i got myself into a decent orbit, how would i go about making it autonomous orbit? would i need to set up an ai or something to maintain the trajectory?

@Oddbase: Yes. Having a stable orbit requires that gravity follow the inverse square law, which results in that larger sphere of influence compared to default space engineers.

are the increased sphere of influences really neccasary for orbits? is there way to turn it off and still have it work as usual?

i press crtl o and shift o but i don't get any of the orbit info appearing on my screen at all

sorry was wondering there my comment had gone, ment to post it on real solar systems

Shouldn't make a difference for this mod either way. If you're using RealStars or RealSolarSystems, then "Enable Sun Rotation" must be on.

Should I leave Sun rotation enabled? haven't noticed if the light is moving. currently using an env mod to disable the vanilla sun in preference of the sun the planets are orbiting.

Final Edit: this mod is NOT the cause of whatever bug I'm experiencing. After removing every mod (including this one, except for the Speed of Light mod), then flying the station in a straight line at ~750 m/s, after a few minutes I noticed the whole build begin pitching and yawing slightly. I began moving around in one of the empty rooms, and my character seemed to be able to push the entire build with the jetpack alone, collisions were kinda messed up, the character got stuck on invisible geometry, even clipped through the entire build a few times before the physics returned to normal. I noted that the final speed was ~125 m/s after the weirdness.

Edit: perhaps it doesn't have to do with the cleanup- I noticed that AFTER the station was mysteriously stopped, the station (which is a couple hundred LG blocks) would begin rotating easily when I flew into blocks at reasonable speeds. It's almost as if the station weighed almost nothing. I wonder if there's a mod incompatibility with my realistic atmospheres mod. I will continue to test.

It appears the 'grid cleanup' fix has been broken. A few times in my world (singleplayer) I've had a large grid orbital station instantly stop (from around 700m/s between 75-80km over the Earthlike in a vanilla system). My Trash Removal Menu shows 'Stop Grids' is 0, so something else may be going on here. I also have the 'no asteroids in gravity' mod so the station definitely did NOT hit anything (plus there's no damage on it after the stop). Would really love to have this mod be a staple of my survival games but if my stations can't reliably orbit, I can't risk losing hours of material grinding to a post-lithobrake-maneuver orbital platform.

How does this mod break ships?

So, I came across something, the mod breaks ships when ever you bring the mod into a already worked on world.

Hey, is it possible to disable the GPS markers for the orbits so that i can avoid screen clutter?

is there an AI mod compatible with this mod? I would like to fight against AI in orbits

The falloff starts at R * (1 + HillParams.Max). It's called MaxRadius in code, but I'm not sure if that's exposed in PB. HillParams is defined in the planet definition sbc.

Hey Echthros. I'm working on a ballistic missile script and I'm having trouble calculating the gravitational parameter (g * r ^2) . It appears that the gravitational falloff doesn't start at the surface of the planet but some altitude above it and that throws off my calculations. (e.g. for an earthlike with a radius of 60,000 m gravitational falloff begins at 67,200 m and below that the gravity is constant.) In the mods' code you get this value from the API but the programmable block API doesn't have this value. Is this intended behavior?

The speed required to achieve a stable orbit scales based on gravity strength, planet radius, and distance. You may want to try lowering the gravity strength of the bodies that you are having trouble orbiting (with the RSS Editor). I'm not aware of anything that would have changed in the last few weeks to affect that, but each body will have a different required speed to achieve orbit.

@Echthros Been having a lot of fun with this mod in combination with RSS (preset 'real' solar system 1:40). However, I encountered a problem. I used to be able to get into stable orbit with 700-800 m/s. Since a few weeks, this is not possible anymore. I can't seem to get my eccentricity down far enough, without having to speed up well past 1000 m/s. I tried another preset RSS solar system, but I run into the same problem. Any idea what could be causing this?

Last update, it only started working on the third restart, no idea why, but ti seems to function now

Just tested, can confirm with a ship >15 blocks, travelling over 700 m/s, after using the command, still no dice

I am using real solar systems, and I went through the sandbox file and manually changed all orbits already. It is possible I was using too small of a grid but I enabled character orbits and they didn't show up then either

If you are also using Real Solar Systems, you will need to make sure that the planets have their gravity falloff set to 2 in the RSS Editor (or type "/SetupRealOrbits" to change all planets). That's the main conflict I'm aware of.

Also, if I recall correctly, you need at least 15 blocks on a grid and be travelling at least 25 m/s for the orbit info to appear.

What non-ui type mods can cause the orbit paths and gps markers to not appear? I've already removed every single UI affecting mod and still they do not show, even when cycling between the modes to try and refresh it.

one of the best mods changes game's dynamics alot !!

@Yori Yes, the default space engineers star systems and scenarios have the moon way too close to the earth, so their gravitational fields overlap. I'd recommend using one of the star system presets that are designed around having larger gravity fields such as with this mod.

@DogeKingChris That sounds unrelated to this mod. This mod shouldn't have any effect on the rendering of planets themselves. At most it adds orbit lines and a tiny UI to tell you about your orbit.

I walk on the moon and the earth's gravity affects me LOL

Ok, so bigger planets have this really weird distortion effect where the ground isnt where it actually is, and rises up as you get closer. How do I disable that? I want to be able to see

@aTruckgril Beverly: Please understand that mod creators are doing this for free in their own free time. If you want mod creators to care about your problems and fix them, maybe treat them with kindness and respect, instead of posting long tirades about censorship and drowning out other people's comments.

@aTruckgril Beverly; I have to be honest, regardless of mod issues, you seem a bit unhinged

@aTruckgril Beverly thats cool and all but can you not make this all about you. I'd like to get a response to my issue as well

im having an issue with the gps coordinates not disappearing if the grid gets destroyed

Well we don't really care about the character walking lol

The game gets really confused about the player walking around in extremely low gravities, so there's probably a good reason to keep that cutoff.

It seems one major limitation of this mod is that due to gravity not having any effect < 0.05g, higher orbits and highly elliptical orbits are not possible to achieve.

The other orbital mechanics mod uses its own code to apply forces instead of relying on vanilla gravity; have you considered this approach? Alternatively I wonder if it would be possible for a plugin to change the minimum gravity value.

the override max speed doesnt work, i do have changed the values in the xml

am i tweaking or this mod messes with plates gravity

This is something I've always wanted to do in this game.

Not currently, but a few people have requested something similar, so I may add that at some point.

Is there any API for scripts to grab values from Real Orbits' calculations, so as to avoid doubling the performance cost of recalculating them constantly?

Yes, this is compatible with RSS. I haven't tested with Realistic Thrusters, but I don't think there would be a conflict.

Ditto @Em Trish; Real Solar Systems (and potentially Realistic Thrusters ) definitely deserves a mention in the description/README. These mods seem like they'd go together really well; but also like they'd potentially conflict!

does this work with real solar systems?

I am not able to see any of the heads up info that I normally do, displaying the trajectory. Is this a bug I can fix, or did it break with a recent update? for the record I have tried loading onto a world with only this mod and it still wasn't showing

Thanks. I'll have a look and see if I can improve on the approximations used in my script.

The formula is something like this:
var PlanetMaxRadius = (PlanetRadius * (1 + HillParams.Max);
var Gravity = SurfaceGravityStrength * ( (DistFromPlanetCenter / PlanetMaxRadius) ^ -GravityFalloff);

The gravity falloff starts at the planet's "MaxRadius" which includes the HillParams adjustment. You can find the HillParams value in the planet definition.

Hello ,
Thank you so much Echthros for this mod that brings back a bit of realism into Space Engineers !
I've developed for myself yet another landing script with a few extra features, one of them is computing an estimate of a planet surface gravity while still far away, by sampling the gravity field while descending and solving for the inverse square law. The very first public version is here:
https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3388634309

While I find that it mostly works, it doesn't quite get the value right. I assume that it's because even with this mod the inverse square law only kicks in at some distance from the surface, with constant gravity below that. I'm trying to figure out where that threshold is exactly. Is it a constant distance, does it depend on the surface gravity value, planet diameter, or other ? Any help would be appreciated.

ForceStableOrbits relates to the velocity adjustment system that is supposed to manage orbit over long periods to ensure that they do not drift over time (due to micro-forces or physics imprecision). Without that system, all orbits are guaranteed to decay or escape eventually (it may take dozens to hundreds of hours depending on the orbit). If turning it off fixed your issue, then there must be some problem with the way that system is working on your file. My guess is that the system has bad info for some reason and is performing incorrect adjustments. It may be the result of some mod conflict.

Hey, just to give you an update. We tried it without the force stable orbit value, after which the orbits now seem to be completely fine and stable. They no longer move when you stop piloting them. Not sure what the cause is.
When it's enabled, the apo/peri heights shift pretty quickly when the grid is unpiloted.
With it disabled they don't shift at all and stay in a completely stable orbit.
This was tested using only perfectly circular orbits though, unsure about elliptical orbits

The orbit is most certainly shifting. This also happens when you are in a grid next to an unmanned grid. When speed is matched perfectly the unmanned grid will shift upwards. Once you re-enter the cockpit the apoapsis and periapsis have gone further upwards. Over time this causes the orbit to leave the planet. There is currently no way to leave something in orbit without sitting in the cockpit or interacting with the remote control of said object for us. This is on mars in RealSolarSystems with the gravity set up correctly