Make Gravity Magnifier Engine affect Enemy Projectiles

[Rafs]

Hey!

Back in modding discussions we tested the Zero Point Gun with high gravity instead of 0 gravity.
Besides making the enemy heavier, it also made other projectiles fired at it to instantly fall.

Gif: https://gyazo.com/5a3f0af2d0b87306269e3d404bcf1666

The high gravity field was effectively protecting the enemy.

Now, consider this:

• When making a Tech, you can opt to use lighter blocks to move faster, but they have less HP, making you swift but squishy.
• Or you can use heavier blocks, which usually have more health, making you slower but tankier.

The Gravity Magnifier doesn't necessarily make you slower since the drag in this game comes from block mass, and gravity is a secondary effect.
But high gravity demands slow and strong wheels or large and strong hovers, decreasing mobility and available space. And it costs energy, a resource commonly used for survivability.
It might make you slower without any defensive gain.


My idea is giving the Generator a better field effect that can act on enemy projectiles, making them more or less fall, potentially missing the gravity enhanced Tech. This would only affect projectiles with gravity enabled, usually cannon shots, missiles and most bullets. Lasers wouldn't be affected, those usually have gravity disabled.
We are giving the Gravity Magnifier a deeper strategic use that increases the Tech survivability at the current cost of energy and possibly mobility.


With these changes, the block could even be considered the "deflector" of explosive projectiles that many people asked over the years, all this with very little changes on the code and no new block required.

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TD;DR - Make the Gravity Generator affect enemy projectiles to make them fall and miss the user.

 

[Nooboid]

YES

 

[burger1113]

Hmm the magnifier really has no practical use other than some novelty builds, so that would be interesting for sure. But it would have to be more effective with a higher multiplier against projectiles than blocks to really make some change to the path they travel.
Yes. Maybe this could be the alternative to missile countermeasures and actually be superior to them since they could affect simple bullets/rounds.

I would very much like to add that gravity engines should affect things other than the tech it is mounted. I was pretty disappointed to find out on an antigrav carrier ship build, how small techs sitting on the deck in the antigrav bubble's range were not in antigrav. It made the carrier plummet to the ground, of course. I eventually canceled the build altogether.

 

[Rafs]

As a part 2 of this thread, I would like to include an idea for another possible gravitional effect, which would be implemented in a new block.

Reverse Gravity Bubble Generator

It acts creating a bubble of reversed gravity, it does not affect Techs but affects projectiles that are susceptible to gravity.

I made a drawing to illustrate the concept:



The projectile gets reversed gravity when entering the field, it starts to go upwards, finds the downwards gravity on top of the bubble, and keeps going forward while traveling on the interface of positive/negative gravity, potentially missing the target Tech.
Such effect would be quite visually appealing too, with the bullets travelling around the bubble like if they were floating on water, really cool.

We modders tested that with reversed Zero Point Gun field but the projectiles did not respond to reversed gravity, only Techs did, so this would need to be fixed in order for the whole idea to work.