Time and weather system

[Demongornot 10]

The last of my series of idea is about time in game and weather.

For the time, well it is confirm that we will be able to set delay for controlling the rover, i hope we will be able to choose between a constant delay and one based on Mars relative position next to earth in game.

Also actually sadly it is instantaneous when we launch a vehicle to Mars.

It don't make us deal with time in a realistic way, and for those who use real time mode of course it is a bad idea to make them wait 7 month until the rover/lander finally reach Mars.

So i have an idea :

For both game and real time need the several month wait for the rover to reach Mars but able to skip time, of course for game mode we will just need to skip time as we can already do and i know you will said that it is not possible for real time, but wait i have an idea.

What about for the real time the possibility to skip a virtual time that just change things like the time for our rover to reach mars, battery use and rover damaged by time but still have the same date and hours ?

It will not force us to wait 7 month but still make the time have a realistic impact or the rovers and landers, it will not make our rover finish sooner his programmed job in real time mode, but it will make him become older and get issue with this like run slower, battery are less effective and produce less energy, the quantity of energy inside is lower cause the battery become older, the solar panel are less effective, sometime instruments need two use for work etc...

I have already talk about it here : http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?166969-Rover-technical-management

And it will be the perfect occasion to have real and useful difference for the rover quality, more quality will mean more durable on the time, and for instrument which have a limited use, rather than a pre determinate number, one based on unsure and quality and damage caused by time/weather and other things.

And about weather i have an idea !

Flight Simulator can use real world weather data in real time.

What about a real weather for Mars, of course not in real time, but their is some website and other servers that provide information about Mars weather with a 2 days update or weekly update.

This one for example !http://marsweather.com/data

https://twitter.com/MarsWxReport Or even by contacting the NASA, if your game gain a mention as approved by NASA or in collaboration with NASA for things like weather and other information, your game will get more success.

Also some objectives and other mission can be nice to be only available during a certain period of time, only the night or at a special date or something like this !

Some event like weather or based on weather, the rare solar storm and other like analyzing the quantity of solar radiation on mars on some periodic position, a recent impact from a small space object (a beautiful small rock) or anything like this...

Of course on the time skip option the possibility to jump directly one day or one hours before our lander/rover reach Mars will be nice !

But for both real time and game time it we will still be able to use our other rover/lander already on mars and wait for the new one to come while using the time skip several time.

And sorry again for the wall of text, this is my last big idea for the moment anyway =)

I hope you will like my idea and considerate it.

[Demongornot 10]

Ho and i forget, weather can have a huge impact on rover with two different type of action, the first one will be by damaging it when a really heavy storm are coming and that the rover is not in a safe place and/or cause more damage by time, loose of quality cause it become older and weather accentuate this.

But the other really important thing is that it can cause issue with communication, visibility and mainly when a huge cloud of dust are all around the planet it can really influence rover by reduce the sun and make the rover unable to use solar panels.