Anti-Gravity Ships

### General information

An anti-gravity ship is any ship using an anti-gravity generator, commonly referred to as AGG. While many AGG ships are used like normal ships and the AGG only sees occasional use in some situations, others very much rely on the AGG for normal operation.

### Function

An AGG will always be set to a certain altitude. This is 1000m by default and can be changed, via LUA, to any value between 1000m and 100 000m. When within 200 meters of the target altitude the AGG will decrease the effect of gravity to the point where the construct will just float. This effect is not strong enough to catch a ship, should it be freefalling towards the planet. When the ship floats, it can be propelled as usual but will not fall, gravity has no effect as long as the ship is close to the target altitude.

The AGG continues to work if the pilot leaves the seat or even the ship. Should the pilot distance himself to the point where the game unloads elements, it is possible that the ship starts falling on return, especially when respawning on the ship.

Setting a new target altitude will cause the AGG to slowly adjust, at a rate of 4 meters per second. This can not be sped up in any way.

### Advantages over normal ships.

* An AGG ship can carry any amount of mass once at target altitude, and then be moved with a low amount of engines at a relaxed cruising speed.
* An AGG ship does not need to land, it can just be parked in the sky.
* An AGG ship does not need wings, ground engines or even brakes.

### Disadvantages

* The climb speed of 4m/s is significantly slower than that of a normal ship.
* Parking in the sky can lead to falling out of the sky.
* Wings, ground engines and brakes may be optional when moving with AGG active, but are still needed for take off and landing

### AGG Towers

In order to mitigate the disadvantages, players have build high structures, to park their ships on static constructs at an altitude above 1000 meters. This however leads to other issues, from obstructing flight paths, difficulty when loading or unloading, to falling through the parking platform if the tower is not fully loaded.

### Usage

Due to the points above, an AGG ship shines when it comes to carrying very large masses and speed is of less concern, when multiple avatars are working together and one stays on the ship, or when scanning difficult territory from the sky and the pilot stays on board at all times.

It is usually less valuable for any quick trips, when traveling via orbiting is possible, or when the pilot needs to move out of load range.

### Sizes and pulsors

The AGG-S is for dynamic constructs with a core M and needs to be pairs with 6 pulsors, the AGG-M is for L core ships and requires 12 pulsors. The AGG-L can be build, but requires a dynamic core XL which does not yet exist. It does however make for an excellent table for around 40 avatars.

### Interaction and LUA

The current default HUD only allows to turn the AGG on and off via alt+G. This can also be done via interaction with the AGG itself. Changing the target altitude requires simple coding. The most basic way to do this is a programming board, connected to the AGG and the command

`Altitude = 1000 --export: Altitude setting`

`slot1.setBaseAltitude(Altitude)`

`unit.exit()`

under unit->Filter->start.

Now the board can be right-clicked to access the Lua Parameters to change the value from 1000 to any desired value, the board, when activated, will change the AGG target altitude and turn itself off again.

There are many more sophisticated user made solutions available.