Planes without atmosphere?

Planes are like X-wings and TIE's without power to leave the planet/moon

looks cooler with wings

supcom cybranstyle gunships are the awesomest ... imo those easily would work as spaceships ^^

That's unfortunate. I'm sorry that you're not capable of thinking in three dimensions.

Or reading.

Maybe I should have replaced that with rotate? The engines on the wings can be rotated to forward and down, as well as up and backwards. Keep in mind the side engines are angled outward, not just straight in that direction so thrust can simply be thrown on one alone to get a forward and sideways angled movement without changing direction at all. (be it forward, backward, whatever engine you choose at whatever angle you choose)

This is true, but already solved above.

Actually, this is false, in a sense. Not in the scientific way, but in the realistic way. You don't see all of the ships sent into space going beyond our reach of control, do you? It's because the very small accelerators and such on the different sides of the shuttle can easily stop the momentum the ship had when leaving the atmosphere. It did NOT take umpteen thousand tons of thrust to stop the shuttle from moving in one direction. (I don't know the hard numbers on take-off thrust, sue me. )

What I'm saying is when you're in space you can have four engines accelerating you just the same as two engines decelerating you. It's not equal, but when you give twice as much force over time with your two engines decelerating, it equals the force of four engines. It takes more time to decelerate but it costs the same amount of energy and you're only burning two engines.

There's basically always gravity on a planet. So upward thrust won't be a problem. If it becomes a problem on asteroids, I've already solved it as above. Like you said, you have to have an equal momentum in the opposite direction. Equal doesn't have to mean exactly the same if you do it over time. Equal is only applied to your end result. If end your result must be 4, you can always add 2+2 and still equal four. 1+3. 1+1+1+1. It's not only limited to the number 4.

In any case, I think the engines on units in PA won't be limited to the ones similar to the Pelican, specifically backward. Or maybe they will and simply have multiple engines. Maybe they'll just have engines that can rotate the whole assembly. Who knows. I'm saying VToL aircraft have paved the solution for EVERYTHING, not just gravity. They want wings for efficient atmospheric travel, but need engines for atmosphere-lacking maneuverability.

Hell, maybe they just have anti-gravity. Does it have to be solidly paved in realism? I don't think it's stated enough that they are already The Best™. ..Or maybe Yukari's just fooling around again.

Might have something to do with that huge sphere of rock it just left constantly trying to pull it back. the "very small accelerators" are just to make small adjustments in its orbit, so it doesn't swerve out of course.

Anyway, I still like the idea of no planes on moons. And by moon I mean the sphere with the graphic style named "Moon", ignoring its size or mass.

Certainly would be an interesting twist where are units couldn't be used on certain planets – like moons.

Would change up the strategy a little.

Not sure if it changes the strategy in a positive way though.

Agreed. I like the idea of different planet types requiring different play styles and all to often air units in RTS games manage to avoid all the penalties other unit types incur from impassible terrain etc.

It would be nice to see them limited in similar ways as other unit types. If they aren't dominant/cannot be used in all situations then they may not need to be nerfed as hard as they are/might need to be.

Construction units use anti gravity units. Why can all air have them?

But, yes, It would be nice to have planets with no aircraft.

They're also used to slow the shuttle when it's in space because the gravity is not as strong, so it doesn't need as much thrust to stop the momentum. The idea itself is sound, and gives a perfect example of what aircraft should have in order to survive in both atmospheric and non-atmospheric environments. That's all I was getting at.

I'm ok with this as well. TA had it on multiple maps, including that moon mission Dump, where the only mass was the immense wreckages. In fact, that would be an amazing map type to play in PA.

Always thinking things through, on every post, all I can say is well played!

Why thank you. I'm glad my ideas and thoughts are appreciated.

I don't think the airfoil is correctly shaped to provide sufficient lift anywhere.

You still didn't get the point. So here a fresh start:
What matters are the equations dp/dt=F, F=m*a and p=m*v (please imagine vector marks above F, a, p and v). Newton's first law of motion says that the momentum of an object doesn't change if the (external) Force(s) equal (/add up to) zero.
What does this mean to an spaceship?

• The direction of movement doesn't change.
  
• The absolute value of the movement doesn't change.
• The direction and absolute value of the movement can only be altered by generating thrust (a force).

So far this is only a brief summary of points I already made. The following graphic illustrates the consequences of these points regarding flight behavior compared to an atmospheric airplane:
While the upper plane (in atmosphere) can use the medium it travels through to change the direction of its velocity vector, the lower one (without atmosphere) has to break till a full stop and then regain it's velocity by accelerating. And there is no friction force, therefore decelerating takes the same time and energy as accelerating.

The example you mentioned (shuttle/spaceship with small thruster) has nothing to do with this. First off you assume a launch from the planet surface to orbit, which means that the kinetic energy (which is related to the momentum) largely has been converted into potential energy. Moreover these thrusters main usage is stabilize the orbit of the spaceship, they can't do things like inverting the direction it orbits around the planet.

My thing is this. Why is it that you have to stop in space to turn? Why are you so stuck on this idea? To turn right, would you not just thrust forward with your left engine, and thrust backwards with your right engine? Granted if given just enough, this would make you move sideways in the same direction, but that's why you have thrusters on your sides to control the direction of which you move.

I'm not thinking of turning in atmosphere, I'm thinking about it similar to how cars drift sideways around a corner. You could apply the same logic to the way they spin entirely and then drive backwards using the momentum they have. Granted they have grip and gravity, the same rules still apply for momentum in the direction in which you're going, does it not? Space doesn't have grip, but you can drift in space using side thrusters without completely stopping.

I really don't see the problem. If your left engine thrusts your ship forward and your right engine thrusts the ship backwards, said ship will not go both directions at once, nor will it tear itself apart. It will simply turn. A lesser amount of thrust can be used in the opposite manner in order to stop it from simply spinning forever. Or is that not possible in the laws of physics that you so clearly have a PhD in?

If aircraft do not have thrusters anywhere other than those placed downward for vertical take off, and backward for forward movement, they're incapable of doing anything in non-atmospheric planets, nevermind space. If this is the type of aircraft we're looking at in PA, then this conversation is completely useless.

This thruster setup would only result in a torque, which changes the angular momentum. Which simply means that the plane will rotate around an axis. But the (translational) momentum is independent of the angular momentum so it won't change.

First off: yes it's technically possible to make a U-turn without (viewable) stopping. But it costs additional time and energy compared to completely stopping and re-accelerating, because you need to accelerate and decelerate additionally in the second direction (since this is a 2D instead of 1D movement). Because it's still not possible to 'convert' the momentum from direction x to direction y without friction.
Let's take a step back and look how this 'conversion of momentum' works. A good example might be a train: it drives on rails which determine it's direction. The rails have the ability to change the direction of the trains momentum and they do it with force. Newtons third law say 'actio = reactio', which in this case means that the force the train applies to the rails are inverted applied from the rails to the train (as long as the rails don't break). The train applies a force to the rails, but since these (or better the earth) are too heavy to move only the train is moved by the forces the rails apply to the train. And since these forces are equally large (with different signs) they cancel out to zero so the absolute value of the momentum is conserved while the vectorial parts have changed (the train has changed it's direction).
And most of our vehicles use this principle. Cars use the friction between the tires and the road. Airplanes use the friction of air. The air applies a force on the wings of the plane and changes the direction of the momentum.
Without an atmosphere this 'trick' isn't possible anymore and you have to converse the momenta by yourself, e.g. using a thruster.

Edit: Words/Spellcheck

in summary orbital units need to actually orbit and planes should only plane in planable areas.

There is so much wrong about this I don't even know where to begin.

The space shuttle has wings *for landing in the atmosphere*. They do nothing in space, and would be useless on a planet with no atmosphere.

It propels itself through space via rockets, not jets. Jets require intake air. In a vacuum you need to carry your oxidizer with you.

So theoretically no plane can travel through space. No. Stahp.

You're right that this isn't a completely realistic game, but it's nice when it makes at least some amount of sense, and I think from a gameplay perspective to have aircraft unavailable on worlds without atmospheres would be fun and more challenging, especially for scouting. As OP stated, we don't have naval on worlds without water.

Just found out that all the mini robot pilots do their type rating on an earth like planet so are more comfortable to the planes as they are there. So the mini engineers built replica models with a million small trusters around the aircraft to make space flight feel like atmospherical flight. It's clever when you think about it.

Rofl, I like that, I like that a LOT

I agree. Diffrent planet diffrent gameplay. Even though they are robots in far far into the future. The planes would long long ago be designed with an atmosfeer in mind. Adding trusters capable of achieving orbit or installing anti-gravity would be inefficient.

So in my humble opinion:
Moon, no atmosfeer no planes
Lava, no naval
Small planet more range for projectiles