Destroying air transport - units and damage

As far, as I can see, when you destroy air transporter in FA, all units in it die instantly, no matter what (im not 100% sure). Sometimes this can be very dangerous, for transporting ACU and SACU. What about solving this problem by not killing units instantly, but damaging them? Damage would be calculated of height and gravity (on small planet almost no damage), with some extra damage from destruction of air transporter.

Ps. Units from destroyed transporter will fall on ground, if into water, and they cant move in it, they explode.

I hope PA will have advanced enough physics simulation for this to be enjoyable to watch.

What will happen when the units collide with the ground? Will they bounce? In the Spring engine, units bounce like rubber balls which is fun to watch but it breaks immersion a bit when a heavy tank bounces on a grass field.
Will units bounce/slide on rocks but sink into dirt? I think it would brake immersion a bit if heavy units just come to a full stop when they hit the ground.
What will happen when dropped units fall on other units? Will they bounce off each other? Will the lighter unit be the one that bounces the most?

If I recall correctly, in Vanilla SupCom when transports crashed there was a chance that units it was carrying would survive, albeit heavily damaged. (around half health)

I think having units survive a crash landing would open up some awesome strategies. Maybe certain units would be less susceptible to crash landing damage than others. e.g. a giant tank would take less damage than a spindly-legged mech.

Interesting questions.

Units are really heavy, they should hit the ground and thats it. There was episode in Myth Busters with throwing pigs into water and ground, if pig doesnt bounce, heavy metal units also dont.

Power of fall is so big, that they shouldnt slide on any material. Also, when they hit another unit, it means damage for that unit based of gravity and weight of falling unit. If both survive, one slice of another, if one explode, extra damage for another, and that unit slides of destroyed unit. If both die... We can enjoy explosion :3

Youtube
In most cases the falling units will have perpendicular speed to the ground. They won't fall straight down.
Most likely a heavy unit will roll/slide and bounce against most types of material.
Whether or not a unit will bounce depends on the structure of the ground material and the unit. If you drop a steel ball on a solid steel floor it will bounce.

So, this...

http://forums.gaspowered.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=40729

Well, mostly yes, now question, how devs will implement this in game, and will they add more complex stuff, or less :>

would be an interesting tactic.
load a transport with something heavy, let it be shot down over the target area and hit your intended target with a kind of thrown tank. catapult redefined

I am not sure whether a strategy which involves a crash landing is awesome or just bad. It would allow you to get a little bit of value out of a failed drop, but not losing the dropship is always the better option.

Also, a giant tank will actually take more damage than a mech with legs. Jump from a chair and look at what your legs do, a tank sure as hell will not be able to do that

There's another case, what will happen to bomb-unit, when dropped and destroyed because of fall damage? Will it explode like when they attack, or just a little cloud of smoke and nothing, just scrap?

If they explode, transports of them can be a nice trap.

The slide part could be prevented by the units ejecting right before destruction. they essentially get jettisoned straight down

Depends on how it's handled and when they explode. Technically, an explosion in the air shouldn't have much effect on ground units (depending on size of the explosion obviously).

For me, units shouldn't be able so survive a fall from Air Transport flight heights unless they are specifically designed to do so. You can't just drop a tank from 200 meters up and expect it to "walk off" the impact.

Mike

Agreed. And from a gameplay perspective, it opens doors to more reckless play if units are allowed to survive dropship destruction. It also reduces the value of anti-air defenses as a defense against drops.

Special units for drops could be spider-legs bots, more chance to survive, than heavy tank. But ACU should survive, too much hp and two-leg unit, better than tracks.

Having more legs doesn't intrinsically make something better at surviving a large fall like that, maybe a small jump, but not a fall where you might be reaching your terminal velocity. What a unit needs is someway to slow and control it's decent, parachutes or powerful short term thrusters(or both as in Curiosity's case) and these aren't the kind of things you just find on random units.

I'm not against a special "Drop" unit that can survive the 'fall' from a downed transport, just expect to pay for that capacity like anything else.

The Commander is a tricky case, not sure how I feel in that instance yet...

Mike

Technically you are at terminal velocity when you land with a parachute. Terminal velocity is when the drag of the atmosphere is as strong as gravity. If there are no drag or no atmosphere, there is no terminal velocity.

I agree that your average unit wouldn't like being dropped from a hundred meters after getting their transport blown up in the air. What I was thinking was if the transport just crashes on the ground there might be a chance for units to survive (if only barely).

Maybe like you said, there would be a "drop" unit and that one would jump out of a crashing or exploding transport or even a special transport that would safely eject units with jumpjets attached when (or before) it gets slagged.

Parachutes, drop pods, jet packs. Being a gigantic hyperdense supermetal whacking against soft squishy dirt also helps. It might hurt a bit, but they'll survive. Probably.

If your only goal is to get units into trouble, why bother with the transport? Just catapult them in. Oh, they're killbots, they'll be fine. Unless the surface is solid metal. Or liquid fire. They won't like that. Not many things like ramming into themselves, especially if they're on fire.

Why should the air transporter burst in the air ? What is if air transporter "lands" heavy. In this case units can survive.