First of all i watched this and it got me pumped for PA again! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKmSQqp8wY Then it got me thinking... Will there be a difference between planets with an atmosphere and planets without an atmosphere. Because you would think that smaller asteroids will have a small/no effect on planets with an atmosphere and also moving through asteroid fields to think about as well. Another thing is how realistically are the stars going to scale to the planets? because if you watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFT7ATLQQx8 You will see how big our sun is compared to us and how disappointing our explosion would be if we collided with it. Unless you made the collisions with stars realistic. Because that would look cool.
I'm.....not sure what you're trying to get at here. I don't see how realistic Star sizes makes for better gameplay to be honest, seems more like it would just things really annoying when rotating around planets and such. I also don't see any point to colliding anything into stars either. Mike
I was wondering whether the damage/effectiveness of kinetic bombardment would change depending on atmosphere density
Yeah, explosive shells and "giant enough to be used as weapons" asteroids really don't care about the atmosphere....if anything wouldn't a planets atmosphere just make explosions more potent?
Asteroids burn up/break up in atmosphere so smaller asteroids may be able to take a base out on a planet with no atmosphere but be useless against a planet with a dense atmosphere
Any asteroids can be used as weapons if they're moving fast enough and hit a planet without an atmosphere
Afrospartan is correct, I would think. With an atmosphere, the asteroid goes through re-entry, meaning that it gets ablated away. Asteroids that are too small burn up entirely. Without an atmosphere, you can use an asteroid of any size, meaning the explosion can be as small as you like; imagine an orbital TML that can hit anywhere on the planet. An asteroid can also break up during re-entry if the physical and thermal stress gets too severe, which disperses the pieces widely. Instead of a powerful hammer blow, you get more of a weaker shotgun effect. (It would be cool to model this as the result of an incoming asteroid being broken up by interceptors, by the way.) On impact, the atmosphere carries the force of the impact as a shockwave, devastating a vast area. Without an atmosphere, you wind up with a crater and a small damaged ring from ejecta but everything else is unharmed. Edit: Oh, and of course, aircraft wouldn't be able to fly. TA had at least one map like that, IIRC.
Next question, how does this make for a better game? Are you supposed to pick an asteroid with no way of know if it'll function on your intended target? There is also the question of how much of a difference does it make? Would a 100m KEW break up but a 110m KEW connect fully? I'm just not seeing any gameplay benefits yet. Mike
It's a matter of scale. in a planet with no atmosphere, You could chose between a tactical 30m rock to break up some enemy stationary defenses all the way up to a 50 km planet cracker. It makes planets with atmospheres better real estate since small rocks wouldn't work, so it's go big or go home. And with varied real estate, that gives rise to desirable objectives in game play, and makes for an overall more dynamic gameplay.
But the need for planets will always be dynamic regardless of atmosphere. location metal supplies defensive ability. adding another layer on top of that, no pun intended, serves no purpose.
It would allow for increased depth of strategy as you would need to think more about base placement on planets. For example if you have a weak economy then you wouldn't be able to attack an enemy very efficiently. The enemy sends their commander onto a moon without atmosphere and you find out this fact. You can then use all your resources on putting a single thruster on a small meteor to take it out before they build defences.
Personally I think atmosphere adds unnecessary complications. I'm going to assume all the ships fly with some sort of thruster/antigrav combo that doesn't require atmosphere. Because lore wise, the planets in the kickstarter video are WAY too small to hold an atmosphere dense enough for planes to fly. Also how would planes fly on asteroids? They can't need atmosphere for it. I think gravity is a bigger question than atmosphere. How will gravity affect projectiles? Will it? Or will everything have the same range always?
