[Suggestion] No air on planets without atmosphere

This would add new strategy to moon planets along with just making physical sense, because aerodynamics do not work without an atmophere. As I see it having air on a planet without an atmosphere is the same as having boats on a planet without water.

Please search first.

There have been at least 5 threads on this, and the general consensus is that this would be a good idea to add in the form of a mod but Uber couldn't be arsed with it at this particular moment. There's nothing wrong with it it's just trivial compared to getting all the stretch goals and core up and running.

As has been mentioned, please search first in accordance with forum rules. This has been suggested before several times.

I support the idea though.

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this would not work because it would make the game take a lot longer and u would get killed while making atmosphere

I don't think the idea is to make atmosphere- just that moons wouldn't allow the use of planes at all.

Personally I'd like to see differences between planets have more of an impact on what you do / don't use on them as I think it adds to the overall immersion.

just on moons and asteroids ... metalplanets might matter too much to not have planes ... everything else pretty much has athmosphere

This would be a good polish feature. Right now Uber has more important things to work on.

This Poll thread shows what the community thinks of the idea.

As with other posters, I recommend you look up old threads - if you comment on them, they will hit the front of the Forums again and you're likely to get somebody reading your post and talking to you about it, as opposed to slapping you for reposting.

No, I don't think terraforming should be added, just *** you don't make water on mountain maps just so you can use naval. You wouldn't use air on moons or asteroids, because they cant fly.

Yeah for some reason, although it follows the same train of thought I just cannot imagine metal planets without them, I suppose it could just be in the lore that they generate their own dense gas for use of planes.

Yeah, thanks I don't use forums like ever, so I am just getting used to them now. Growing pains and what not, I shall make more less mistakes in the future. I hope.

This idea would require actual ground scouts to replace the fireflies in the event of nofly zone planets

Ohhhh. You mean air as in air units. Dammit now I can't leave a witty correction.

Mind you that atmosphere vs no atmosphere is very much a scale. There are planets such as Venus where the atmosphere is so dense that virtually anything can float in it, and planets like Mars where the atmosphere is so weak it's very susceptible to meteors. I mean, would asteroid crashes be weaker on atmosphere heavy planets?

I don't think there are differences in unit behavior based on gravity of a planet either. Should escaping from a planet be cheaper depending on the type of planet? Should a unit's range be extended depending on gravity?

The problem is that you have just one set of units, that are supposed to be suited for all planets. We don't have a tech center to provide adaptations for all our units depending on the specific environment, it would be an extreme hassle to implement and would require a lot of imaginative thinking and knowledge of engineering. And it would be confusing for players to have to end up with dozens of variations on their units.

Furthermore, you can easily say that there is some anti-gravity tech that is standard in bombers that makes it work even in extreme environments. Another example would be corrosion on planets with an acid atmosphere. That's easily abstracted away by saying that the units are coated with some acid-repelling material. There is always some way to have it make sense.

I think that since this is a game we have to accept that most real aspects of space warfare will be abstracted away. I don't think this necessarily adds to the game and I would like have a more immersive experience, but only if it's understood that this happens at the cost of increasing complexity.

And no air on metal planets might be okay, but aren't there a lot of biomes with no atmosphere? I feel like it would impact gameplay too much, and bombers and such are strategically too important. Furthermore, gameplay still takes place typically on only planet. It's not the cast as if you're a galactic commander fighting over forty planets. You're often just stuck with your one single planet and in that case it would be unacceptable to not have access to air.

We have ground scouts, we just never use them because Air is omnipresent.

Also requires a trivial amount of effort to implement

I think obviously we need to strike a balance with realism and environmental effects. It doesn't need to be all-or-nothing. I think preventing Air use on planets without atmosphere would actually help gameplay as it increases the combat and resources required to secure devastating KEWs and Metal Planets.

I think it'd be good for people to not always rely on Air. I do not think bombers are completely integral to gameplay, any more than a ship or tank is. People just use Air a lot at the moment because it's imbalanced in the absence of Mobile Flak/with stacking over a single target. Formations/Mobile Flak are coming.

You don't think it odd when planets without water have no Naval units. Why would it be so unacceptable to have planets without air have no Air units? Where are the 'Anti-Grav' Battleships?
Lastly, people often set up games (like 10 players on a scale 1 planet) because they enjoy the increased opportunity for ground combat. Ground combat is working really well

In my eyes, if the game can't function without Air, something is wrong. PA can and does function without Air.
So why don't we let it, and blow some robots up without carpet bombing them?

I don't support the idea.

If we really are taking the rules of nature seriously, then also get rid of all sound effects on planets without any athmosphere. Sound needs air to travel trough.

There's a difference between ultra-realism and a mechanic that mixes up gameplay a bit.

It would be cool for gameplay, but it doesnt realy make sense. the planes can start and land straight up and hover in the air after all, so you would think that they can manage to stay airborne on planets that dont have enough mass to keep an atmosphere. At least the engineers and the gunship would work in any case and more efficient at that since they would have to spend less energie to stay floating.
Still as was said before it would be nice to get some variety in gameplay on different planets and would probably be a good thing gameplaywise.

Advanced robots from the future could do many things to not need air.

As it is, air is a counter to things just like flak is a counter for air. If you remove air, then some units/buildings/strategies won't have a counter. Keep in mind that "moon" planets aren't only small ones for smashing into stuff.

However, no air units on asteroids is a good idea (if they end up anything like the kickstarter video).

They're able to do that because they're VTOL(vertical takeoff and landing) planes, which is a technology that exists today.
The reason they'd be unable to fly is because jet fuel requires oxygen intake in order to ignite.
No atmosphere, no oxygen.
No oxygen, no flight.