Areas forbidden for aircraft movement

Aircraft can be the most powerful tools an army can have, with their high speed and excellent mobility. Because of their innate ability to traverse any terrain at high speed, they can be hard to balance with ground and naval units in such a way as to keep all three useful. Eg - Stealth Fighters in TA, Restorers and ASFs in FA, at least initially.

So what if there were areas of map through which aircraft could not be ordered to fly? For instance, extremely tall mountains, areas of radiation/toxicity, etc. In some instances, ground or naval units would be able to move through these areas, giving them a clear advantage and taking air out of the game somewhat in those areas. I'm curious as to what effect that would have on gameplay.

This seems like it would be an obvious idea to me, but I didn't find anything similar on search.

Take a look at the original video. Look at the mountain. Look at the flight paths. I think you are on the right track

I guess the orbital units will take the role of all-terrain units but they will be slower than aircrafts.

No, I want them to be more than "Like Air BUT_________" type deal. They need to be able to do things that can't be done by another unit type.

Mike

If orbital units can move above the high mountains and destory land units there but air units can't, their relationship would be simlar to hovers and ships (but on a higher level). I think that's different enough for me,

Storms or tornadoes can maybe damage or even kill aircrafts instantly.

Oh hell yes. I hated how in FA planes would try to slowly climb mountains.

Still, I'd be curious about whether there'd be areas planes couldn't travel through, but other types of unit (say land or naval) could. Uberstorms for instance.

This is terrible. Just how tall are these mountains? How is air different to land if it has to take the same routes?

I'm not against blocking air movement in some way, but using the same device for both land and air I feel is a bad move.

For gunships and transports in makes sense.

But for the normal bombers and fighters it would be really strange.

Anything that promotes the bomber over the gunship is ok in my books.

A planet with no atmosphere might be completely incompatible with winged craft. The only viable craft would be hovers like transports and gunships.

I'm not so sure about mountains blocking a jet's flight path. Mt. Everest has a height of about 30,000 feet, and an average F-16 (which is fairly old technology by now) has a service ceiling of about 50,000 feet. It would make sense in the context of gunships/helicopters though. An Apache helicopter has a service ceiling of about 21,000 feet.

Taking other planets into account, several in our solar system have mountains that are quite a bit taller:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ta ... lar_System

Mars, for example, has some mountains going upwards of 20 km high, which is about 66,000 feet. The F-22 has a service ceiling of about 65,000 feet, so it does hit its combat limit. (It can fly higher, but isn't combat effective at higher altitudes.) The U-2 and SR-71 aren't combat planes, but have service ceilings of 70,000 feet and 85,000 feet respectively, and should have no issue with the highest known mountains. Both use old technology.

And this doesn't take into account that the robots are using futuristic technology, likely non-dependent on atmosphere, which means that for spy planes, mountains should be no obstacle. For bombers and fighters, mountains are unlikely to be an obstacle. For gunships, mountains are likely an obstacle.

Luckily we get to pick the scale of the game to make it awesome.

You haven't addressed what makes planes different to land units now. They're limited to the same travel path that land units must take. The difference is only some weapons work on them. It just seems like a pretty arbitrary decision.

I think it will be interesting to see how this works in game however, it may be good, I'm just pretty dubious at this stage.

The service ceiling of all modern aircraft is entirely dependent on having an atmosphere that reaches far enough to support the frame and be used for propulsion.

Only a true magic hovercraft can ignore that and fly around in complete vacuum.

If it's used in this way, a planet's atmosphere may just be too thin for aircraft to fly above the mountains. It'd be a mighty alien planet, but not strictly impossible.

What? Who said they have the same travel paths as land units? If that's your impression it's wrong.

Having things high enough that aircraft need to dodge them is not the same thing as the same travel paths as lands unit. Not even all land units use the same travel path (it depends on something we call the agent spec).

You can have mountains with tunnels in them so that only land vehicles are allowed through, refer to this drawing, top left hand corner.

Also, planes can travel over water and vehicles can't.

Also, I would have thought, in general planes would be faster than land vehicles.

This map feature of terran non-pathable for air units seems very... destructible rocks/Xel'Naga watch tower-ish to me. Something that doesn't add much, and which players will quickly tire of and stop playing maps that have them or modify them to remove it.

Does this being possible allow you to make maps that behave differently in a significant way?

I suppose if a large region of a large map were non-passable for air units that could be important. But if it's just a section of the map that is cut out of the playing field so that neither air nor land units can go there, it doesn't seem like it makes a big difference.

I think this is a great idea mechanism wise, just doesn't make much sense, but making sense is not important for strategy games anyway, nobody cares why knights can't move in straight lines in chess.

These terrains can create chokepoints that give AA defenses advantages, and they make gunships and fixedwings more different cause fixedwings tend to lose more speed in turning, plus they are still passable to orbital units and maybe some land units.

Non all-terrain air? Ok, so should be establish a queue who will mod this out first? Really, that's worse than wheels-vs-kbots thing, that's worse than land-on-gas-giant thing...