Making Ground Combat Suck Less

[Lecic]

I think I have a solution to one of the main issues that makes ground vehicles and soldiers useless.

The atmosphere of planets should work as a natural shield, preventing bullet, beams, pulses, and missiles from passing through and hitting the surface. This would make ground combat viable without worrying about being destroyed in .3 seconds by an orbital swarm missile strike. Disintegrators would not be stopped, however, so they could still be used to soften up targets beforehand.

Next, to prevent people from just sticking the front nose gun of the their dreadnaught into the atmosphere and blasting away anyway, the atmosphere would deal damage to ships based on mass as they entered. The heavier a ship, the more damage it would take as it entered. A capital ship skimming into the atmosphere would come away with huge chunks ripped out where it impacted. However, smaller ships would be able to enter and leave atmosphere without any issues.

 

[Equilibrium21]

I agree with everything that stops doomsday weapons and lonewolf noobs so yes it's a good idea!
PS:
I have no problem with lonewolfs but the ones that make death cubes and go pewpewpew on everything are annoying as hell :/.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

I was also thinking about some shielding surrounding the planet, but didn't thought about using the atmosphere as a natural defender

Also damaging the big ships entering the atmosphere/gravity of the planet is a good idea, but may be tricky while implementing.

 

[Lecic]

I was also thinking about some shielding surrounding the planet, but didn't thought about using the atmosphere as a natural defender

Also damaging the big ships entering the atmosphere/gravity of the planet is a good idea, but may be tricky while implementing.

Yeah, and it could be a little unfair, as the entrance to a planet sector can be very abrupt sometimes. I think that'll be less of an issue now that server owners can increase the size of a sector, which makes that less of an issue, because you won't be almost immediately in atmosphere when you enter the sector.

 

[Equilibrium21]

rece ktore leczo You mean like forcefields and shield generators? Thats great!
Also it's not hard to implement it, it could just work like the damage you take when you're near a Star but with a few changes.

 

[mrsinister]

I think I have a solution to one of the main issues that makes ground vehicles and soldiers useless.

The atmosphere of planets should work as a natural shield, preventing bullet, beams, pulses, and missiles from passing through and hitting the surface. This would make ground combat viable without worrying about being destroyed in .3 seconds by an orbital swarm missile strike. Disintegrators would not be stopped, however, so they could still be used to soften up targets beforehand.

Next, to prevent people from just sticking the front nose gun of the their dreadnaught into the atmosphere and blasting away anyway, the atmosphere would deal damage to ships based on mass as they entered. The heavier a ship, the more damage it would take as it entered. A capital ship skimming into the atmosphere would come away with huge chunks ripped out where it impacted. However, smaller ships would be able to enter and leave atmosphere without any issues.

YES! this is a very bad@ss idea.

 

[darkstar64]

I think I have a solution to one of the main issues that makes ground vehicles and soldiers useless.

The atmosphere of planets should work as a natural shield, preventing bullet, beams, pulses, and missiles from passing through and hitting the surface. This would make ground combat viable without worrying about being destroyed in .3 seconds by an orbital swarm missile strike. Disintegrators would not be stopped, however, so they could still be used to soften up targets beforehand.

Next, to prevent people from just sticking the front nose gun of the their dreadnaught into the atmosphere and blasting away anyway, the atmosphere would deal damage to ships based on mass as they entered. The heavier a ship, the more damage it would take as it entered. A capital ship skimming into the atmosphere would come away with huge chunks ripped out where it impacted. However, smaller ships would be able to enter and leave atmosphere without any issues.

Planets will need some type of round shield generator that don’t take damage from ships or the planets can have a bigger atmosphere and ships can shoot throw without entering, or massive ship can shoot missiles all day long breaking any shield put down.

 

[Megacrafter127]

I agree, but IMO your measures are a bit too much. I suggest not dealing damage based on mass, but instead based on the velocity. Now let me explain:

• The moment a block of a ship enters the atmosphere of a planet, it is dealt damage(shields should be able to absorb 50% of the damage) according to velocity and current turning speed of the ship.
  Spoiler: formula

  d=faktor*(-1+e^((|2*v|/[speedlimit]+|ß|)/(2*PI))) | v...total speed, ß...rotational speed in radians/s
  this formula allows ships to slowly fly in an atmosphere without taking damage at all, but if they go too fast or turn too fast, the damage/block increases extremely, and since the shields also take damage, they go down faster the bigger the ship is, that flies too fast
• Now, how to prevent little fighters from being damaged by too high speeds? Simply by increasing the draft force(not acceleration), so little ships are prevented from going too fast in an atmosphere, while big ships have so powerful thrusters and so much mass, that they'd not feel the draft in the atmosphere at all, resulting in too high speeds.
• Also, let a ship be affected by a planet's gravity, once a block of it is detected to "collide" with the atmosphere
• Let it be a config option to enable server owners to reduce lags from the detection
• EDIT: missiles should be able to pass a planet's atmosphere, if they're not too fast(I am assuming, that different missiles can have different speeds, although I don't know if this is true with the latest updates)

 

[Lecic]

I agree, but IMO your measures are a bit too much. I suggest not dealing damage based on mass, but instead based on the velocity. Now let me explain:

• The moment a block of a ship enters the atmosphere of a planet, it is dealt damage(shields should be able to absorb 50% of the damage) according to velocity and current turning speed of the ship.
  Spoiler: formula

  d=faktor*(-1+e^(|v|*|ß|/([speedlimit]*PI))) | v...total speed, ß...rotational speed in radians/s
  this formula allows ships to slowly fly in an atmosphere without taking damage at all, but if they go too fast or turn too fast, the damage/block increases extremely, and since the shields also take damage, they go down faster the bigger the ship is, that flies too fast
• Now, how to prevent little fighters from being damaged by too high speeds? Simply by increasing the draft force(not acceleration), so little ships are prevented from going too fast in an atmosphere, while big ships have so powerful thrusters and so much mass, that they'd not feel the draft in the atmosphere at all, resulting in too high speeds.
• Also, let a ship be affected by a planet's gravity, once a block of it is detected to "collide" with the atmosphere
• Let it be a config option to enable server owners to reduce lags from the detection

Well, the main issue with that is that a huge ship can still slowly stick its forward guns through the atmosphere and annihilate anything on the ground, which is something I'm trying to prevent.

However, if gravity was stronger on larger objects, and things that entered the atmosphere were immediately affected by gravity like you suggest, enough that a big ship that dared venture in the atmosphere for more than a moment would get pulled down to the surface, it would take large amounts of damage from all the velocity and possibly turning that would happen as it fell to the surface.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Well, the main issue with that is that a huge ship can still slowly stick its forward guns through the atmosphere and annihilate anything on the ground, which is something I'm trying to prevent.

Try to aim at more than one spot without moving or turning your ship. Also, if you end up moving, the mighty shift-key will not work unless you release all movement keys, so you'll constantly have to balance your ship against the gravity of the planet. This even increases if you try hitting a fast moving target.

 

[darkstar64]

Well, the main issue with that is that a huge ship can still slowly stick its forward guns through the atmosphere and annihilate anything on the ground, which is something I'm trying to prevent.

However, if gravity was stronger on larger objects, and things that entered the atmosphere were immediately affected by gravity like you suggest, enough that a big ship that dared venture in the atmosphere for more than a moment would get pulled down to the surface, it would take large amounts of damage from all the velocity and possibly turning that would happen as it fell to the surface.

Or you can make an ai ship set to protect a planet or fraction block, so they can fight the big ships and the only thing you do have to fight is the landing party lead by a real player.

 

[rece ktore leczo]

Maybe not necessarily make the gravity pulling bigger ship stronger, but decrease thrust/mass ratio on the big ships (also resulting in slowing them down), so once they got caught in the gravity sphere of the planet, they would crash on it. But still there would be a problem of ships with exceptionally high thrust/mass ratio...


OR make thrusters not working in the atmosphere and implement new type of thruster block (hover-like) which would be the only way to keep the ship in the air once in the gravitational field. This system could have different calculation equation than space thrusters, so more massive ships could have a disadvantage in using them, i.e. more mass - less thrust from the same number of blocks, or the only active thrusters would be the ones on the surface of the ship (smaller ships have bigger surface/volume ratio).
+ Thrusters would automatically stop working once any part of the ship gets into the atmosphere. Oh god, i want to see abandoned ships on the planets, left there because they don't have hover thrusters or capitals slowly accelerating toward the surface and crushing on it.

 

[Equilibrium21]

rece ktore leczo And in the end the server crashes unfortunantly

 

[rece ktore leczo]

The collisions are now less cpu intensive, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad

 

[Equilibrium21]

rece ktore leczo Well until they add this feature or if they add it i'm sure there will be tons of optimization and new physics.

 

[darkstar64]

what you really need is one of this

 

[Equilibrium21]

Holy Moly!

 

[Lecic]

Or you can make an ai ship set to protect a planet or fraction block, so they can fight the big ships and the only thing you do have to fight is the landing party lead by a real player.

Turrets and AI can only do so much against a manned ship. Anyway, someone could just set turrets to target mode and target people on the surface.

Maybe not necessarily make the gravity pulling bigger ship stronger, but decrease thrust/mass ratio on the big ships (also resulting in slowing them down), so once they got caught in the gravity sphere of the planet, they would crash on it. But still there would be a problem of ships with exceptionally high thrust/mass ratio...


OR make thrusters not working in the atmosphere and implement new type of thruster block (hover-like) which would be the only way to keep the ship in the air once in the gravitational field. This system could have different calculation equation than space thrusters, so more massive ships could have a disadvantage in using them, i.e. more mass - less thrust from the same number of blocks, or the only active thrusters would be the ones on the surface of the ship (smaller ships have bigger surface/volume ratio).
+ Thrusters would automatically stop working once any part of the ship gets into the atmosphere. Oh god, i want to see abandoned ships on the planets, left there because they don't have hover thrusters or capitals slowly accelerating toward the surface and crushing on it.

Well, we ARE getting hover blocks for ground vehicles at some point.

Seeing as how this would prevent fighters from functioning in atmosphere, there could be some issues from this.

With one of the new effects (I forget which one) you can cancel planetary gravity. What if it scaled so that it would require heavy dedication for a large ship to keep one running, but relatively easy for a small ship to be built to ignore planetary gravity?

There are 2 types of engines that only require electricity to function, and they rely on the basis that nothing is really a vacuum, and that space is actually full of constantly reappearing and disappearing quantum particles, which can be used to propel an object with clever manipulation. If the engines in game rely on this principle, they wouldn't work in an atmosphere.

 

[darkstar64]

Turrets and AI can only do so much against a manned ship. Anyway, someone could just set turrets to target mode and target people on the surface.



Well, we ARE getting hover blocks for ground vehicles at some point.

Seeing as how this would prevent fighters from functioning in atmosphere, there could be some issues from this.

With one of the new effects (I forget which one) you can cancel planetary gravity. What if it scaled so that it would require heavy dedication for a large ship to keep one running, but relatively easy for a small ship to be built to ignore planetary gravity?

There are 2 types of engines that only require electricity to function, and they rely on the basis that nothing is really a vacuum, and that space is actually full of constantly reappearing and disappearing quantum particles, which can be used to propel an object with clever manipulation. If the engines in game rely on this principle, they wouldn't work in an atmosphere.

But they can give humans rocket launchers that goes throw shield

 

[Lecic]

But they can give humans rocket launchers that goes throw shield

Well, that'd be overpowered, but at the same time pretty useless. They wouldn't do much good against a big ship unless the explosion radius was huge and they did a bunch of damage, but they'd be op because you could vaporize small fighters and ground vehicles with it.