Gas giants, and the expanded orbital unit set.

My impression is that gas giants are orbit only.

They'll go squish, pretty definitely

Land units can sometimes be built to withstand the sort of pressures found in a submarine environment (e.g. amphibious tanks), however the expected pressures inside a gas-giant atmosphere are a few thousand times more than the most extreme under-sea pressures.

According to wikipedia, water pressure in the sea (Earth) increases by approximately 1 atmosphere (101 kPa) every 10 meters. So, Marianas Trench = 11,000m deep (rounded up) and would be 111,000 kPa.

The pressure in Jupiter is estimated to be in excess of 200GPa (200,000,000 kPa) and that's before you hit the solid core. That's a few orders of magnitude different

tl;dr - don't drop tanks on gas giants, even amphibious ones will get crushed :twisted:

They is a point where they start to float though.

No, there really isn't. The atom ultimately determines an object's density, and that's a very difficult thing to compress. Even among gasses, the heavier gasses will sink while the lighter ones float.

It might be possible for a dead husk's lighter materials to hold it afloat. And we don't really know too much about surviving deep in the atmosphere (the upper atmosphere breaks enough stuff as is). The best thing we have to go on is temperature, which would likely be VERY high and simply slag everything past a certain depth.

That actually depends on atmospheric density vs. the vehicles average density. It is entirely possible (and I would posit it is quite likely) that a combat vehicle which has a high concentration of dense armour plating to be unable to achieve neutral bouyancy, until it is well beyond it's structural capacity to mitigate the external pressure (and goes squish).

Even assuming it does, how do land-based locomotive mechanisms (legs, tracks) provide any appreciable motive force in a fluid medium? You'd want vehicles specifically designed for the environment, because "just in case we get dropped into a gas giant and start floating" is more a specific vehicle design brief, than an overarching land vehicle design paradigm :lol:

I reckon we'll get gas-giant specific vehicles, rather than multi-purpose land / air units (e.g. "meant for gas giants" instead of "also usable in gas giants"), purely because it's easier to segregate and balance things that way.

I'd imagine Gas giants to be kinda like an "air units only" map. High enough the "squish effect" isn't as severe, or the units have inbuilt anti-grav tech or whatnot to counter the forces.

Similar to water planets, which are basically naval only. Ok you can have amphibious units on the bottom of the sea, but eh, let's just pretend it doesn't exist for sake of simplicity :lol:

Hi Everyone,
this is my first post in the forums.

I picture gas giants in this game as maps with only orbital and air units and in my opinion there is a difference between this two.

Air units:
Fighters, Bombers, Transports etc.

Orbital units:
Satellites, Orbital platforms, Large orbital ships like crymaw mentioned etc.

On a gas giant map are bots, tanks, and ships obviously not included.

The other question is what kind of buildings do we have?
Can we build Radars, towers, etc. ?
How do we build the orbital units when we start directly from the orbital layer?
Will there be some "gas giant only" builder unit or is there an other option?
How will commanders behave themselves on a gas giant environment? They are bots after all...

I tried to search the forums, but I did not find this particular information.
Any thoughts or any information that I have missed?

The same questions apply to water only worlds but it is a bit off topic: could it be possible to build air factories or say rocket gantries on a water only world?
This planets do have an orbital layer too after all...

All replies appreciated.

With regards to the high atmospheric pressure in a gas giant.. if you equalize pressure between inside & out, doesn't that negate the ill effects?

Machines don't need a breathable atmosphere.


So what if gas giants had this huge atmosphere, but you COULD land on them.. just that once you're on the ground, you're completely invisible to anything in orbit, and vice versa. And it takes a huge rocket to get back out of the gravity well.

Although with this floating thing, perhaps you'd be more likely to need a navy?

I thought it was decided that gas giants were going to be orbit only?

Firstly, I don't really see the majority of the "orbital" unit set to be capable of interplanetary travel. And units can't "land" on gas giant planets, due to reasons already stated by other posters.

The orbital facilities are more likely to be static, satellite-type structures for radar and perhaps shield generators, and space stations/orbital shipyards and orbital defence platforms.

The only units the shipyards can produce are probably the standard air units for local defence, and perhaps interplanetary transports.

It would be like the water-based/amphibious equivalents that were in Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander.

Think awesome, not realistic

Hexagonal plates that you can build on the ground and then launch into orbit or onto another planet would be cool...then you build on top of the Hexagonal plates...basically creating your terrain as you go and you would be able to eventually fully encase the planet/gas giant like a dyson sphere :mrgreen: maybe protecting from an asteroid premptive strike...? That would be like cracking an egg, then the next roid obliterates the planet, hehe

I would imagine though, that givern the epicness of TA at its peak, PA will be just as good no matter how they implement it.

Regards,
Nayzablade

Here, I'll do it gently before anyone snaps at you: That we arent going for realism we are going for awesome does NOT mean what you think it means. viewtopic.php?p=545971#p545971

I thought it would be Air/Orbital.

I think the dev comments have leaned towards orbital only, but because the game is still in development it's all speculation

Mixing orbital with ground warfare honestly hasn't happened before. Other games have done super weapons and death rays and such, of course. But there have never been direct exchanges between units on the ground and units way up in the orbital plane. At least, not in a way where both systems are working towards a common goal.

It'll be very exciting to see what happens. But don't be surprised if orbital stuff starts out a bit slow. It is pioneering new territory, after all.

True, however even if you build an open-plan vehicle (e.g. tank cabriolet, or oldschool biplane) the components themselves will change in size as the pressure increases. It would also leave internal components open to corrosive elements in the atmosphere, and gas giant atmospheres can (it is believed) be pretty corrosive.

Also, the pressure numbers can get so stupidly high that a 1m*1m*1m cube of e.g. AI core would in fact be more like 0.7m cubed (or even smaller) if you go deep enough, and that is going to do all sorts of screwy things to the functionality.

Suspension of disbelief is required for immersible gas giant units, but it would also suggest that it will have to be specifically designed "gas giant capable" units e.g. a special harvester, maybe a gas giant submarine analogue (shallow immersion combat unit) and the rest as de-facto orbital units that never make planetfall, but carry out their jobs in orbit. Those can be generic orbital units, since they will not be interacting with the bizarro environment that is the gas giant, and so can be the same stuff you can build in orbit of a planet or moon

Also, since gas giants generally have quite a number of moons available, there's no real gameplay need (IMO) to provide buildable territory (e.g. platforms) as opposed to just using orbital "buildings" (orbital refinery, orbital factory, observation satellite, defense satellite et al.). Your landmass is the moons, and the gas giant is effectively just a mineable resource rather than needing to be a capturable territory. I'm not sure I see an advantage to being able to build a big floating platform that I put normal buildings and tanks on like it was a planetary surface :?

To be fair, if it has platforms I'll use them, I just wouldn't consider them a requirement for that sort of environment, when you can get away with a few specialised units, and a few generic orbital ones and provide the same (or certainly similar) functionality. People are bound to mod platforms in at some point regardless

Metal Fatigue had an air layer that was kind of an orbital analogue, with preset floating asteroids/platforms that you could build on (a drawback of having a static square map). You just ended up filling them with solar panels for energy and having air unit fights between them, or building a teleport on one so you could move one of your big robots onto it and go on a smashing spree. :mrgreen:

Nowhere near "proper" orbital mechanics, but then anything with platforms is going to get thought of as "a bunch of islands" initially, and some (most?) players are going to have trouble adjusting to true orbital mechanics if they do get implemented. We're just too used to square maps