Planets without atmospheres or moons with atmospheres

Just like in our own solar system there are planets without atmospheres such as mercury and there is also a moon called Titan with an atmosphere. So why not take these same properties and put them into planetary annihilation.

That would rather depend on whether the presence of an atmosphere does anything in the game. In TA you had wind generators which didn't work on airless maps.

INB4 people say airless planetoids can have air units, because that's just silly, you don't need 'Air' to travel off the ground.

Mike

Atmosphere will be something modifiable. You can have tiny rain forest covered planetoids or gigantic crater covered airless asteroids.

And "air units" as a group are probably better thought of as units that require propulsion to traverse above ground and "orbital units" do not, not necessarily if they're traditional airplanes that require atmosphere. (Not to say units that do require atmosphere are out of the question.)

Why not, winged planes not woking on moons and other small planetoids might add to the experience, planes on something with as low an escape velocity as an asteroid would look wonky anyway, shall i remind you: no space battles ;-)...

Even a winged plane with the ability to vector it's thrust can still fly without an atmosphere, assuming it has enough thrust....in theory. Problem is that wings producing lift more or less reduces the amount of thrust you need to 'fly' so most planes just wouldn't likely have the thrust required. SupCom style Gunships would be fine for example.

Mike

Winged planes that solely rely on their thrusters for uplift are basically gunships. I understand there's no lore or physical reason that advanced planes designed for that purpose shouldn't be able stay afloat without avionic uplift in reduced gravity conditions. I just said that gameplaywise and even lore wise it could make sense to limit planes (or certain types of planes) to bodies with an atmosphere.

The neat thing about planets with no atmospheres is that you can have *really* low orbiting satellites, since there's no atmospheric drag. Just watch out for mountains.

It's fun to try in KSP, but obviously, not worth thinking about for PA.

Gunships on asteroids are a whole different topic guys

Asteroids barely have any gravity so they'd be spaceships.

After reading this, I rather like the idea of having both winged and VTOL aircraft available, but limiting the winged ones to planets with atmospheres. The best thing about having different biomes is that combat is changed based on where you are. Otherwise it would simply be a backdrop.

I thought someone at Uber had hinted at (or said outright, can't remember) that all the 'air' units were able to be considered vtol craft? If that is the case, then an atmosphere wouldn't be required for them to lift off.

However, keeping with the TA feel, there were maps like on the Core moon that you couldn't use air due to no atmosphere. Having restrictions like this would differentiate the different planetary bodies somewhat. I would assume that there wouldn't be any water on a moon/asteroid with no atmosphere, right?

Concurred. I have no idea what impact it would have on gameplay, but it seems like it would add an interesting layer of interestingness to the game.

The question becomes what relies on the atmosphere for gameplay uses. All I can think of are

-Wind generators
-space-faring creations, like the 'egg' launcher
-significance of asteroid damage (complexity would be a signifiant issue with this)
-planes that require atmosphere to run (no atmosphere would mean jets would be out of the question, or any winged craft that relies on atmosphere. But we aren't necessarily having 'jets' now, are we? )
-...planet eye candy?

Most other things that I can imagine are affected by atmosphere, like weapon trajectories and terminal velocities, seem like they would either not add much to the game, or be too complex to realistically do anything with them.

Like the idea with having different planes for different atmosphere types though!

I suppose (and this might not be the thread for it) it might not be a bad idea to put together somewhere a summary of planet types and the effect each one has on available units, combat, etc. Even if the differences are at first largely arbitrary, as the alpha ramps up we would have opportunity to assess them as a community.

i like the idea, but as said before we need the reason why otherwise it is just a backdrop.

im all for pretty planets; and im all for biome limitations. But if those changes make little impact to the game overall, im fine with playing on just pretty planets.

Why go through the trouble of making 2 different biomes if by doing that now forces you to make 2 different power generators, 2 different metal extractors, 2 different aircraft types and there is no strategic advantage/disadvantage (IE: is one plane better than the other? is one generator better than the other?) Otherwise this is a lot of work to make the same thing twice. Something must be gained for all of this coding other than 'prettiness'.

You're right of course, some elaboration is in order.

I'm not necessarily saying that each biome type should have a variant of each unit that works in that terrain. I would like to see differentiation of strategy per planet type. In some cases it's as simple as being unable to use naval units on a desert planet because there is no water.
I think when we think of an airless planet, we mostly tend to think of supcom style air units, in which the fighters and bombers were winged units, but the gunships and transports were VTOL. I don't want to see a special VTOL bomber for airless planets. I'd prefer to have that biome be the "no fighters or bombers" scenario, forcing the player to use an alternate strategy. (Purely an example, but I hope you get the idea.)
Having said that, I do like the idea of the terrain itself being a natural limit on applicable strategy without extra rules imposed on gameplay, but there are some planet types that I have a hard time imagining the difference between apart from artistic style. Lava planets and deserts come immediately to mind. Admittedly, I'm at a loss as to what the difference in play style should be.
I hope that's a little more descriptive.

zero-k for example has a separate gunship factory for vtol aircraft.
http://zero-k.info/Static/UnitGuide#fac-Gunship Plant

An idea relating to biome types occurred to me, but it seemed far enough away from this thread's original subject that I made a new one in the General discussion forum. viewtopic.php?f=61&t=46440

Sailing ships confirmed!

I've seen winged aircraft and VTOL aircraft both mentioned, but helicopters are technically VTOL, and they definitely won't work without an atmosphere.

Also, in Treasure Planet, I'm guessing that they basically assumed that space had air, after all, none of the characters had space suits. Or any kind of breathing mechanism, for that matter. :lol: