So now in addition to the "meat umbrella" of bodies falling to the planet below, you get a mix of spinning cargo containers too. I've seen this happen many times over the past few days. It is fun to watch, especially when one or more of the crew get lit on fire in the explosion.
This brings to mind an observation about gravity and orbiting.
If the ship was moving, the pieces would inherit its movement vector, modified by the explosion. They would continue to orbit if the ship was orbiting.
Since our ships just hover there in orbit instead of orbiting, the pieces don't orbit either. They fall to the ground with gravity.
I am only pointing this out so you know why the pieces don't stay there in orbit for you to salvage. I don't want to require objects to actually orbit worlds due to the constant motion of all those objects that would create quite a load for a little gain in realism. It could complicate the flying code for NPCs considerably.
To compensate for this I made TEU containers extremely tough against falling damage. They aren't invincible. At a normal size world I was seeing about one in ten containers get destroyed in the fall. There are many factors. World size affects strength of gravity. Atmosphere density induces drag on the container on the way down.
This brings to mind an observation about gravity and orbiting.
If the ship was moving, the pieces would inherit its movement vector, modified by the explosion. They would continue to orbit if the ship was orbiting.
Since our ships just hover there in orbit instead of orbiting, the pieces don't orbit either. They fall to the ground with gravity.
I am only pointing this out so you know why the pieces don't stay there in orbit for you to salvage. I don't want to require objects to actually orbit worlds due to the constant motion of all those objects that would create quite a load for a little gain in realism. It could complicate the flying code for NPCs considerably.
To compensate for this I made TEU containers extremely tough against falling damage. They aren't invincible. At a normal size world I was seeing about one in ten containers get destroyed in the fall. There are many factors. World size affects strength of gravity. Atmosphere density induces drag on the container on the way down.