- Joined
- Nov 16, 2013
- Messages
- 616
- Reaction score
- 179
Right now, land/atmospheric vehicles don't really exist. Any vehicle that can move around well on a planet will also have enough thrust to go into space, and thus is really a spacecraft. I have ideas for number of changes too make land vehicles and atmospheric craft an actual thing, distinct from spacecraft, without adding another type of core, as has been suggested before.
first of all, make the effectiveness of the defensive stop effect scale with distance from a planet. Meaning that a craft with a light stop effect will be able to float near the surface, but the effect of gravity will increase as it rises, until it loses all effect. That right there will allow us to make atmospheric craft and hovercraft that are not able to travel in space, but are effective on planets.
The second thing I think could be changed would be to increase the gravity on planets, so that one needs quite a bit of thrust to get off of one. It could even vary by a planets size. That would mean that one could have fast land vehicles that can't go into space. But keep it reasonable, so that a decently fast fighter can still escape the gravity, even if it has to orbit a bit. But no more flying straight up like gravity doesn't exist in any ship. That should need a particularly powerful vessel.
So, why would one rather use a planetary vehicle on a planet instead of just a ship? Simply make it so that a certain number of stop effect modules is more effective at resisting gravity than the same number of thrusters, and also uses less energy. Alternately, one could add an "atmospheric engine" that uses much less power than a normal thruster, but only works in an atmosphere. I prefer the former option, however, as it uses no new blocks.
first of all, make the effectiveness of the defensive stop effect scale with distance from a planet. Meaning that a craft with a light stop effect will be able to float near the surface, but the effect of gravity will increase as it rises, until it loses all effect. That right there will allow us to make atmospheric craft and hovercraft that are not able to travel in space, but are effective on planets.
The second thing I think could be changed would be to increase the gravity on planets, so that one needs quite a bit of thrust to get off of one. It could even vary by a planets size. That would mean that one could have fast land vehicles that can't go into space. But keep it reasonable, so that a decently fast fighter can still escape the gravity, even if it has to orbit a bit. But no more flying straight up like gravity doesn't exist in any ship. That should need a particularly powerful vessel.
So, why would one rather use a planetary vehicle on a planet instead of just a ship? Simply make it so that a certain number of stop effect modules is more effective at resisting gravity than the same number of thrusters, and also uses less energy. Alternately, one could add an "atmospheric engine" that uses much less power than a normal thruster, but only works in an atmosphere. I prefer the former option, however, as it uses no new blocks.