The air layer should be higher.

As the title says.
The air layer in PA just seems way too low in my opinion.
Example, here is a picture of air over land in SupCom.



As one could see, there's a considerable amount of height.
Now, here's a picture of air over land in PA.

They practically touch the top of structures.

I'm not sure if this is because of problems with the spherical maps or what, but it just looks kinda silly that planes aren't high up.

I see where Uber is coming from though, because if air was as high as SupCom, then it'll look ridiculous.

What it should be is dynamic. The smaller planets, aircraft fly closer to the earth. On larger planets, they fly farther away from the surface.

I think aircraft should have a full 3D space in which to move. Currently it seems they move on a 2D plane (heh) rather than ascending and descending dynamically. Bombers could fly low on bombing runs, for example, before returning to a higher altitude.

I guess, but I'm not saying it should be as high as SupCom, just not so low.
Dynamic height would also look pretty cool.

I think a 3D fly area will be made sooner or later just patience!

They may have other priorities for now, I am quite happy they fixed the shadows and added SSAO. That's already a very good improvment for graphics. If they would now only add reflections (water & metal) and caustic then, well it would be awesome

I would call aircraft and orbital - for short - just a very very big WIP, that's all

I could dig it being a little higher. Sadly, it isn't very high now, 50% or 2x higher either one would still be decent. Just not really really high.

I remember them saying something about too much height diversity, and the curvature of the planet plays tricks with the air units much the same way as orbital, the units don't appear to match the land position, and the smallest movements make larger air movements, ranges would be tricky, angles might not allow fire sometimes, ect ect.

If this was an issue, it isn't really terrible they fly so low.

I agree. plus this is like the third or fourth time a thread is made to bring it up.

The air layer in SupCom is also way too low. Everything flying at the same level like there was some glass wall in the air has always looked like crap.

well in this case they are robots, they have no need to fly high or low, one altitude suffices to them given their monotone and accuracy.

Dynamic more like...where bombers and transports will be lower (higher then now lol) and fighters will be high and scout planes...pretty much very high up there. And gunships be way down there

Yeah, but robots that have calculated the most efficient combat altitude are boring for human players.

They are also quite flush so its easier to see their exact location. The higher up they are, the harder to proportion them to their ground location. If they varied in altitude a slight bit it might not ruin everything, but it would be harder than currently to tell their relation to the ground when you can't use one air unit to relate the other one's ground position.

Basically, it makes them easily readable. Magnify the height by 100, and you have a distinct problem portrayed by current orbital.

I do feel like past a certian zoom point, that green orbital shell should appear, and you can only select to command units on that orbital shell, while of course still allowing you to target stuff below for attacking purposes.

It would be so much easier to drag select without selecting my whole god-damn military.

There's another problem people are missing here which makes the orbital problem worse than the air one; orbital layer move orders are given based on the location of the cursor over the orbital sphere, not of its position over the ground. In this example, you give a move order with the cursor over x, expect it to move to y, and it moves to z instead:


\ < ray determined by cursor location
..\
....\
......\
........\
_______z____y_______ orbital sphere
............\....|
..............\..|
................\|
____________x_______ ground

Which means there's no good way to move orbital units to a specific position relative to the ground layer without assist / attack / some other kind of interactive command.

For PA as it is, that's true. Without major, major changes, an air layer that has real purposeful 3D volume isn't possible. So yeah, I'm talking about massive scale RTS as I'd like it to be, not how it actually is.

I think this can be solved with a UI system that allows general movement of unit types that are largely controlled by unit AI. That's vague, I realize, but if a player typically controlled a mass of fighters in toto, instead of trying to box select individual units ... it might work. I think in this type of game, players should route whole groups to their destinations and objectives, not single units unless they need to micro for something. So perhaps that group has its own icon, and is grabbed and controlled by shortcut or UI button or even click-selection just like it was a single unit. Or if there were (vastly) more scrolling depth than there is currently, the air layer would be far above the ground and you'd only barely see the ants battling it out below, so only the air layer would be intuitively selectable at the time if you needed to nab one individual bot.

Anyway, that's roughly how I'd like to see the air layer work, but I realize that PA like SupCom and TA before it, isn't going to do that without massive changes.

Yeah it should, it would help not only making it look better. But they would suddenly have a purpose to add clouds besides just looks.

So when you zoom out clouds pops up and acts like a background border, that helps show what is air and what is ground. Atm it just blurs together, because there is nothing between the 2 layers and they are so close.

Haha, I never looked at it like that before! What has been seen... hahaha!

That's a gross oversimplification. They are flying in a 3D space. They would use the whole 3D space for the same reasons that fish do.

They are unrestrained in the z axis. There is no reason for them to ignore that volume


I'm sick of this 'futuristic robots are simple' argument. It's ignoring all of the relevant biology

Well to be fair....is there any reason to bother flying higher?

Like bombers wouldn't want to, because they are closer to their targets.

And so fighters would try to get as close as well.


Like, the only reason I can see as to why they would try to fly higher, is after they attack.....and considering weapon ranges....well you can't exactly run now can you.

So why bother? Just stay low, and try to weave through a mountain pass or something.....like it'll help against sam sites however.

i don´t think that would be good considering projectilespeed for bombers and gunships