What happened to the moon?

Lacking any sign of in-game references to the situation, I figured the "for fun" dorum would be a good place to ask this.

What in blazes happened to Primal and Praetorian Earth's moon? One, it appears roughly three times larger than our earth's moon, (putting it some 70,000 miles out, if my math is right) but that can be attributed to dramatic license. The art team didn't go nearly as overboard there as leaked screen shots from DCUO demonstrate. Gotham's moon is clearly in geosynchronous orbit.

My real question relates to the thing's orbit. It rises in the extreme south-southeast and sets in the far north-northwest. Polar orbit at best, and probably a retrograde orbit with a steep angle. I know, this is a comic book universe, so things don't have to make sense, but obvious bits like this usually have some in-continuity explanation?

Given that this is a phenomenon in both universes, one might suggest that it pre-dates the blatant historical break point: Marcus Cole finding the Well of Furies. Before that, things are relatively quiet on the paranormal level. Just the Circle of Thorns waking up and acting out low-impact Call of Cthulu plotlines.

The previous cataclysmic events date all the way back to the Oranbegan wars, and the death of all the pre-ancient gods. i wonder if we need to borrow the box of Tielekku's remains from the Midnighter's Club and ask HER who broke our orbital mechanics?

Or did the Dev team just set things up this way to guarantee the maximum unlikelihood of a solar eclipse?

It's actually a Nemesis plot. By adjusting the lunar orbit and always allowing a full moon to rise, it maximizes the transformation possibilities of War Wolves and the like... thus allowing heroes to slay them more easily, and in turn weaken the 5th Column and the Council.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

The Game-Day is 30 minutes long: 20 minutes of day and 10 minutes of night.

While the sun had a mostly east-west rise and set, the moon had always been a bit off.

Then came Ultra Mode.

In the first stage of testing, the shadows followed the actual sun. And if you think the shadows move fast now in the game, you should have seen how quickly the shadows of the skyscrapers moved at dawn and dusk: Walk couldn't keep up with them.

So, I suggested they divorce the shadow movement from the actual sun position. And that's what they did. If you watch the shadows, they appear at daylight as if the sun was already 20 degrees up, though it's actually on the horizon. And similarly, the shadow movements stop at 20 degrees of apparent inclination above the west even though the sun sets past the 20 degree mark to the horizon.

Then they enabled night shadows from the moon. And if you think the shadows in the day moved quickly, you should have seen the shadows try to track a moon from horizon to horizon in 10 minutes.

And so, my suggestion was a static moon-shadow-scape divorced from the movement of the moon. But what they did something similar: They created a moonshadow that tracked a non-visible moon that simply rotated about 20 degrees from the zenith.

I think at that time they also fiddled with the movement of the actual visible moon to be even more aberrant than it was before, to maybe match a little more the fake moon-shadow-scape.

So, there you go. Just like all the buildings are not to scale and much smaller than they would be in real life, the motion of the sun, moon, and their shadows are backdrops that are not meant to be more closely scrutinized or reflect 'reality.'

It was the very same weird, gibbous moon that the Mad Dev Jak al-Emmert dreamed of that hideous night before he wrote the blasphemous "Needstobemyideaoffun", along with his eldritch visions of a strangely laid out city, its cyclopean pedestrians, and this unexplained couplet:

"That is not fun which can't make players cry,
And with these Gulch runs even death may die."

That's no moon...

As Miss Golden said, it is a Nemmie plot ...!

Namely, Issue 20 is aptly named 'Moon Base Alpha'!

You heard it here first, True Believers!

I actually want to know what happened to the SUN. I've been staring at the sky for the last few days, and all I can ever see is vaguely light clouds where I assume the sun should be. What happened to the ball of light up in the sky?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Sorry my fault.

Is no one going to mention how we can still see the stars shining THROUGH the moon?

Theory: The Moon was moved closer back in the 1960s so it would be more economical for heroes and villains to have their supersecret Moon Bases on them. This was done at the behest of an alliance of the International Henchman's Union and American Lackey Alliance, who complained about the commute time.

Theory 2: That's no moon, that's yo mamma! ... Oh god, not in the face! *dragged off and beaten by the Dead Horse Police*

Incarnate of Selene: does this orbit make my moon look big?

See, this is why the Devs should put me in charge of official in-game practical jokes...

Since the moon is so large and its surface so visible I would have a small black smudge be placed on it at the beginning of one month... I would then increase the size of the smudge on a weekly basis and have it become less a smudge and more defined... looking strangely like the distant outlines of a great city perhaps...

I would then sit back and wait... then laugh my nether-glutes off when speculation of Issue XX: MOON BASE!!!" swept the forums.

Yes... my powers can also be used for evil.

The only issue i have with the "Ultra Mode did it" theory is that Primal Earth's moon has been in a polar orbit long before Ultra Mode.

Nice moon.

--NT

Could the moon (whose gravitational pull affects the tides and weather) being closer be the reason why Paragon City has no real weather patterns aside from Sunny with a chance of Rikti?