Air units on atmosphereless bodies?

I think it's a good idea to remove air units on atmosphereless planets. It will radically change the game according to world type, and increase game interest .

This has been discussed a lot in the past.

I think it's a neat idea. It'd add more diversity to the biome types.

However, a lot of the competitive players love the moon biome because it's simpler and less spawn luck. And they wouldn't be too happy if they couldn't use aircraft.

So if this were to be implemented, it would need to be a setting so we can still get aircraft on moons.

I think it has potential, but this has been covered in other threads.

WARNIING <rant>

It comes to this: the reasons planets don't have atmospheres in real life is because they are too small to hold onto them (and other things involving magnetic fields, but we'll ignore that bit for now). Removing air units from small planets would make sense for game balance, because the primary advantage of air is speed, and on small planets that means air is practically omnipresent. Having or lacking atmospheres provides a good reasoning for removing the air units, but as of now planet size and atmosphere are completely unrelated, and may stay that way.

Since the beginning of the kickstarter, Uber has been sticking to a "what you see is what you get" mentality, which can be good an bad. This idea is great, and makes sense for realism, but they

• aren't shooting for realism. (they're shooting for awesome)
• will likely feel that this violates the "what you see is what you get rule"

The latter rule was there to avoid ridiculous complexity such as the veterancy system in SupCom, but I believe it has been rather stifling of late. Complexity in an RTS is necessary, as long as it adds more strategy. One of the greatest things about TA was the attention to detail. Wind turbines produced little energy on moons because there wasn't air. Metal planets could be mined anywhere. there were dozens of Easter eggs, and the maps actually effected strategy in more ways then just mass deposits. This was good complexity.

When you hear talk about complexity in this forum, it is almost always compared to SupCom's complexity. SupCom's complexity wasn't really strategic IMHO. Without the veterancy system, you had to decide whether or not to send in your units factoring how many units you could kill, how many you would lose, and how much mass would you give to your enemy for reclaim. Veterancy could be achieved after a certain number of kills, but the number was high enough that it really only was valuable for experimentals. It wasn't very well documented for beginners, so it didn't seem fair when you had 100 t2 bots fighting an experimental and he suddenly kills enough to regain his health. it wasn't well though out. On top of that, the maps had none of the environmental complexity of TA, leaving them all feeling rather sterile.

Honestly, I believe that this game needs complexity like TA had, including things like no air units on atmospheric planets. Is it complex? sure, but it's a strategy game. an RTS without complexity isn't an RTS, it's math homework. I believe that bigger better RTS games are the future, but not at the expense of detail. TA felt massive because of all the little details that effected matches and allowed for a broader range of strategy and made single unit strategies near impossible to rely on. I really do hope Uber reads this, because I believe it's the little things that give a game character, and that is something every RTS benefits from.

</rant>

I think it's a horrible idea that makes no sense at all considering the game is set in the far future. The main purpose of wings at this point is weapon hardpoints, not flight.

The way I've liked to put it is like this, with enough thrust in the right directions, ANYTHING can fly! ;p

Mike

See? Jebediah agrees with me and that's all the supporting evidence any reasonable person should need! ;p

Mike

you can make a brick fly like an F18 if you strap enough rocket engines to it.

Put some more thought into this. Most planes, if not all, in PA can hover, which means they have engines that can create vertical lift.

With that, they don't need atmosphere to fly.

So.

Hmm. Maybe not?

I doubt just being in the future would justify

Therefore I demand they be able to go orbital aswell.

I guess itd make sense for them to need air simply because its more energy efficient.

Just because they have engines on them doesn't mean the engines are strong enough to break orbit. We have VOTL aircraft today, but that doesn't mean their engines are strong enough to break orbit.

That being said, I still want an advanced air fighter that can travel between planets.

not if they're airbreathing engines

I'm assuming not since they can fly on the moon.

Aircraft engines rely on oxygen intake. Hovering slows their speed to a point where no oxygen will come through, causing them to crash to the ground (they land before they completely stall. It's also to preserve fuel, although aircraft fuel takes awhile to drain, especially on a small planet). It's also much harder to fine-tune the thrust of an aircraft engine; it can very easily capsize mid-air or start ascending/descending too quickly.

The only solution would be to attach rocket engines to the planes, but you can't switch your aircraft from using a rocket engine to an aircraft engine, which would make aircraft on atmospheric planets just as impossible as pushing a piece of paper against a jet stream.

Technically, if it's flying purely by lift and not be thrust, it's a rocket anyway. At that point, we start getting into whether air units are technically "air" or if they're just scaled-down rockets with vanity wing designs.


Realism is a horrible balancing point.

Doesn't the planes in PA use energy based plasma engines for thrust thus not needing oxygen, just an igniter laser and an exit valve to provide thrust?

Edit: I like how I completely murdered this thread. >:3

My question was not to add realism, but to add strategy.

Also, there are no "helicopters", there are multiple jet based flight units. Those CAN fly on moons, no problem.

I kinda like this idea... and if there are going to be gas planets one day that only support air and orbital units then this wouldn't be a bad trade off.

Yes, exactly. It's what i want to say. Each biome has its advantages and desadvantages.

It would be nice gameplay wise but it makes no sense.
Why should air units that are able to hover and obviously dont rely on an atmosphere to provide lift be unable to fly without one? If anything they would be faster since there is no friction and the gravity is lower so that more force can be used for forward movement.