Ok then, I agree with capital ships in atmospheres. Even if they could not reasonably do it, this game shouldn’t have invisible walls or arbitrary limitations.
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They COULD reasonably do it, is what I’ve been saying.
You can limit how closely their warp engines can operate near gravitational forces. You can lower their crash tolerances. You can lower how intense of reentry forces (gs, pressure, friction). But to say they can’t reenter at the speed and angle something like Apollo or Soyuz enter and can’t stay aloft with their thrusters there (except maybe above some super high gravity bodies) is just nonsense. 
Now landing is a lot more force for every m/s of velocity you hit the ground with.
The Corvette seems to be able to hit the ground with hundreds of m/s of velocity, which I think is fine. Force grows greatly with mass, and it would be reasonable to have to be insanely gentler with its landing and to still crush bottom turrets though.
But an arbitrary restriction that makes no sense is ugh…
Just remember, that wind is the biggest enemy for anything trying to attempt a semi-stable atmospheric entry.
No… First like I said, I’m just playing devil’s advocate so that together we work this problem out as thoroughly as possible. My personal pref is for capitals to come low, even if it’s required to be a very hairy proposition for the sake of gameplay.
Second, one crew jumping up and down is not comparable to the orders of magnitude larger forces applied in maneuvering a … whatever thousands/million tons structure, and same structure cycling thru planetary gravities repeatedly.
I will say explicitly this time that I don’t find pressure vessel construction is an obvious reason for space-optimized capital ships to avoid atmosphere. I don’t know that, but then I have even less concrete basis there.
My only intent was just piggy backing on Gene’s comments for fun/curiosity’s sake. We still know basically nothing about this specific I:B design area.
[quote=“Kreydis, post:84, topic:841”]
wind is the biggest enemy for anything trying to attempt a semi-stable atmospheric entry.
[/quote]What if the ships simply thrust themselves to a slow descent? It doesn’t seem out of the question based on what we know/have seen so far.
Sure, it’s 5gs on the whole structure from front to back, but still, that’s an incredibly low amount of force to sustain with modern day engineering, and century old engineering, let alone a future space ship.
The wind thing is silly, since it seems like capital ships will have near or above 9m/s/s of acceleration when you extrapolate from the barges and the playable ship in the game. Wind is not that strong in most gases except gas giants. Their thrusters can counteract wind.
But yes, that’ll be something that lowers their maneuverability. They’re going to use their upward thrust to stay aloft, so they can’t rise fast without pointing up. Their thrusters counter acting wind is going to change how much they can thrust against it. That’s all cool stuff that adds to gameplay and is all the more reason they should be usable at or near a planet or moon’s surface.
Like so what if a capital ship can fly right down above a factory to bombard it?
The factories are supposed to have defensive artillery that can reach space, right?
It hits the bottom of the capital ship with that super powerful artillery, knocks out its bottom thrusters, and it falls right down. Seems like that balances itself out perfectly fine.
I’m from the stand point that handling it realistically, pretty much as if it were KSP but we have far more powerful and efficient engines, but obviously the capital ships have lower TWR, especially from thrusters, than Corvettes, will make from amazing gameplay and be a big selling point that isn’t in any other game.
Elite did have flying from space to a planet seamlessly.
Elite did not have beautiful 1km large capital ships merging out from a cloud while tugging the cloud with it and leaving a trail of it wisping behind it.
Also, yeah, their thrusters seem like they’ll be powerful enough to slow to terminal velocity which would drastically lower entry g forces, pressure, and friction… they can even just safely fall straight down to the surface calmly, albeit slowly.
While smaller ships can just warp right through much of a planet’s atmosphere, I think at the minimum the capital ships should be able to take a bit more entry forces than Apollo/Soyuz.
I never argued against that myself. I even suggested something similar that might inherently emerge, as illustrated in that old arcade game.
I am just assuming the role for argument’s sake, of specifically what Gene suggested.
I know. I didn’t mean that to you. Just what others were saying.
Since people are basically trying to say that capital ships outside of space would be bad, and are trying to make excuses for why they can’t get near planets and moons.
I think capital ships near the surface of a planet and in the atmosphere would be amazing both visually and for gameplay, on top of just making more sense.
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But if it ruins gameplay we will have to make do with the nearest thing to a realistic excuse, or even a crappy one or none at all.
I’ma just butt into your guys’ discussion to throw my $0.02 in.
Like innociv and lolsparta4, I don’t think there should be any artificial restrictions that entirely prevent a capital ship from entering atmo and landing. To do otherwise would seem to go against the grain of the philosophy of the I-Novae engine.
However, to prevent players from using capital ships to decimate bases with ease or place new bases with ease, there obviously has to be a downside to bringing one into the atmosphere. The first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that a capital ship will be extremely sluggish in an atmosphere - perhaps moreso than it already would be in space - due to the increased gravitational effects and increased surface area (atmospheric drag). So bringing a Cap into atmo, while physically possible, might leave it more vulnerable to fighters than it otherwise would in space.
But I rather like the idea of watching the spectacle unfold of a capital ship slowly descending over an enemy base and unleashing hell upon it. Perhaps that might be the ONLY way to destroy a base, since chances are a base’s shielding will be much stronger due to lack of a requirement to…move. So maybe that’s your solution right there: In order to prevent capital ships from being OP in atmosphere, make bases be heavily shielded and capable of withstanding long-range bombardment.
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Just a random thought, I really don’t like the trope of capital ships being slower than fighters at least sub light. The thrusters on capitals are 100 times bigger. Fighters can be nimbler, but capitals should be faster.
I think the idea is that an interceptor is an engine with a cockpit, thrusters, and gun attached to it. Lots of its mass is an engine.
But a destroyer, it might have more mass in guns all around it than the engines.
So, it makes sense for it to have a lower TWR, especially manuevering wise.
Maybe in a straight line there could be overlap between the fastest capital ships and the slowest corvettes, but I doubt they would put so much mass and space toward thrusters. I agree in a sense that they shouldn’t be super sluggish. But in atmosphere, a corvette’s thrusters having 1.5 TWR near the surface of a large moon or small planet, and a capital ship barely being over 1, is a huge difference in application even if the number is close.
Just like how the Nimitz isn’t slow in a straight line by any means, it’s actually deceptively fast, but it’s no speed boat, and certainly not a jetski when it comes to maneuverability.
In addition to living quarters, habitats for crew, galleys to eat, bunks, etc. Lots of things that a fighter (and maybe limited in a corvette) don’t have.
In space, acceleration is the name of the game since there’s (theoretically) no speed limit (god I hope they don’t put in an artificial sublight speed limit). What a Cap CAN do that a fighter can’t is last much, much, much longer. It’s built for endurance; for the long haul. A fighter obviously isn’t. So even though it’s slower to accelerate and harder to turn, it still will have a longer range and probably a larger delta-v if fuel capacity is taken into consideration (but it will take longer to implement that delta-v)
It’s worth noting that that Forces due to drag scale with the density of the medium, the cross sectional area perpendicular to the direction of travel, and the square of velocity. Cap ships will create immense drag inside of any atmosphere due to their large sizes. Additionally, I expect them to have a shitton(an SI unit in the Inovae universe) of mass. It better have a ton of momentum regardless of what it’s trying to pull off, so much so that it’s a bitch to fly these things into atmospheres because it would take the better half of an hour just to reach the surface safely.
Warp != maneuvering thrusters either so don’t expect this ship designed for space combat to have awesome accelerations or anything like that. It has warp, it doesn’t need to dodge. It needs to take more hits than the other ship. It’s going to fly even worse inside an atmosphere and capships should only have the faintest ability to fly and land in them to re-arm.
Too late, it’s already c. 
(I have no idea but I thought it was funny)
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They’ve already introduced atmospheric flight dynamics, so it seems reasonable to assume that it can be extended to impact capital ships as well.
Yeah. Capital ships are surely less aerodynamic as well even if their forward thrust TWR is similar to smaller ships.
The ship in the prototype might not be very streamlined, but it still is more so than the mining barge and still looks like it works somewhat as a lifting body.
Honestly would have liked to see that prototype ship a bit more streamlined looking, though. :x
That was the point I was making. They better handle like shit in atmosphere.
It’s a spacecraft used for operating in space. It doesn’t need aerodynamics. Take all spacecraft into atmospheres at your own risk 
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They fly pretty cool in atmosphere. Are they really not supposed to? It seems like it wouldn’t hurt to not have all that blunt stuff to the right of the cockpit, is all.
I think that just needs a second look.
Doesn’t need wings or whatever when it’s a lifting body with plenty of maneuverability with thrusters, but still. The “it’s a space ship” stuff gets taken too far in a game where the big draw is the seamless transition from space to atmosphere and where there can be wildly different atmosphere and weather that changes flight dynamics.
It’s a prototype. Every thing you have seen, every speed, every show of agility, every weapon shot, amount of damage, repair time, power setting, even the atmospheric colour, is subject to change.
As far as the little ships, I don’t care. Overpowered(in the traditional sense of thrust) antigrav engines can push through anything so long as it’s not a massive brick housing smaller bricks that can also fly.
Keith already said that there won’t be restrictions on capital ships.
IMO:
As long as we allow capital ships to crash and burn after losing control in the atmosphere, they should explode like a powerful nuclear weapon would, and send out a shockwave that levels the trees and sends players flying!
And knocking out their engines would be the most effective way to take them down, making them vulnerable in enemy territory but okay to land in a friendly city.
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