Flight charcteristics need suggestions please.

In the images attached I have my ground "hero" units and my blimp units. I posted shots out of game so you can get an idea of how the game camera is working.

I have modified my tree doodads. The fly over for the lower trees is 500 - the taller "giant" trees are pathed as no fly zones. In the real map (this is from the test map) they will be used mostly around the edge of the map and placed in areas were no units can move through.

As you can see with the Ground Unit view the camera AOA is much lower - and if you look at the map you can see that in this particular screenshot the camera is looking from the west to the east.

AOA for flying units is higher and steeper than for ground units. And as you can tell the Camera is set much higher giving the feel of being high in the air. In the blimp image you may barely make out the hero units on the ground in the forest.

BTW the camera will follow units automatically.

Although I have adjusted the fly over height of the blimps to fly over the lower custom trees (which are set from 1.8 to 2.4 scale) My forests are not so close together as to form a "solid" flight height. When the blimps fly over they dip and pitch terribly as they fly.

I desire a more smooth, high flight, they should climb and retain their height while flying over forests (or village or other "tall" doodads).

Further when they are over a clearing and getting ready to load/unload or are stopped I want them closer to the ground to where the gondola's are just above the ground. visible from the ground unit's perspective (not so high up) and looking like they can be boarded/unboarded easily.

To make this a little more complicated I would like to restrict where they can load and unload down to whether or not they can get close enough to the ground if possible. Meaning that they can not unload over forests, but have to use a clearing.

BTW the blimps are scaled up to 3.00.

Any and all suggestions are welcomed. I am seeking the "easiest" way to accomplish these goals. Keep in mind the finished maps will have a diversity of woodland and pastures/clearings. The "wasteland" maps is no problem since there is nothing high to fly over other than the occasional vulture LOL.

You could trigger the height change. Periodicaly, check for trees in a small area around the zeppelin; the larger the area, the smoother the flying height will be, but more destructibles will get picked, meaning more calculations. Find the nearest destructible in that area and based on that, set the fly height. If the nearest destructible is right next to the zeppelin, go to max fly height (+500), if it's at max range, at the edge of the area in which you pick trees, then give no bonus flyheight and for all distances in between 0 and max distance give a height bonus between 500 and 0. If there are no trees in range, you can allow the zeppelin to use it's land ability.

Works rather well. Thanks!