Idea for Evochron Legacy Atmosphere entry

[TraderDan]

If upon entering the atmosphere, if a drift mechanic were implemented that would scale up as the player went faster causing the ship to drift away slightly from the center of the planet and the player would have to fight against this affect

I thought about an idea that would give atmosphere entry more weight but might be easy to implement from a programming perspective

We know that once you enter the atmosphere damage levels and the flare effect scale up as you exceed 2000 kps

[Vice]

Drag is also imparted as well as changes in physics behavior (considering spherical nav shielding, limited ship aerodynamics, etc). How do you envision the drift mechanic enhancing such changes in flight behavior? That is, what benefit would applying an additional drift element provide (beyond the planet starting to carry the player along with its rotation as it does now)?

It almost sounds like a repulsive effect (away from the center of the planet, almost like a magnet), rather than a resistive drag effect (friction against shields/ship).

[TraderDan]

Maybe depending on the players speed and angle of decent the amount of repulsion effect would vary in intensity. I think this would go a long way in the immersion department, add "weight" to the atmosphere and give the player more involvement other than just set the autopilot or vector and decend at whatever oblique angle and gently glide down. Planetary decent is one of the games biggest strong suits and it accomplished this way before any rivals did.

[TraderDan]

To be more specific the "repulsive effect" would occur just as the player enters the atmosphere to say the "mid atmosphere" and the rate of repulsion determined by speed and angle. If a player has already entered the atmosphere then this effect would seem unnatural. I think of sci Fi shows where a ship has "bounced" off the atmosphere from too shallow an entry angle etc and thought that would be cool to have And might not be hard to implement.

[TraderDan]

Ok let's see, as a player I know you've went through meticulous effort to add these drag, gravity and atmosphere effects. (Reminds me of my rain on windshield argument and you are *technically 100 percent right) But as a player while I see the numbers and know what happening I don't *feel* it in the game and a lot of that comes to the fact that the player is interacting with the game world with a monitor and keyboard / mouse or stick sitting in an office chair. So you're not going to feel that feeling in your gut of the inertia so the divergence in realism and "feel" have a lot to do with conveying information to the player with the medium that's available. I guess depending on perspective (and feel is highly subjective) if the player "feels" like the entered a planets dense atmosphere might carry more weight than the technical aspects of how they got there. Again this is all highly subjective and I feel like I'm rambling lol I swear I'm not being pretentious these things just legitimately interest me and I just want to be of help.

[Vice]

I think of sci Fi shows where a ship has "bounced" off the atmosphere from too shallow an entry angle etc and thought that would be cool to have And might not be hard to implement.

That would be a different effect from what it sounds like you are describing. Entering an atmosphere at too shallow of an angle can result in just skimming and then flying back out into space. But it is not a 'bounce' or 'repelling' effect (regardless of how it might be described in a sci-fi show), it's simply that the glide path is too shallow to sustain speed reduction via drag to fully enter the atmosphere. This can happen in the game as well. Entering too steeply can result in too much friction, causing a spacecraft to burn up (which the shields in the game significantly protect the player from, but they can still explode if entering too quickly).

So I'm not sure how such a repelling/bounce/drift/resistance effect could be realistically applied. It sounds like it would be literally pushing the player away from the planet just because they entered the atmosphere, rather than allowing the physics of drag and friction to apply naturally.

[TraderDan]

In a way yes, I'm not talking about like a dramatic effect like navigating a storm but more subtle and only just upon entering the atmosphere

If angle is really shallow and the speed is high enough the "repulsion effect might push you out from the center, a more steep angle might push up on the ship and slightly alter course but the ship wouldn't "bounce" off . The reason I bring it up is that the atmosphere won't exactly feel like planets are just space where you can't fly too fast but as a completely different zone to communicate to the player that "hey I'm entering a new flight environment " other than the audible alerts and numbers on screen.

[TraderDan]

In my mod I added some metallic creaking sounds after the audible alerts (I noticed this in elite) and just those subtle touches did make difference in the feel of planet entry - is it "realistic" ? Maybe not but it "feels" like it does