No Air on Moon/Metal?

Edited for being a ****

i'm going to load the "fly without atmosphere" program. it actually really helps I swear. /sarcasm

seriously speaking we could consider the metal planet's surface is jam packed with magnets

I would like no air on moons and asteriods. Aside from the lack of atmosphere, land units have more freedom of movement with no obstacles, which makes them somehow closer to the aircraft functionally.

But metal planets with their choke point bridges need air to brake the possible turtles/stalemates.

I also once was in favor of no air units on planets without atmosphere, but not anymore. Beyond the vast number of pros and cons in either direction sits this one major problem that turned the tide for me, personally; scouting.

With no air units, there would be only a single [viable] avenue for scouting a large fortified enemy position: orbital. Maybe, [again for emphasis] maybe, if orbital scouting shifts into being viable with cheaply available, and long-enough lasting scouting options to inspect enemy areas on demand, a no-air-unit planet type (leaving gas giants out of this; too many unknowns) would start to be ok. But for now, air is required for its ability to spam out some quick scouts to have a way to actually see "is there a nuke in that base? an anti? that last commander?, etc" without resorting to the [very expensive and fragile] Adv Sat.

Not sure I emphasized the point well enough there. Imagine what to do if playing on a moon or metal biome, mid to late game and you want (*cough* need) intel about what the emery is up to inside their base. There's no land scout that can penetrate enemy lines effectively, not even in good numbers. Without the ability to mass a bunch of throwaway air units to at least grab a quick peek past their front lines, you're left with only orbital.

If they manage to deny orbital overhead (a few umbrellas, and some avengers might do it), you have one option left. 40k metal into an Adv Radar Sat, yikes! And if they manage to deny you that too, good luck.

We can have Planes on Metal/Rock(moon can be every type like Yavin 4).

Interesting idea, but I'm sort of torn on whether it'd be a good implement or not.

First based off realism, the games atmosphere is chaotic and
cartoony/dramatic. It not trying to be uber realistic in the mechanics
it introduces. (Ex. Planet smashing.)
I also think that limiting the tools a player can use is a poisonous
idea that limits gameplay options, ultimately taking away the
entertaining decision making that goes into a strategy game. There are
more interesting mechanics that can be introduced that makes gameplay
on these different planets different and more interesting.I just think
choosing to limit a players tools doesn't make the cut. Gas giants
being resource havens, metal planets allowing planetary destruction,
possible automated turret activation on metal planets, unit cannons
that only are made on asteroids that can shoot units of low gravity
systems, it is those mechanics that I think are better on varying planets that truly spice things up.

Your top of the line AMD computer has the hardware to play PA perfectly, without bugs.

However, the bugs and performance issues are caused by software, not hardware.

That's what I meant. They could have the hardware, but not the programming to fly outside of a gravity well.

Gravity well is not equal to atmosphere by the by.

I'd hate to over-realism a multi-planet-with-engines-to-smash-asteroids-into-planets-game, but there is no reason for the lack of atmosphere to stop flight.

Atmosphere makes it harder for flight. No-atmosphere = No air friction. You can go as fast as you want without your fighter burning up.

The reason conventional planes don't "work" on moons would be that there is no oxygen for the engines to ignite fuel, which is very easy to 'lore in' a work around. Especially with that cool green goo.

I'm going to be a stick in the mud aswell and bring up the point that just because the rock looks like our moon, doesn't mean its the same. It's perfectly reasonable for a desolate moon-like body to have an atmosphere!

What I've said aside, I think it would be amazing for some limitations on low atmosphere planets. No air would be cool, use the oxygen argument instead of the atmosphere one though.

In addition you could have some other cool little tweaks:

1. Remove the orbital layer on planets without an atmosphere. Orbital fighters ect could land on the surface without having to worry about breaching the atmosphere. Fighters could reach satellites without any interference from the atmosphere.
2. Artillery can be disabled on low gravity, no atmosphere planets. Refer to Neil Armstrong hitting a golf ball on the moon for a strong argument
3. Nukes could also be disabled on no atmosphere planets as they primarily ignite the air, which doesn't exist on most rocks

Not hijacking the thread by any means, I think this would be very cool for gameplay. The current system can work and be realistic though.

You also can't turn without using your engine. Airplanes change their direction with flaps and rudders. Without atmosphere that wouldn't work. Wings, flaps and rudders would be useless.
In order to actually change your direction you would need thrust of some sort. Rocket engines for example.

I bring you the Messerschmitt 163. The worlds only rocket propelled fighter ever used in combat. It didn't use oxygen from the air and only had about 6 minutes of powered flight and after that it became a glider.

The reason you don't have air planes without atmosphere is because there are no aerodynamics.

If "fighters" are capable of achieving flight without atmosphere they will also be able to go into space since they are able to achieve higher thrust than the strength of the gravity. Yes that is true.

If you mean that artillery would basically be unable to hit the surface on planets with low gravity then that is true. If the muzzle velocity of the artillery is higher than the escape velocity of the planet, the artillery would need to aim down to hit the ground.

Todays rockets typically use a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen so they also don't use the oxygen in the air to achieve thrust.

I think he's referring to the effects of a nuclear detonation with no atmosphere, not the propulsion system of the missile. And even still it's not entirely correct. There wouldn't be a blast wave (no air to propagate the pressure wave) and there wouldn't be a thermal blast (no atmosphere to heat up), but the radiation effects would be far worse (higher dosages, greater radii), and you still get the EMP blast. Here's an old NASA report looking into the feasibility of manned orbital weapon systems when an enemy is using nuclear countermeasures: http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm

Of course, this is mostly looking at the effects on humans, so who knows how much radiation the robots in PA can handle.

This is an interesting prospect. Arguably the explosive effect of different weapons would be very different under different atmospheric conditions and in water or lava for example.
I guess the shockwave is much stronger underwater or in a dense atmosphere but what would happen if the weapon penetrated the armor and detonated inside a unit in vaccum?
Would the effect of the explosion be smaller or larger?

It would be negligible. There would be no explosion. In Star Wars, the death star couldn't explode into a fireball.

If the weapon penetrated armor and detonated, the only explosive effect would be the force that the actual detonation makes on the rest of the unit.

It's one of the reasons why I'm against the idea of nukes in PA. There's no thermo component to the explosion, and there wouldn't be any firestorm or wind.

Presumably the only true effect would be seismic. And I would hope that these masterful killer robots have the civil engineering knowledge necessary to make their buildings earthquake proof.

Well you know what I think ^^

I've read through this thread.
I too am interested to see how Orbital develops, because if Air were to be denied on planets without atmosphere, Orbital would currently simply become a replacement for it. You can see my original thread for my problems with Orbital and Air, but suffice it to say that, for me, they take the strategy out of strategic gameplay and too often reduce this awesome game to a spamming numbers contest. Orbital needs to distinguish itself from Air, so that it isn't simply 'Really-Expensive-Air'.

I disagree with the statement which saw Naval as superfluous, and Air as more intrinsic to gameplay. Ground combat is where the action should be, it's where our Commander and Base and explosions and resources are.
I think Air should be denied on Metal Planets and Moons/Asteroids. The first need to be difficult to conquer due to their game-ending potential. A lack of air scouting would encourage greater greater tactical awareness on the ground and see how adaptable players were. There seems to be little point in having all these different environments if they don't influence or affect strategic gameplay, after all.
However, to succeed, ground defences need to be capable of being overwhelmed. This will probably come in the next patch with the Artillery nerf (so that guns shoot in arcs, which means lasers will be the main defence). There is also the issue of Nukes turning Navies and Armies to dust before they can approach bases, which is another thing working towards current over-reliance on Air.

Denying Air is not poisonous, it encourages alternative methods of gameplay because it ensures that Ground and Naval and Air are designed to function as independent entities, which is exactly what they are. Air should not be the 'Go-To' strategy any more than Naval or Orbital or Land should be. If the game cannot function without Air, but it can without Naval and Orbital, it is imbalanced. If Air is denied in the same way that Naval has been denied, we won't end up always having games with 200 Hummingbirds lagging the game, obstructing our view and waiting to be turned into dust by 201 enemy Hummingbirds.

Lava Planets would likely have some form of gaseous atmosphere with all that volcanic activity, and with Lava oceans and islands, Air would be necessary on such worlds.

You sum it up so well, all I can say is "I love you Everything Burrito."

screw realism, let's get interesting gameplay. If there are planet types without water, there should be a planet type without air (units). Just 1 is all that is needed.

You could even go for ocean planets. Now your looking at air and water only.

Actually, removing air will make it MUCH easier to invade an enemy controlled planet, as it means there's only 1 layer of flying death to push past to get a foothold (i.e. orbital). Currently (and especially in light of the new auto area paroling) once a player has the entire planet they can just mass produce air and destroy anything that lands on the planet before it has chance to do anything. Orbital can be dealt with by taking a fleet of orbital fighters with you but what do you do about air (since orbital and air don't interact).

This change would allow effected planets to be invaded as it would allow you to get an orbital builder or a astreaus down to build a gate through which you can invade. It makes allot of sense for any planet that you want highly contested- so basically anything small enough to move with halleys and metal planets.

The 'no air on moon' option could be determined by size- the argument being that larger planets with more gravity are likely to have an atmosphere, however small planetoids (e.g. asteroid / small moons) wouldn't as their gravity well would be too small to contain it.

+ Unit Cannon invasions would be more viable if bombers didn't immediately take out whatever landed
Which means that navigating Airless Metal Planets and their choke points/bottlenecks wouldn't necessarily lead to stalemates.