A vital component of plan Giant Flying Fortress, but, critically, not one which significantly helps us in building the others.
Personally, I actually don't think it's as useful as it looks. I guess it depends on just how adjustable the area it covers is. Because I don't know about you, but I don't particularly like the idea of having to design our fortress with lunar-level gravity in mind, much less zero-gee. So unless we can shape the field so precisely that we never have to deal with that, I'm not sure I actually want to use it.
There's also sort of a catch-22 with it. By limiting the low-to-null gravity areas to specific places, we increase the overall weight of the fortress, increasing the amount of lift we need. It also means we have to deal with how an object hovering due to null-gravity handles having objects under a full gravity of force on top of it. But not doing that leads to other problems.
Overall, design-wise, Aten is much closer to what I want in-terms of propulsion for a flying fortress. It just hovers. Maybe we'll end up incorporating the Lightweight into our fortress, to reduce the amount of lift we need, but I think Aten is actually a bigger step in that direction.
Though guys? All of you pushing for the Aten because of how useful it is, especially if you're dropping the Titanian because it's obvious... Well, how obvious do you think a floating disc is going to be as 'An Inspired made this!' It basically gives up every single attempt at subtly ever, which we still need right now. Hell, the Titanian is LESS obvious than the Aten, especially if we make some adjustments, or just do something like pulling off the outer layer and shoving them in a bag to hide them.
The difference is that we can park the Aten somewhere inconspicuous (and likely booby-trapped), if need be, and still use it when it's actually necessary. Titanian, on the other hand, needs to worn to do anything, and we'll want to wear it in towns. If you want defence, just vote for Prometheus's Gift, and wire it into our current defenses. It'll be as effective, if not more so.
Aten just didn't inspire me. It's, what? A flying mirror with a situational use laser?
Why build that when, later, we could build a clock-work jetpack dragon with a proper laser? Or particle gun. With missiles.
Or, you know, a helicopter? One that transforms into a mecha and uses its propellers as rotary blades to literally mow down infantry.
Because Aten, if upgraded in size and lift, makes an excellent foundation for a flying fortress. Like, a literal flying building or town. Lightweight, on the other hand, will probably result in us building the ISS, just out of necessity for dealing with null-gee.
I think that Aten and Skybreaker are the most exotic builds we've been offered, so I'd interpret these as saying that Prometheus' Gift will put most or all of the builds we've been offered in range of a no-audience Surge. I could see some of the green-level proposals being more difficult to build, but honestly not by much. Skybreaker is complete bullshit and I have a feeling that Aten isn't far behind.
Given how bizarre it's hovering propulsion is, physics-wise, yeah, it's fairly impressive. Especially since I don't think objects under conventional zero-gravity would actually float with objects at 1 gravity on top of them. That means Aten is probably major shenanigans.
