Planes without atmosphere?

It's not about lift. Without drag planes can't change their direction. Like a car sliding on ice.
And since you are against realism, why do boats require water to float?

A moon is per se smaller than the planet it orbits. Otherwise it's not the moon, but the planet. So the size of moons is already limited.
And in my opinion the gameplay would improve since it adds another gameplay variation. Fighting on the moons would differ from fighting on planets.

Again with the realism. Why are you saying that moons are smaller? Moon in this game merely refers to the planet type, not about its size. besides, afaik, 'Moons' can be larger than the earth.

It definitely adds a gameplay variation, but it limits moons to being midget planets which i dont like. Moons are the best types of planets to play on, so if any should be large, it should be a moon.

I must ask an obvious question. We can argue why or why not planes/jets need wings or not. But since this is a game where we have previously been informed it's not about being "realistic" it's about "AWESOME"(from the kickstarter). It seems to me silly to argue whether or not these planetoids can sustain a viable atmosphere, but whether or not Uber will feel the need to make another exclusive group(those for atmosphere and those not).

With all the work that's going into this game I don't see the point in asking Uber to create a whole nother group of "special"(atmosphereic and non atmosphereic planes/jets) just to allow us to say. "Gee golly, look how realistic these planes/jets are compared to all the other unrealistic parts of this game." - Seeing as how there is uniform gravity to start with.

We don't need absolute realism people. Otherwise this will be a very unfun game. Yet, we do want some realism or there won't be any real "rules" for the game to follow.

Find the balance, don't through either out the window.

I am not playing this game for realism. It is nice, but not funny here.
The idea is good for any mod, Real PA or something like that. You can play it with anybody who prefer realism to fun.

Because that's the definition of moon.

You are wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moons_of_solar_system_v7.jpg
At least we haven't discovered one (surely there are some), but nevertheless a moon is by definition smaller than the planet.

You can still play on a desert type planet. No water, but atmosphere. And I can have my airless moons.

I won't repeat the ship example again. Nobody expects this game to be a physically perfect simulation. But I don't want ships on a waterless planet and I don't see why there should be planes in the void space. There is already a unit type for this area: satellites.

Uber wouldn't need to add any units, the same way there are no land-ships.

On a side note, what do you think regarding the unit cannons, since they might respect gravity wells? Are they to realistic?

i guess it was mercury not the earth that i was referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganymede_(moon)

Its also not a case of how the planet looks that i care about, its about the type of terrain, or lack thereof, that im after.

Also, there ARE land ships. They are called Tanks.

OP here
Glad to see some people are on my side . To clarify the position, though, the main reason I suggested it is that atm the planet variations are almost entirely superficial. To the angry young sir who claimed that moons are the best type to play on, I ask "why?". There is no gameplay difference whatsoever between playing on a moon or any waterless earth type, regardless of temperature. The only current differences are that lava planets have randomised no-go areas and metal planets have no-go latitudinal strips, and only water planets have naval (and orbital only gas giants later on). This seems to defeat the point of having planet types a little and the removal of planes on an airless type is an intuitive modification which helps vary the game.

As for all this stuff about about fancy pants plane engines which work without air, you're working pretty hard to explain away a simple problem, dontcha think?

Do.. any of you think about VToLs? How they function?

A VToL, Vertical Take-off and Landing aircraft, has the ability to function rocket thrusters UNDER the aircraft as well as behind the aircraft for lift AND thrust.

Think about the Pelican from Halo for example. It's got thrusters behind and below it for liftoff and flight :


Tell me, do you think aircraft in the future would NOT have wings? Having wings would take a load off the engine when flying straight making it extremely efficient on planets with atmosphere, while being on a planet without atmosphere is absolutely no big deal because you can make enough thrust to fly up as well as forward. Because the thrusters are angled and the wings can move, the Pelican can easily make turns in space, or low atmosphere areas.

You guys want realism without conforming to realism? Consider your mind blown.

You clearly have not seen the pathfinding differences between the planets yet. Go play some on each, and you will see that the terrain/pathfinding is significantly less stupid on moons. Not only that, but earths are far less open than moons. Its not just cosmetic like you seems to think.

You clearly have not seen the pathfinding differences between the planets yet. Go play some on each, and you will see that the terrain/pathfinding is significantly less stupid on moons. Not only that, but earths are far less open than moons. Its not just cosmetic like you seems to think.[/quote]


Dude, the hight variation is adjusted manually and so both types of world can be as open or craggy as you like. The pathfinding probably improves accordingly but they will be fixing that. Stupid unit AI aside, why would you want to play on a featureless sphere?

why do graphics effect gameplay? doesnt bother me what the planet looks like.

why do graphics effect gameplay? doesnt bother me what the planet looks like.[/quote]


That the different planet types don't have a significant effect on the gameplay is the thing that I was addressing in the first place. Sigh.

It's not that big a deal for aircraft to fly on moons. TA did it. ¬_¬

You could have a moon the size of earth orbiting a gas giant. So the definition changes to orbits another

You could have a moon the size of earth orbit a gas giant (or a brown dwarf) which would then make the definition of moon not based on its size but the fact that it orbits something other than the star.

E.G Coyote by Allen Steele

It would be pretty nifty if in thin atmospheres the planes had little navigational retro-jet type effects. Maybe entirely different handling? It would add to the illusion of combat in space and help differentiate the worlds a little more.

You could do some really fun stuff, with units that act differently based on atmosphere and lower gravity.

Like units on earth like planet could jump a small distance, however on the moon they would be really effective because they could jump really far.

Would also be kinda cool to have not all units be super effective on all planets.

Personally i feel its fair that planes dont work on moons. makes you think about where you go and what units to make.

People keep using "moon" as a defining term here but the moon is just a satellite of earth, defined as an object that orbits around a celestial body (and we have more than one). There are examples of planets orbiting other planets, one is just a satellite of the other.

Back on topic though, I'm all for limiting use of air units and anything else that helps differentiate planets.

Personally I think it should be implemented using a mass based system, if a planet is above a certain mass it has a strong enough gravity well to hold an atmosphere.
If a planet doesn't have an atmosphere then aircraft can't be used on it.

This gives map makers a lot of flexibility as they can make really small dense planets that do allow air units and really large sparse planets that don't and perhaps if a planet takes enough hits it could even loose its atmosphere. How cool would that be?

You completely missed that point regarding land-ships. @oathalliance claimed that Uber would need to implement a new set of space-planes. And the logic that there must be a new class of 'airplanes' for 'airless' moons deduces that there must be a new class of 'naval units' for 'waterless' planets.
And if you only aim for a 'flat' map, do as @byemberlight suggested and use the parameters in the planet generator.

I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. Moving in space is fundamentally different than in athmosphere. I'll try to explain:
Let's look at a glider (sailplane). This kind of aircraft uses only aerodynamic effects to fly. To get an idea what moving in space means take a jet (a regular one for now) and remove every action a glider can perform. So pretty much everything.
All a 'jet' in space could do would be accelerating. No decelerating and no change of direction, because the aerodynamic drag is missing.
Having a VTOL-jet gives you the ability to break and to rotate around the axises. But there is an enormous difference to the situation in atmosphere: breaking requires thrust. To be more specific breaking requires the same amount of power (trust per time) as the engine already powered when accelerated.
So the jet can't 'easily make turns in space' as you told. There is no way of changing the direction of your momentum beside accelerating and decelerating. Accelerating and decelerating are both equally expensive in terms of energy and time.

My definition of moon doesn't depend on how the piece of rocks and metal looks like. And I specifically mentioned that. It's about what rock obits the other rock. And the smaller rock (the one who orbits) is the moon. Which doesn't anyhow specify how it looks like.
But if a moon has the size of the earth it has an atmosphere. And a rock with an atmosphere doesn't look like our moon (the real one).

If we just ignore all the physics and realism and just focus on gameplay it would be nice to have different units in different planet environment. You don't get naval unit unless you have water, why not extend this to other unit types? Like it was said maybe gunships only on moons and planes only in atmospheres? Maybe no air on moon? Maybe no air on moons but land could hit orbital?

More battle variaty would be nice... but harder the balance.

And yet strangely enough, the TA campaign did not allow air units on moons.

Campaign maps had unit restrictions, but skirmishes used the unit roster that you gave it.