Atmosphere?

I was just wondering about air units on airless bodies. Will planes and bombers work on moons and asteroids given that (I assume) there will usually be no atmosphere? Seems like it should be the case given that water units don't work out of water but just thought id ask.

That is making the assumption they need air to fly.

Mike

It shouldn't be too hard to make winged aircraft not buildable on airless bodies.

But as Knight said, we're assuming that aircraft need air to fly. That may not be the case for some or even any of them.

I think we are asking the wrong questions.

In most cases airless planets(moons, asteroids) tend to be smaller then planets that do have an atmosphere(earth, Lava). So Think the question is should air be usable on small planets? or what should aircraft's role be on a small airless world?

I think this is the interesting question because stereotypically, aircraft tend to be most useful in large areas where there mobility allowed them to get a round much more quickly then tanks or ships could. But on a smaller areas aircraft would lose much of this advantage since targets would be significantly closer to each other and an aircrafts advantageous these areas would be significantly lesser.

it just feels right, that flying units need air and atmosphere. You wouldnt expect naval units on a rocky moon, would you? Why have aircrafts without air?

Because Air units aren't defined by HOW they fly, rather the fact that they fly to begin with, and you don't need air to Fly, you just need gravity and an opposing force equal or greater than Gravity.

Mike

The problem with that is that there's then no reason they couldn't fly straight up to other worlds. If you can fly close to the planet regardless of the presence or lack of air, you can achieve escape velocity, as gravity is stronger the closer you are to something.

Air required means no gaping "plot" hole.

really? interesting ... still, "AIR"crafts need air, otherwise they are rockets or rocket engine propelled crafts.

Nope, you can't reach escape velocity, let alone travel to other worlds, if your engines aren't powerful enough.

Considering all the planes we have atm are fixed wing craft (besides the t2 constructor which is a vtol) with thrusters/engine at their back I'd say its a save assumption to make.


Having said that, I think its the wrong way to look at it. The question should be, does it lead to better gameplay to not have planes available on certain planets or would it limit it too much and lead to an imbalance on those areas.

Worrying about the lore reason is something that can always be done after the fact.

If you are going to argue gameplay considerations based upon real world physics, then it's time for a science lesson I think.

If something is to fly, it requires a force to hold it in the air which has an equal magnitude to gravity, but an opposite direction. This is referred to as "lift", and (barring anti-gravity) it has two possible sources. The first is aerodynamic lift, which is provided by moving a specially shaped component through air. These are referred to as "lifting bodies" or "aerofoils" and make up the wings of a conventional aircraft. The second method is by using a reaction engine, such as a jet or rocket.

In an atmosphere, aerodynamic lift is used, as it is generally more efficient in terms of the fuel used. A great example of this is the Harrier Jump Jet. Although it can take off using it's reaction engines, it is forced to carry less ordinance and fuel compared to when it can take off using aerodynamic lift, with a runway. There are further complications in that most engines use atmospheric air for combustion and re-mass, (with the exception of rockets), but we will ignore those for now.

Without an atmosphere, reaction engines are the only available option. They are less efficient, and even if an aircraft can use it's engines to directly generate lift (such as a Harrier), not all aircraft would be able to take of this way. However, a general fact of planetary science is that the smaller the celestial body is, the less atmosphere it has. Thus, the reaction engines don't have to work as hard in order to maintain flight.

This doesn't necessarily mean that something which can hover via reaction jets can automatically get into space, just because it's engines can overcome the force of gravity. Again, look at the harrier jump jet. Even if you replaced it's jet engine with an (air independent) rocket engine, there is no way it could carry enough fuel to get into space by itself. The Tsiolkovsky rocket equation will see to that. Even if we do assume that future rockets are massively more efficient and rely on futuristic power sources, getting a conventional air-superiority fighter into orbit is not necessarily a good idea. If it has not been equipped with reaction wheels, appropriate navigation equipment, appropriate materials/construction, and a reaction control system, it would be pretty helpless.

In other words, there is no physics/engineering reason why the planes cannot fly in airless environments, assuming they have appropriate systems for vectoring their thrust.

However, this is a bit of a sideshow here. The main question is "does making airless bodies a plane free zone make the game more fun". My gut instinct for this is no. I suspect airless bodies will be numerous in most solar system maps, so planes will become something with very situational use. If we assume planes only have aerodynamic lift, the majority of the solar system would be a no-fly zone. I would have nothing against making planes behave a little bit differently in airless environments, but getting rid of them all-together would be a bad idea.

The moons in PA have no atmosphere, so it would appear this has already been answered.

Heh, I'll counter you real-life logic with video game logic as I think thats more appropriate to a game. :mrgreen:

Metal
Moon
Terrestrial
Water
Volcanic
Gas Giant

Those are the planet types that are confirmed. Of those, only metal and moon don't have any atmosphere. Its a safe assumption that metal planets will be kinda rare as they are a special type with special mechanics. Moon biomes will most likely be most of the time on moon type "planets" (ie. orbiting other planets) so their number will be limited too.

Thus we can conlude that even if no-air planets wouldn't have planes that this still would be the minority in PA.

Considering that until recently land units all were able to walk through water you can't say that its a definite answer. It could as well (although personally I don't think so) be a placeholder until uber gets down to the no air-unit flag for certain planets.

I disagree.

In our own solar system, (purely as an example) every planet aside from venus and mercury have moons of some description. Gas giants have dozens of moons. Asteroids (which you seem to have forgotten) exist by the billions in the main belts, and by the millions just as freely orbiting bodies.

Now, if we translate that "real-life-logic" into "video-game-logic", i would predict that a lot of planets would have moons, gas giants would probably have three or four (which would be a fantastic environment to fight over), and asteroid belts may contain dozens of objects. This isn't an unreasonable assumption, and it is entirely possible for this as a large game map.

Give this, i suspect airless bodies will be common.

They really should give the "Moon" biome a different name. Like, airless rocky, or cratered rocky. In our own solar system, Mercury, Mars, and all the asteroids are cratered rocky, and every body barring the gas giants in the outer system are cratered icy, such as Pluto and the Kuiper Belt bodies.

So it's a safe bet that the majority of bodies in a PA multi planet game will be asteroids or small icy bodies. And for these, I would actually disable air. Considering how small they are, and thus how weak the gravitational forces on such worlds would be, it might break immersion to see air units flitting about on them.

I would keep air units on Mercury type planets and moons.

I still disagree.

The majority of planets in any PA system will be whats fun to play on. Which most likely will be 2-3 planets with maybe one or two moons (total) and a dozen asteroids for an average 4v4 or 5ffa. Realistic sized system would be pretty much unplayable without masses of players or end up with boring 30min of eco 'till war happens.

And I highly doubt that fun 1v1 will ever go over the single planet stage (maybe 2 planets if the players want a mandatory no rush game...).

You don't just add empty terrain (the moon biome is mostly empty terrain compared to other more "interesting" planets) to a map because you get that in real life, that's pointless from a game design standpoint.


I mean, have you played on a size 6 planet yet? Its got so much terrain that both the current game balance and the UI fall appart (victory is only possible through server crash or com sniping with bombers if one player neglects air cover because of the lag those many planes create). Yeah its alpha etc. but scalability only goes so far before the intendend gameplay gets thrown out of the window because the playfield is just too large for humans to still be able to control it.

(Edited the first sentence out as it was unnecessary)

A similar thought occurred to me, I considered that the air units in game might use 'anti-grav' or something like that to fly but then I was wondering where the cut-off is between air layer units and orbital layer units.
I asked the question here as I thought it felt like an interesting gameplay element given all other units have environments in which they cannot operate, water cannot float on land and land cannot float on water. There will be planets made purely of water and dry planets but it seems that air units can be used everywhere.
In the end I don't mind either way but I think it would be more interesting and thematic to get people to come up with varied strategies for airless rocks. To fight one battle on a sea planet and then to adapt to a land only engagement. Perhaps orbital layer units may fulfil the air niche anyway. I wait in eager anticipation to find out.

The value of air units lies in their speed. If the world is tiny enough, you won't really miss a lack of air units.

Have you even looked at the units at all?





Clearly the Wings, while far from useless, are not REQUIRED to keep it flying, even on planets.

Mike

Space ships and constructors are the few things that would HAVE to work in a vacuum. They are hardly conclusive proof for how all air units work.