Inspired by older submarines I thought it would be a neat maneuver option to order ships into a crash dive.
Normally a submarine would blow it's ballasts to sink quickly (to avoid enemy fire) but in Airships: Conquer the Skies a crash dive could be the guys manning the suspendium chambers turning off all of the lift generators simultaneously for however long before the ship is about to hit the ground.
This could be really good for commanding small airships who can recover quickly, especially for avoiding heavy cannon shots that could instantly cripple the vehicle on impact.
For larger vehicles it could make vertical ramming slightly more effective with no lift chambers online.
This could also be called a "forced landing". Along with allowing ships to crush each other, it could allow smaller gunship sized vessels to land on bigger ships- thus creating a flighdeck cruiser.
Yes, but I find the ram function very situational (doesn't appear to work effectively on larger ships). The "put her down" command would forcefully turn off the lift chambers and allow the dead weight of the ship crush smaller vessels, or allow smaller vessels to land on bigger ships.
Yes, totally, turning off the chambers would be more effective yet. The plan here is that I am collecting a set of "special manoeuvres" like "turn off the Suspendium chambers" that will become available under certain circumstances.
Other manoeuvres I have gathered:
Smoke screen - Uses up coal like crazy but makes ship harder to hit.
Flare - Makes target ship easier to hit.
Supercharge Suspendium Chambers - Increased lift, but ever-increasing chances of a catastrophic crack in one of the crystals.
Scuttle - Literally set your own ship on fire and escape. Useful if you're being boarded by superior numbers.
Scavenge - Damages armour and modules in exchange for fuel and repair tools.
Scattershot - Converts repair tools into ammo.
Why do they all start with S? That's going to be fun to create shortcuts for.
On a side note, Zarkonnen I had an idea I`d just like to throw out about the command bar (to avoid it becoming the GSBII clutter-screen).
Where you could remove it and the bottom bar and change it to so with a ship selected the player can right click anywhere to bring up a command wheel that acts as your command options, stats in the middle and where move orders will go to.
Side note: do sflares make ships easier to hit or more likely to be targeted? Because just being easier to hit doesn't seem useful; And could supercharging a suspendium chamber have offensive capabilities?
Cracking suspendium crystals? (rubs hands together far too viscously). I've noticed that sometimes (especially in 6.4, when I bought the game) that the crew will randomly shout "it's gonna blow!" and dash out of the lift chambers. This in turn, would make the ship drop, but the lift chambers never exploded. Was I seeing things?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Inspired by older submarines I thought it would be a neat maneuver option to order ships into a crash dive.
Normally a submarine would blow it's ballasts to sink quickly (to avoid enemy fire) but in Airships: Conquer the Skies a crash dive could be the guys manning the suspendium chambers turning off all of the lift generators simultaneously for however long before the ship is about to hit the ground.
This could be really good for commanding small airships who can recover quickly, especially for avoiding heavy cannon shots that could instantly cripple the vehicle on impact.
For larger vehicles it could make vertical ramming slightly more effective with no lift chambers online.
Commodore
This could also be called a "forced landing". Along with allowing ships to crush each other, it could allow smaller gunship sized vessels to land on bigger ships- thus creating a flighdeck cruiser.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Hopefully ships will just have hanger modules (from the gunship suggestion) to avoid collision damage.
On a side note: rubber (or a similar material) back-wall would be another cool addition to mitigate collision damage.
Aerial Emperor
(Note that you can give a ram command straight down that is pretty effective in that way.)
Commodore
Yes, but I find the ram function very situational (doesn't appear to work effectively on larger ships). The "put her down" command would forcefully turn off the lift chambers and allow the dead weight of the ship crush smaller vessels, or allow smaller vessels to land on bigger ships.
Aerial Emperor
Yes, totally, turning off the chambers would be more effective yet. The plan here is that I am collecting a set of "special manoeuvres" like "turn off the Suspendium chambers" that will become available under certain circumstances.
Other manoeuvres I have gathered:
Why do they all start with S? That's going to be fun to create shortcuts for.
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
On a side note, Zarkonnen I had an idea I`d just like to throw out about the command bar (to avoid it becoming the GSBII clutter-screen).
Where you could remove it and the bottom bar and change it to so with a ship selected the player can right click anywhere to bring up a command wheel that acts as your command options, stats in the middle and where move orders will go to.
Side note: do sflares make ships easier to hit or more likely to be targeted? Because just being easier to hit doesn't seem useful; And could supercharging a suspendium chamber have offensive capabilities?
Commodore
Cracking suspendium crystals? (rubs hands together far too viscously). I've noticed that sometimes (especially in 6.4, when I bought the game) that the crew will randomly shout "it's gonna blow!" and dash out of the lift chambers. This in turn, would make the ship drop, but the lift chambers never exploded. Was I seeing things?
Air Lord, Engineering Corps
Your seeing the future!!