Whenever you're building you might be planning to have a house in the air, maybe a couple dozen feet high in the air, but you'll have to make a giant, horrendous wall of dirt to get to your point where you will build. Then you'll need to find a way to remove all the scaffolding. That's why we need air blocks. Now, you might think, what the hell Shock, what are air blocks. Well, as a matter of fact, I was getting to that part. Please carry on reading. Air blocks are placed as a platform and will disappear in 5 seconds, which is also quite useful when you attempt to climb out a vertical cavern and... you're out of materials to create platforms, you're out of dirt to make an aesthetically displeasing way of getting back up. You'll need some air blocks. They're selling on £5 on ebay, if you're interested. Screw that! They're free, made completely out of... Well they are found in chests... underground. Let's just say they're not craft able and you'll have to explore some more if you want to collect some. Thanks for reading. - Shock
Oh that's alright. When I was reading, I was crying because they sounded too overpowered, but the fact you have to get your arse down them caves and find them in chests is awesome. They'll be a bit bad for dungeon loot, though.
That's exactly the point, I needed some disadvantages somewhere in my thread. And thanks again for the feedback, everything is much appreciated.
They basically are bits of cloud and they help you build up to a higher ground if you run out of materials. You know the ice rod in Terraria? It placed ice blocks and you could build from that point, air blocks can do that to.
This was a useful game mechanic in Valkyrie Profile, also - freezing air to create stepping platforms. If you need a science-fictional constructs: Tech 1: Cubic helium balloons. They'd be displayed as having a thin string extending to the ground, and pop after a while, since cubic balloons have a lot of stress. Tech 20: Superconducting gyroscopic disc. Did you know magnets levitate above superconductors (and vice-versa)? Well, they do, because of induced electric currents. And "live" (tectonically active) planets tend to have magnetic fields. Tech 40: Spinning cold plasma ball, working on the same principle as superconductive levitation, but requiring no materials, only air and energy. Lasts a little while before dissipating. I'm not sure how safe they would be to stand on. Tech 80: Cubic standing gravity-wave solition. No mass, no matter, just a standing wave that has a local zero at its top, and is stable for a while before dissipating.
Okay I can see where you're coming from, especially because all of this was pretty much the main problem in Terraria hahah. Although if you look at the building tech demo, I believe that we won't need to place blocks in the same manner. There's a chance that with the new building tool we can place some block on thin air.
Yes, and with vehicles that can hover(possibly) the building tool would be able to put the block wherever you want. Also even without the building tools a hovering vehicle would make it easier to get rid of the dirt wall, or go pretty much wherever you want.
Maybe 15 seconds instead of 5, when you get where you want you would want to make a platform under yourself so you don't fall.
Air blocks aren't a bad idea, or a forcefield generator that pretty much identically mimics the Ice Rod in Terraria, if you don't mind it being slightly more useful.
I would rather have some sort of floating blocks instead of "air" blocks For example primitive- helium balloon block- one such block could lift itself 25 blocks above sea level- each block attached to it will decrease height low tech- solar powered helipad block- can lift itself 50 blocks above sea level- each block attached to it will decrease height medium tech- fission powered jets- can lift itself 100 blocks above sea level- each block attached to it will decrease height high tech- fusion powered antigravity pod block- can lift itself 200 blocks above sea level- each block attached will decrease height helipad, jets and antigravity pods can be wired to control unit to adjust floating height (all must be wired to work) All these block can be crafted and used to make one floating structure (cross tech floating blocks will float at height of best tech) All building blocks are divided into 3 categories Light blocks- decrease flight height by 1 block (for example- porous plastic) Medium blocks- decrease flight height by 2 blocks (for example- wood) Heavy blocks- decrease flight height by 3 blocks (for example- steel-ceramic composite) Light blocks usually are easy to break, while heavy blocks usually are armored So for example We have small hovering base that is kept in the air by 20 helium balloons, 15 helipads, and 3 jets So maximum height of it is 100 blocks (height of jets) Such structure can carry 20*25+15*50+3*100=1550 light blocks=775 medium blocks=516.7 heavy blocks before lowering at the sea level (higher load will force it to decrease even lower until whole construction will reach the ground- hovering at 1 block height above closest block) That means that it will float at height of 100 blocks as long as is loaded with 1450 light blocks, 575 medium blocks, 216 heavy blocks or any combinations of those Any additional load will lower the height All helipads and jets are wired to control unit, but since helium baloons can't be adjusted, base can't go lower than 20 blocks Characters, vehicles and other creatures wouldn't be counted in all this (since it would be too frustrating and complex) One possible problem of such thing would be how much calculation system will need to run on the background each second It could be quite problematic with huge bases
I like your idea. Terraria basically did this with the Ice Rod. Very handy for building in the air. In Starbound a tech device creating forcefield blocks could be used to do the same.
At the beginning, I definitely remember putting a section about how it's similar to the Ice Rod. Oh well. Thanks for the kind words.
