[Suggestion] No air on planets without atmosphere

I think that if air isn't fun to play the solution should not be to remove it from various planet types, but to fix it so that it is fun. It's one thing to remove air units from asteroids, but to disable it on like 25% of the planet types in the name of realism is actually destructive for the game.

Navy is more of an afterthought and not as integral to the game as air is.

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On the topic of sound effects in space, I thought this was fun: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/features/halloween_sounds.html

I would also like to mention that nofly zones are a CONFIRMED FEATURE. Make a search for confirmed features & you should found a thread on the matter (currently at 2.0).

It just hasn't been implemented, but is planned on

Air can be fun to play, but it's never going to be as fun as Land gameplay is. It's too fast to be aesthetically engaging, it looks ugly when it overlaps and it ignores environmental obstacles. If it was affected by temperature/clouds in some way, it might be more engaging. At the moment it's a case of "Build more Fighters ftw"
Look at this lengthy post I made a while ago about what's so fun about ground combat. Its suggestions may be somewhat outdated but the argument stands. This style of RTS advertises itself as based upon ground combat because interacting with the world is where the fun's at. If we were birds, we might find Air combat more fun.

As I said, a good reason for disabling Air on Metal and Asteroids is that it makes those planets harder to secure. Would also make traversing that labyrinthine metal maps (with their possible defences) more engaging than sending out a few dozen gunships to clear the planet.

Seeing as we will be able to make Ocean worlds, I don't think we should consider Naval an afterthought. UBER have been focusing on Ground and Air but Naval will be awesome too.

Well yes sure, the jet fuel we have nowadays. But if thats the reason air couldnt fly on any planet with the wrong atmosphere or a too thin atmosphere. Lava planets for example would probably be out since there most likely wouldnt be any oxygen. Same goes for moons of any size, even if they are big enough to have an atmosphere.

In starcraft it is the interaction between air and ground that's a major part of interesting unit interactions.

Exactly. It may be a micro-intensive game but it (and the SupCom trailer) have Air Transport playing a large role. I used to win games by taking all my Overlords, loading them up with Zerg and dropping them on an enemy base.
WHERE'S YOUR YAMATO NOW BITCH?

Lunar biomes in general wouldn't have Air. You could still have a 200 Radius tropical world with Air. It would just provide that bit more variation/choice when designing and playing systems.

Lava planets would have atmosphere (if not oxygen) for Air units to fly in, and as Lava seas are impassible to anything but Air units, it would be irresponsible for gameplay to not allow Air on those planets. Whether Air should behave differently in volcanic, ash-filled atmospheres is an interesting question ^^

Good idea but the problem is this isn't supposed to be some ultra realistic game as seen by the art design, its just supposed to be an awesome fun RTS with planetary annihilations all over the place. Now they want to add atmospheric features, but ones that "don't affect gameplay" just in the same way that random elements do and is the same reason why there wont be random events in the game either. The atmospheric that might be added are purely cosmetic things to make the planets appear more life-like, to give water cloud reflections ect but an atmosphere that affects how aircraft fly around planets? a big NO NO .... for the most obvious reasons possible...

If being in space does not affect the gameplay, why have a space game? Even starcraft 2 has rising lava that kills stuff, retracting bridges, ancient alien devices, ice that freezes units, collapsing rocks, LoS blocking smoke screens, destructable environment. I'm sure Uber can come up with some appropriate ways to have environment affect gameplay.

yes but you have to remember, star craft is based on a very old geometry plain.. the game isn't even in 3d for heaven sake, trying to do all the things that you just listed inside the Planetary annihilation game engine would hit performance like you wouldn't believe. Don't forget you have to render multiple planets, and 1 planet is like the size of 4 of 5 very large Star Craft 2 maps, you have to take everything into consideration when coming up with idea's to improve the already good gameplay.

I hear what your saying and some of those environmental effects would be awesome to have in PA, I've even done threads on that personally myself like falling ash on lava planets and you could come up with all kinds of actual gameplay mechanics that could effect but there could be serious game engine limitations - to performance - ratios here that we just simply don't understand. An atmosphere will only be a visual thing, this has been stated i think 2 or even 3 times during the 11 hour marathon livestream the other day to make the environment come more alive pending on what planet you're actually on and I've had numerous experiences where random events just absolutely kill the gameplay of games and just piss you off more then thinking "o wow that was awesome" which you'll think for the first couple times it happens, after that you're done and just tends to piss you off.... Sword Of the Stars II great example of that.

When it comes to atmosphere affecting the way air units fly, you can always go onto the assumption their mechs, they have specific technology built to withstand and fly down into any atmosphere no matter the conditions.