@Felthry I could definitely see four steps down happening (massive, almost-brown-dwarf gas giant -> small gas giant -> Mars-sized rocky moon -> tiny asteroidlike moonlet), though that would take a pretty huge system to really work out and sheer luck to actually like, exist

maybe around like, a type A or B star

@Thaminga Go one step further by having the biggest gas giant orbit the distal star of a binary star system

@Felthry better yet: make said star a brown dwarf

@Thaminga oh, of course!

Then put a space station in orbit around the smallest mini-moon, because hey, why not, maybe some aliens live on this world that surely has some _really weird_ weather conditions

@Felthry orbits like that won't affect weather conditions too much, I don't think!

now, astronomical events though? yeah those are going to be all sorts of fucked up

@Thaminga I mean, the sun would be periodically eclipsed by one of several larger bodies, I feel like that would do _something_ to the weather

@Thaminga Unless you somehow manage to have the planetary system at a very high inclination, but that's even _more_ improbable

@Felthry There'd definitely be some level of inclination at least, but yeah; eclipses like this don't actually last for long enough to affect the overall weather patterns too greatly!

@Thaminga A very high inclination is quite improbable though!

I wonder what it'd take to get a planet with a moon orbiting at near-90° inclination... it'd almost certainly have to be a captured asteroid or Oort cloud object, maybe even an extrasolar asteroid

@Felthry I didn't say high, but even low inclinations will radically decrease your chances of an eclipse; an object orbiting Neptune at the same distance the Moon has from Earth would already move three planetary radii above and below the planet at an inclination of only 10°; while this is high for regularly formed moons, remember that this is with respect to the -orbit-, and regular moons are typically coplanar with their planets' rotation axes (which can be well, anything).

@Thaminga Oh, good point. I didn't think about planets with highly inclined rotation axes.

@Thaminga @Felthry Now I'm wishing I'd taken screenshots of some of the buck-wild systems I've seen in Elite Dangerous (which claims to do a rough modeling of system accretion).

Here's one I found on a list of nearby Interesting Systems: https://www.edsm.net/en/system/bodies/id/20145/name/32+Cassiopeiae

@starkatt @Thaminga we should really try elite dangerous sometime, supposedly it's pretty good

@Felthry @Thaminga I enjoyed it a lot! It's very, very pretty and gives a sense of scale I haven't seen anywhere else.

@starkatt @Thaminga I'd expect a similar sense of scale as No Man's Sky?

Kerbal Space Program also does a pretty good job of making you realize how big space is but that's just one solar system and a pretty small one at that

@Felthry @Thaminga Oh NMS left me *really* disappointed in terms of system modeling after coming from ED.

@starkatt @Thaminga it does leave a bit to be desired but I can understand it for gameplay reasons

@Felthry @Thaminga Yeah in Elite systems are Actual Size. You superluminal cruise faster when away from gravity wells but things like a distant binary can take ages to fly to.

Also there's the literal entire milky way galaxy to explore. hundreds of millions of systems.

@Felthry @Thaminga This is how far I traveled, after 100 hours of gameplay, a good chunk of which was spent on long-rage exploration.

@starkatt @Thaminga I mean, that's a _really long way_ to go in only 100 hours!

@Felthry @Thaminga That was with a max jump range of somewhere a bit under 50LY.

@Felthry @Thaminga That circle is a path, not an area.

@Felthry @Thaminga If you really hustle you can do several jumps per minute. Even then it takes weeks of travel for dedicated players to get to Sagittarius A*.

@starkatt @Thaminga The question remains: is it worth the time and effort to get there?

@Felthry @Thaminga Depends on what you find fun?

@starkatt @Thaminga fair point!

@Felthry @Thaminga Go exploring and you can see some really beautiful things. Here's a (extremely remote) ring outpost in the Sadr Region nebula about 1.8kLY from Sol, with the North American and Pelican Nebulae in the background.

There's another screenshot from inside a planetary nebula that I haven't shared because I want to keep it *mine*.

@Felthry @Thaminga And it all feels a lot more special when you have to really go a long ways for it, y'know?

Also uhh I realize now I kinda hijacked the thread. Apologies if that was obnoxious.

@starkatt @Felthry @Thaminga SPACE
FOX

@starkatt @Felthry @Thaminga Yeah, ED is seriously something I've been wanting to check out. They do some amazing, fascinating stuff

@Felthry @Thaminga I was big on exploration but you can also do pew pew or commodity schlepping or tour guiding.

@starkatt holy -shit-