Planet Stage (Small & Life Planets)

Planet Stage Index

The Planet stage in the video game Solar 2 consists of two separate but somewhat similar sub-stages, those being the Small Planet and Life Planet. Throughout both forms of the Planet stage you will have a new method to consume mass and grow your controlled object, differing from the Asteroid stage.

1. Gaining Mass as a Planet ^(Below)
2. Concert Mission 1
   ^{+ “I’m Late!” Achievement}
3. Concert Mission 2
   ^{+ “Planetary Soloist” Achievement}
4. Experiment Missions 1-2
   ^{+ “Why did you kill me?” Achievement}
5. Fine Art Missions 1-3
   ^{+ “Gentle But Firm” Achievement}
6. Nomad Love Missions 1-3
   ^{+ “Asteroid Nursery” Achievement}
7. Challenge Mission 1: ‘Atom’
8. Challenge Mission 2: ‘Concert Encore’
9. Challenge Mission 3: ‘Planet Survival’
   

If you are looking for additional guides for this video game you can find links below to the other stage indexes which hold more information and links to guides specific to those stages of existence.

• Asteroid Stage Index
• Small and Life Planet Stage Index <- you are here
• Star Stage Guide Index
• Black Hole Stage Index

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Gaining Mass as a Planet

As a planet, your options in gaining mass come from asteroids just like before, however you will now need to consume said mass by trapping the rocks in your planet’s orbit. Using the path (P) and orbit (O) keys will give you lines to use as guides, which can assist in trapping large amounts of asteroids in a quick manner. Using the L key will absorb all the asteroids in orbit around you, adding their mass to yours and consuming them, while the K key will consume only one of the smallest asteroids in the same manner.

In order to trap an asteroid in your orbit you need to match your speed with the asteroid, so that it is traveling at a speed of 0 relative to your planet. In other words, even if the asteroid is moving across the screen, you should be moving with it so that it is at a set distance from your planet and not moving away or towards your planet. See Figure 1 to the right for an image depicting this. Colliding with asteroids will no longer gain mass, instead damaging shields (if your planet has evolved to possess them) or strip mass from an unshielded planet.

Next, when it comes to trapping asteroids in your orbit, you will find that they can only be captured within the first 5 orbit rings of your planet as depicted in Figure 2 to the right. You can have a near limitless amount of asteroids in orbit around your planet, with new asteroids pushing the existing ones to further orbits, but as you gain more it becomes difficult to continue adding additional orbits since you will need to pass new asteroids through all the orbits that exists past #5 in order to capture them in this “green zone”. Outside of this #5 orbit is limited to asteroids already captured which eventually get pushed out beyond this range as more are added within the green zone. For additional tips concerning capturing large amounts of asteroids, see the Asteroid Nursery achievement section below.

Small Planet Tips

As a Small Planet you will need to reach a mass of 80 to hit the next part of this stage, the Life Planet. As the small variety you are simply a larger rock traveling through space, however with additional mass behind you along with a more powerful gravity well that can pull other objects towards you.

During this part of the Planet stage you are extremely vulnerable. Collisions with other objects, with the one exception being space ships (unless you hit their lasers or missiles) will all strip your mass away, with larger and faster objects taking more out of your planet. In addition, weapons fire from space ships will do the same. At this point, avoidance is your best survival option until hitting the Life Planet half of this stage.

Life Planet Tips

Once you hit the Life Planet half of this stage, you will immediately begin to evolve life on the surface of your planet. This is depicted with a rotating fan like icon displayed over your planet. Once the bar starts growing, it will take just over 20 seconds to finish evolving, whereupon you will have 2 turrets built on your planet, a shield that continually recharges and defends your planet from hazards and a constant stream of space ships being built and launched to defend you and attack enemy vessels or hazardous objects.

The level of experience of your life forms decide the number and power of the ships launched on your planet and the benefits the lifeforms provide. At 0 Kills you have the two turrets and will launch mostly Fighters and occasionally Missile Boats, up to 2 active at a time. At 6 kills you gain your 3rd turret and 18 kills caps out your experience with 4 turrets. As you gain experience your shield will become tougher, you will be able to field more active ships up to 6 at once and will spawn the Missile Boats and Cruisers more frequently.

If your shield is dropped and your planet takes further damage, there is a high chance to extinguish the life on your planet. If this happens you will need to re-evolve the life after a short delay of not taking any damage and once evolved, the experience of the lifeforms will be reset to 0 kills. If you lose too much mass you can turn back into a Small Planet, forcing you to gain mass in order to grow life once more.

You will need to gain 180 total mass to reach the next stage of Small Star. Upon making this transition your mass will jump to 1,200 as you become a Star. At this point you will lose control of your lifeforms and will need to capture planets and raise life on them in order to regain their benefits. This will be further covered in the Star walkthrough for Solar 2.

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Small & Life Planet Progression Video Guide