Spring RTS Engine

So, apparently, when the map gravity is high, (say 500% of normal, for instance), planes have much trouble flying. They are hugging the ground, they look like they fly with a high incidence even when going straight on flat terrain, and they don't manage to climb slopes: I saw them using their momentum to climb half a slope, then turn back when their ran out of speed, and neither insistant clicking nor FPS mode could force them to climb the rest of the slope. BTW, I had the impression that I couldn't steer the planes on FPS mode.

It's like if under heavy gravity, planes try hard but can't take off, and so drive on the surface.

Save that, strangely, planes get a huge vertical boost when taking off or landing. But they fall to ground level right after, and I haven't even managed to use that vertical boost to cross any slope.

Strangly, copters (such as the brawler) are unaffected.

It means that on map with high gravity, planes are turned into some sort of ground vehicle with very low manoeuvrability, that are very hard to get where you want and are blocked by ramps that wouln't block a bulldog.

I guess that to some extent, it can make sense that planes don't fly when subject to very heavy gravity.

But on the other hand, when you experience that ingame, it feels like a bug.

I'd prefer planes to fly well even under heavy gravity. I could settle for having them fly worse but still be able to fly anywhere. But having my bombers' tails buried in the ground while they're flying straight at cruise speed on flat land just is wrong. And having planes unable to fly over ramps any vehicle can climb is really weird. And having copters unnaffected seem wrong.

Having a movement class without a defined maxslope but where any slope is crossable with enough momemtum, and any low slope unclimbable without momentum, could be interesting, but that should be a new kind of unit type, not the type "aircraft under heavy gravity", imo.

So, what do you think?

Well, naturly I voted with my sense of hummor and click Trees, however on a more serios note, i think there should maybe be a max Limit to how much planes are effected. Surely If the planes are using gravity in there movement calculations, someone can add an:
If gravity > 200 then gravity1 = 200 else gravity1 = gravity and just reference planes gravity to gravity1 insted.

(PS thats very sloppy code I know. Think of it as a sentance with symbols...)

aGorm

While I appreciate that this is certainly _not_ intended functionality, and that planes flying low is a frustrating effect - not to mention the confusion in pathfinding, I think that it is good that there is a way to limit the movement of aircraft. Mappers do need a way to make an area plane-proof. For example, maps like "the pass" are pretty much absurd - instead of being a tight brawl in the alleyway, the alley is fortified with turrents and the game becomes a gunship/artillery war.

I don't think forbidding planes to cross certain areas should be done by rendering all planes and artillerty useless map-wide.

also, brawlies are hovers so they wouldn't be affected by gravity in this way

Allow me to take this opportunity to bitch.

Transport planes seem to be set at a fixed height and won't differ from it no matter what their cruisealt is set to! My monstrous Krogoth gets mashed into the terrain when it gets airlifted!

krogoth's shouldn't be able to be transported imo..

I rather like seeing the Krogoth wade through the ground at a lightning pace. It wouldn't look quite so absurd if the unit carrying the krog was visible too.

NOiZE wrote:krogoth's shouldn't be able to be transported imo..

Get your own mod!

Maybe just have a constant for gravity for every map? I mean, it's sort of pointless, not really something you think about when you are playing.

all unit should influenced by gravity, so at extreme gravity the tank will be suck by gravity and stuck on the ground, and at very extreme gravity all unit will crunched to pieces by gravity pressure
me genius no ?

But zero gravity maps are COOOOOOOOOL! Also how would YOU like your space maps having gravity. That would suck. Also low gravity affects a suprsiing amount of gameplay, as dose high gee. Its just no one has really gone to extreams for maps and stuff.

Exept for me!

i'd like to have high-grav just slow down the planes more as they vector morre thrust into vtol...

Caydr wrote:Allow me to take this opportunity to bitch.

Transport planes seem to be set at a fixed height and won't differ from it no matter what their cruisealt is set to! My monstrous Krogoth gets mashed into the terrain when it gets airlifted!

SWEET! They fixed it!!! And another bug I reported!!! Everyone, the secret to getting noticed is giant red lettering!

Well, I won't write in big red letters, but I'll just say that planes should be seriously affected by gravity at all times, and the brawlers and such should be behaving like normal planes (their height should not be fixed, rather they should be supported by a force vector - same goes for taking off VTOLs), and gravity would oppose to that. In high-G situations, planes would be forced to taxi. This again brings about ground collision damage - extremely high G-forces would create enough force so that a unit merely standing would take damage as if it was constantly hitting the ground.

The very idea of having custom gravity just messes up the gameplay in so many ways. The play balance is completely thrown out the window, especialy considering how the physics model ignores gravity for many units and projectiles that should be effected by it (missiles for example).

Let custom gravity be a mod feature, not a map feature.

Pxtl wrote:...
Let custom gravity be a mod feature, not a map feature.

Hmm, that's actually a very interesting idea.

Because of varying gravity, for example, balistic weapons have to have they're range artificially limited and artificially modified when on higher ground and all sort of weird stuff.
Of course, having it removed from the maps takes away from the mapers the feeling of power of modifying whatever they want.

Maybe we could have, instead but similarly, gravity defined in the mod and, in the map, the ability to have a gravity modifier, optional, with a default value of (obviously) 1 or 100 (meaning 1,00).

There is actually a very interesting tag in the code named "gravityaffected"... I wonder if that can be of any use to help in this case...

The maps can have all kinds of weird gravity settings (vector-defined gravity anyone?), but if a mod specifically says that something isn't affected, it isn't.

I'd like to see a way to ground planes, but I think gravity isn't really the smoothest option.

I'd rather go for something like Tiberian Sun's ion storms, or other such weather conditions.

I can see this being used to apply a whole new level to Spring. High-gee upgrades, increased energy costs for aircraft in high-gee maps. Keep it; realism's good. But add workarounds. Otherwise it's unbalanced.