Greetings!
I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but the celestial bodies that can be seen in Conan Exiles are behaving nonsensically (and both the sun and the moon are disproportionate on top of that) astronomically speaking.
First of all, the moon is extremely big whereas the sun is extremely small. Just take Earth: Both the sun and the moon have the same apparent size, which means that the moon is able to eclipse the sun at a small area, and the Earth is able to eclipse the moon - providing they form a (nearly) straight line. Being this out of proportion, solar eclipses (if they were implemented) would last significantly longer an also cover a larger area, and lunar eclipses could even become annular.
However, considering the size of both the sun and the moon, I wonder about the distance of this world from its sun as well as the distance of the moon from this world (or rather the size of the moon).
Another striking point is that all celestial bodies are moving into different directions: The sun is traveling from South to North, the moon is moving from West to East, and the stars are moving from the North to the South. This combination makes absolutely no sense.
Assuming that this world is, like Earth, rotating from West to East, all celestial bodies would have to move from East to West (since the sky is apparently moving in that direction). Also, since the movement of any moons is normally not reversed, that would have the moon revolve around the world, moving from West to East. This also implies that the moon rises later and later every day as it starts with the new moon (not visible in the night sky - potential for adding solar eclipses) to a crescent moon (setting shortly after sunset) waxing to half moon, then to bulbous and to a full moon (visible during the entire night - potential for adding lunar eclipses). After passing that point, the moon wanes to bulbous, half and again crescent (its rise closing in on sunrise) before turning into a new moon again. Rinse and repeat.
This also means that the phase of the moon changes when it changes its position relative to the sun. The problem is that currently the moon is only seen at night so any change in phases doesn’t make any sense at all (add the strange movement of the sun, and it makes even lss sense).
Also the stars seem to move from East to West as the world rotates, with any constellations shifting their positions as the days are passing, and as the seasons change, the constellations appear just before sunrise and continue to rise earlier and earlier until their setting starts to approach sunset (the constellations can be seen riding high in the sky or even farther to the West at nightfall and set some time afterwards).
Also depending on the latitude of the area this game takes place in, everything revolves around some imaginary point in the sky so the axis of rotation needs to be taken into account as well, both for what can be seen and for a potential seasonal change. This also allows for adding actual seasonal changes like rising and dipping temperatures, changes in weather patterns, etc.
Since no world has a perfectly vertical axis of rotation in respect to its orbital plane, it’s highly likely that there are seasons: The bigger the tilt of the axis, the more prominent the seasons.
Also, since the plane of the moon’s orbit rarely matches the plane of the world’s orbit around the sun, that means that some particular positions are needed for eclipses to occur, and the shadow of the moon usually passes above or below the world so nothing can be seen. Flipping it around, the moon also tends to pass above or below the world’s shadow so no eclipse can be seen here, either.
It would improve the atmosphere of the game if these things were adjusted so that they make sense astronomically speaking. It also opens the door for adding astrological events depending on the constellation, the phase of the moon, the season, etc. - and even eclipses can be taken into account.
Adding this shouldn’t be a problem, because the mathematics behind this are rather straightforward.
