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Friction Shield


Dui Mauris Football

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I have been thinking, and this actually makes sense for a strategic "solution" to high and low air resistance worlds. This part acts much like a shield or a cooler; it has a radius in which it affects things, in this case the air friction. What the friction shield will do is it will either increase or decrease the air friction defined by a slider, and the difference between the original air resistance and the new air resistance is how much energy the thing takes up. It cannot change the size of the diameter of effect, which I propose will be slightly smaller than that of a shield. Not only would this allow for easier movement, but it could also be used against enemies by slowing them to a halt so you can kill them or remove the air resistance and send them flying. I can see many great uses for this, especially in sumo. I'll leave the rest of the ideas to you.

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Hello and welcome!

Possible complications with this kind of device:

-Reducing air resistance increases overall speed regardless of the ambient pressure. That makes this a speed multiplier that could always be worth using, mitigating the point of the original use. 

-Any part increasing pressure would be subjected to it, causing instability unless it's ship wide, at which point the enemies around you are slower, but so are you, so it's a bit of a wash. 

-Reducing the air pressure to send enemies flying would likely result in you getting sent flying instead. A striking drone part will speed up the moment before it hits you with an arm, and even if you manage to strike back, all you struck was a moving part.  With your reduced friction, you'll head straight for the ring.

-Anything that can increase air pressure in sumo will make center hogs even more dominant than they already are. 

So far, I think drones do fairly well in high air resistance maps if they're built with an emphasis on high thrust. Sadly, I think a part like this could be very hard to balance. 

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Deceleration thanks to air resistance is incredibly potent and useful, even at its lowest settings.

If your craft is not completely symmetrical, and e.g. its left side travels a little faster than its right side, air resistance will make it so that the side going fastest will be slowed down more, effectively putting a limit to how much faster one side can go: excess speed is shaved off every 1/60th of a second, making such small problems minor, if noticeable at all. Suppress air resistance, and any excess speed will stay and accumulate: your craft will be turning right, and if your brake thrusters are evenly placed this left side speed will never resorb. You will be spinning right round.

Nimbatus_GIF_201812041414469375.gif.02e938fa27ea5d1af2fdca7d15c14ad1.gif

A minute later:

Nimbatus_GIF_201812041417239505.gif.3b79f8aa9a84e5b810b0518673c2f14f.gif

I should also state that high speeds achieved through the lowering of air resistance are likely to disintegrate crafts for the most part, and create problems of stability on any ship with such devices on board if they do not cover the whole vehicle. Not counting the problems with factories and explosions caused by the same speeds.

Such small range could not be used against enemies in anything other than a secondary drone (produced by a factory, for example), seeing as how every thing that is mildly menacing can shoot/explode from farther away than even a shield can reach, except hammerheads, which are quick enough not to really care about friction.

I struggle to see a use to it, other than bypassing the heavier atmosphere of some planets.

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Me and Markus discussed in another thread that high air resistance makes the game slower but not necessarily more challenging, (translation : less fun) so I think dense atmosphere may in the future mean more severe wind and weather, rather than the mere slowdown we see now. 

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