AI exploits and how to fix them
1. AI does not respond to being fired on by particle based damage, such as the Devil's Tongue flame tank. I actually got this fixed, the solution will be further down the post.
2. Once AI unit gets EMP'd it loses track of what it was doing. Very very exploitable, especially to AI harvesters. You can basically EMP all his harvesters and he will never understand to replace them.
3. AI units that don't have anti-air weapons will still try to target flying jumpjet troopers. Basically you can lure an entire team after your jumpjets and slowly but steadily kill them off. The solution would be to just ignore being fired on by jumpjets, like they do against airplanes. But I haven't found any way to do this.
4. AI does not automatically target units along the way. You can make them respond to being fired on, but I haven't found any way to make AI stop and take out whatever units come into its weapon range. This would improve the AI alot since they would actively take out hijackers, suicide units, etc. Also anti-air units are quite useless with AI attack forces since they only target enemy aircraft when being attacked, which most of the time is way too late.
Anyone have ideas or knowledge how to fix these issues? Like I said earlier I did find a way to fix the particle damage thing. You need to edit the fire based weapon to use the Reaper missile logic. Here I've edited the devil's tongue weapon:
Code:
[FireballLauncher]
Damage=0
AmbientDamage=2
ROF=50
Range=4.25
Speed=75 ;1 ; This was changed
Warhead=Fire
Report=FLAMTNK1
UseFireParticles=yes
AttachedParticleSystem=FireStreamSys
Burst=2
ProjectileRange=2 ; Added these 2 keys to use reaper logic
Projectile=FireballFixPR ;Invisible
; Reaper logic weapon attached to FireballLauncher to make AI retaliate
[FireballFix]
Damage=1 ; Gets multiplied by 10, so adjust verses in warhead.
ROF=1000
Range=4 ; Allows them to hit far since the particle flames can travel far too
Speed=100 ; To make sure they always hit
Warhead=FireballFixWH
Projectile=FireballFixPR2
Add the new projectiles:
Code:
; Used by 1st stage of reaper logic attached to FireballLauncher
[FireballFixPR]
Image=INVPROJ ; Need to define an image or the missile logic doesn't work
High=no
VeryHigh=no
Proximity=no
Cluster=2
Ranged=yes
Range=4
ROT=8
Splits=yes
AirburstWeapon=FireballFix
IgnoresFirestorm=no
RetargetAccuracy=50% ; So force-firing ground usually hits enemy too
; Used by 2nd stage of reaper logic attached to FireballLauncher
[FireballFixPR2]
Image=INVPROJ
High=yes
Shadow=no
Proximity=yes
Ranged=no
And finally add the new warhead:
Code:
[FireballFixWH]
Spread=6
Verses=10%,10%,10%,10%,10% ; Will even out the dmg to 1
InfDeath=4
ProneDamage=100% ; Always force that 1 dmg
In art.ini add the following:
Code:
; *** Projectile Objects ***
[INVPROJ]
Also remember to add the new warhead to the warheads list, and more importantly, remember to give FireballFix as a primary, secondary or elite weapon to some fake unit, like the Weedguy infantry. Every weapon has to be used by at least one unit in rules.ini or the game will cause an IE. I've included the INVPROJ shp as attachment to this post.
Basically this fix will make the devil's tongue fire both the normal fire attack and an invisible weapon that deals 1 damage. That 1 damage will be enough to make the AI target and destroy the unit. Even if you force-fire close to the enemy they will get mad at you since the invisible reaper "missiles" home in on units. So much for owning all those Disk Throwers with a single flame tank...
Interesting but off-topic thing to note is that by using particle based weapon + reaper logic you could add more than 2 weapons for a unit, actually up to 4. They would just fire in pairs, at the same time. By tweaking the reaper logic into more stages I guess you could go even for more weapons.
