My pet theory is that biome is irrelevant, but is instead dictated by the presence of asteroid fields in the same system. Amusingly, I've yet to see meteorites on an asteroid or moon environment (Possibly due to the absence of weather effects on these biomes)

 

This is a pretty sound theory. I bought a 4 pack of the game for some friends, and so far the only planet we've had them on was our starter planet ( ) as I had the same hunch and intentionally avoided any planets with an orbiting meteorite field when we moved on, since that first starter planet was basically overlapped by said meteor field. So far we've run into snow, and acid rain, but no more meteorites.

Honestly, I really don't like the meteorites destroying the ground. If you stay on that planet for a while, it's going to turn into a wasteland. Eventually it's not going to even have a surface, at least not around where you tend to populate it. And as my friend keeps pointing out, if meteor strikes were THAT damn common, the planet would have been a pock marked wasteland long ago, reduced to a barren surface by the fact it's constantly being bombarded by destruction from the heavens.

 

Yeah, the frequency in which I was seeing the meteor strikes on our server home planet is what led me to post this. I started building a house for us at spawn only to watch it get destroyed by meteors four times. Four times in easily less than an hour. I'd only manage to build 4 rooms at the time. Eventually gave up and went looking for another planet to build on.

 

I can vouch for meteor strikes in asteroid fields. (They made me rebuild my asteroid base twice now.)

 

I've tried to make an house out of steel block, but it seems like it's not strong enough to withstand metorITES (not meteors, those burns up in the atmosphere). Any idea about what material would help against that?

 

have you tried obsidian?

 

How quickly do they destroy block layers? Would it help to create a ladder high above your base (offscreen from your base) and then dump a ton of dirt/cobblestone as a thick "shield" over your base?

 

Ironically, this doesn't work either. The meteorites spawn JUST off screen - I've actually had meteorites appear inside structures where they could not possibly have fallen from above, and given the blast radius of the big meteorites, building a layer defense will only resist maybe 1 hit

 

They seem to spawn centered around your char. Its not like you run across the surface of a planet and see that a meteorite had hit there some other time. Ive had 4 total and I eye witnessed all 4 of them, 1 of them killing me. After running the entire surface these were the ONLY 4 meteorites to hit the surface. Its not mathmatically possible for me to eye witness all 4 of them in this case, thus assumption is that they only will spawn on or just off screen nearby your character. Staying underground would then mean you wont get meteorites at all OR theyll just spawn into the ground and make even more of a mess as they try to get to you. So far when underground for a couple hours I did not see a meteorite.

You have a meteorite beacon imbedded under your skin =/

 

Hi, to answer one of your questions- the first world I spawned on in my first game had meteor showers like, all the time, at least once a day. It was extremely frustrating and I eventually just started over with a new char.

 

Well, from my experiences so far...I really can't say too much. I mean, I regularly cycle new characters once I get to Sector X so I can try different routes through the game and what not but meteor showers seem to be completely random in duration and occurrence. One forest biome might not see a shower for hours, another forest biome might get them quite frequently. Some showers are only two or three impacts long. Others last for at least several minutes at least as that's what I personally endured before finally giving up on waiting for it to stop, moving on to another planet. I'm assuming that there's also a variation in the size of meteors as seen by other peoples' pictures 'cause the craters I've seen in-game so far weren't anywhere near as large as those!

But yes, they do seem to spawn juuuust off-screen. I also tested this myself as I made a pretty large titanium dome but somehow, meteors were still landing on my head, even though the dome remained completely intact. This isn't to say that a dome idea won't work...it just can't be a large dome. Er, one that fits into the same screen is as big as I'd go. Oh, and as Arthore Dhent said, they do also seem to spawn centered on your character as well. If you stay put and wait it out, you'll see that no damage was done anywhere else except in your immediate vicinity. Which kinda' sucks as I'd rather have 'em happen randomly across the planet instead of only where I'm at.

As for defense, the idea is simply to use materials that are strong enough to absorb the impact of the strike(s) and last until they can hit that health reset point. Technically, If said material can survive one impact then that should be good enough since the odds of the same spot being hit twice in rapid succession are fairly low but still...the stronger, the better. All this being said, building anything on a planet's surface with weaker materials is pretty much pointless at this point. Er, unless it's a really basic structure for instances where you get caught in acid rain or need temporary shelter for whatever reason. Just don't get too attached to said structure. But as it has also been said, one CAN build an underground structure, making sure to go deep enough underground so the meteors won't get to you.

 

anyone knows if it is needed to restart the game with a new character to see acid rains, meteors, etc ?

 

No, they'll appear just fine in old saves. They're just nowhere near as common as people make out (i mean yes, once you FIND a planet with them, they're very common, but planets with the phenomena are rare)

 

Have people been putting bg blocks beneath their anti-meteor domes? As if they spawn like rain drops, they need an open bg to spawn off screen.

 

I am attempting to edit my weather files and reduce meteor power to pathetically small numbers. Until I know how to predict what planets can get hit by meteors and/or can have an actual defense against them other then building bunkers everywhere I don't really like them at all.

If there is a planet that has meteors frequently or even rarely I'm fine with it as long as there's some sort of warning (like on the planet travel screen) provided there are also safe planets.

They've curiously both added things in this patch (like skyrails) to foster base development (at least above ground) but also added extreme detriments (random meteors) as well.

If you are someone who likes to make bases on planets like myself there is nothing more frustrating then having to deal with meteors that frequently spawn and wipe out hours of your time.

 

I've been on my old homeworld for about an hour now, and I've experienced one meteorite swarm. It's been able to do considerable damage to the surface of this desert world, but not much else. I've been waiting for the next wave but I have been out of luck thus far. Honestly, considering how rare it is on my homeworld I think it'll be safe to build here with a steel meteorite shield four blocks thick. Then just repair damage after the swarm has ended.

Edit: For clarification I'm just standing on the surface of the planet with a few blocks to keep monsters away.

 

This is what i found in surface biome files
example from forest biome:

"weather" : [
[ [0.1, "rain"], [0.05, "storm"], [0.025, "glowingrain"], [0.125, "drizzle"], [0.7, "clear"] ],
[ [0.05, "acidrain"], [0.95, "clear"] ],
[ [0.1, "snow"], [0.9, "clear"] ],
[ [0.03, "meteorshower"], [0.97, "clear"] ],
[ [0.01, "largemeteor"], [0.99, "clear"] ],
[ [1.0, "clear"] ],
[ [1.0, "clear"] ],
[ [1.0, "clear"] ],
[ [1.0, "clear"] ],
[ [1.0, "clear"] ],
[ [1.0, "clear"] ]
],

All biomes have 11, 10 or 9 weather combinations, meteor combinations are always the same. I assume, it means that all planets have ~20% chance to have meteors.

 

Interesting, that confirms my observation that most biomes only have one weather type, and for worlds where meteors occur, that one weather type is the only weather you'll experience (including no variety between large and small meteors)