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[Deshara]

having not played this game in, like, over a year I was in line at the dr's office & couldn't get the map-terrain effects from this game out of my head. In particular how they could implement planetary atmospheric conditions for mid & low-altitutde combat that work like a pursuit map, and then how they could make multi-tiered battles that stretch from orbit down to ground level. The fact that the game ignores the concept of directional movement actually helps.

High Atmosphere terrain map: both fleets start on the bottom corners of the map traveling up, the left side of the map is towards (but not) the ground. The ships are still in overhead view bc *** you, I guess they're flying sideways, who cares. There's a "Wind-Shear" terrain effect that scales from 0%-100% that shoves the ship leftward, its force multiplied by the ship's mass & how close to 100% the effect is. It increases if a ship's shields come up or the farther the ship turns away from pointing up (the acceptable degrees of deviation scales with ship size, 45/35/25/15(?)) or if the engines die. If the ship is at the far-left side of the map the "Wind-Shear" affect fills up an invisible bar that once it gets full forces the ship to retreat off that side of the map and gets moved to the Low Atmosphere terrain map. Escaping the map on the top of the map takes the ships up into orbit. Being in orbit of a planet with planetary defenses spawns flak cannon rounds from off-map that target ships & reduce their CR like the corona of a star, upgraded defenses will just straight up fire random LRM's & large missile slot missile barrages at enemies.

Low Atmosphere terrain map: Same as high atmosphere, except the far left of the map (just past the part of the map that bounces your ship back) is the ground, flying past at a blur. From the top left of the map straight downward, at high speeds, the map launches projectiles in the form of, trees, buildings, hills. They're background objects initially, but every time a ship passes over one it rolls for chance to impact, depending on ship size 5%/20%/35%/50%, and if you fail the roll the object becomes a physics obstacle, does base fragmentation damage to that ship & is blasted into parts like a dying ship that function like landmines to any nearby/flanking/chasing ships, all damage from impact & debris increased the smaller the ship x9/x7/x5/x1 (spoiler the middle is in the most danger, frigates have disproportionately low chance to get hit & capital ships disproportionately low damage, safety over-ride, fuel injectors, civilian & heavily armored mods decrease damage taken from or chance to impact). Touching the ground on the side of the map, like if the "Wind-Shear" affect shoves you into it bc you got your engines shot out, applies the "Lithobrake" affect which does kinetic damage and applies gigantic kinetic force on your ship shoving it downward (on-screen downward not towards the ground), if your ship is lithobraked off the bottom of the map, smash bros rules apply.