Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2013 11:36 am Post subject:
Spy Plane
Just an idea I got from the spy satellite discussion. What if Nod had a buildable spy plane unit that would be pretty fast (Speed=24), have the max sight (11) and be able to fly in the shroud? It would have somewhat low armor so you can't just fly into enemy bases if they have alot of AA defences. It would also have BuildLimit=1 so you can't build an army of them and then fly into the enemy base. Still thinking of a proper cost, maybe something like 1000 to 1500? While the unit isn't anything unique, I think it would give Nod a nice little advantage. I'd probably make it require the tech center so the enemy has some time to set up AA defences before they become available. Think Temple of Nod as requirement would be bit of an overkill.
Might be cool if it had some sort of "camera" weapon. When the weapon fires it throws around some debris, and stealthed things around the impact zone get revealed. This way the plane would still be useful after you have explored the entire map.
Here's the voxel by Azri_Apoc that I actually used for another Nod aircraft (that I later removed).
Isn't Sight=10 the max, not 11? On older C&Cs and iirc even on early TS versions you got an IE when you had something with a higher sight than 10.
How about giving it a higher FlightLevel than any other aircraft? Then short range AA weapons like bazooka infantry can't hit it.
I think ingame you will rarely see this being used, since it's so late available and the map is surely already revealed by then.
Though it would be very useful if you add the reshroud map special building/superweapon. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Isn't Sight=10 the max, not 11? On older C&Cs and iirc even on early TS versions you got an IE when you had something with a higher sight than 10.
I've been using sight 11 on many things for years without any errors. Recall reading that the max was 11, not 10.
Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
How about giving it a higher FlightLevel than any other aircraft? Then short range AA weapons like bazooka infantry can't hit it.
Already adjusted it to fly higher. Looks better too.
Lin Kuei Ominae wrote:
I think ingame you will rarely see this being used, since it's so late available and the map is surely already revealed by then.
Though it would be very useful if you add the reshroud map special building/superweapon.
But isn't the spy satellite uplink late game too? In both Red Alert 1 and 2 you need to build the tech center to unlock it. And in RA1 it has a long reload even after that. And I still find myself building it always in both games. The spy plane isn't much worse than them, it might just be shot down if you try to fly into a base without disabling their AA. As a bonus the spy plane would have the camera ability to reveal stealth at a medium sized area (and infinite ammo for it). Would be handy in hunting down stealth harvesters and finding mines. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
The SpySat was a sideeffect (no action and automatically launched) of the Allies techcenter, which again was inevitable to build. So the SpySat wasn't really something that you had to care about. It was simply there.
If you give it infinite ammo, you could also link the debris to the muzzleflash anim, so the aircraft uncloaks everything along its path for a longer duration than just a single short camera snapshot. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
I enjoy the concept a lot, I just feel it should work better than clicking all around the minimap screen for a while untill it's all revealed, just to me feels a bit cheap and nasty. Leaving recon to your faster and more agile units such as buggies and bikes also gives them more of a role in my opinion. The Spy Plane would work better if it simply worked like the RA1 Soviet Spy Plane, I guess the nearest thing you can do to that is just using HunterSeeker logic which makes it random. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
HS doesn't works as it's a vehicle and flying vehicles can't reveal shroud. (except maybe it is changed using the teleport locomotor?)
The closest other thing is a single droppod with a dummy infantry that reveals the area for you and instantly dies when it leaves the dpod. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
HS doesn't works as it's a vehicle and flying vehicles can't reveal shroud. (except maybe it is changed using the teleport locomotor?)
You can give an aircraft HunterSeeker=yes and it will behave as one. And be able to reveal the shroud.
EDIT: But yeah, can't use it with the superweapon logic since the spawned unit is a vehicle. You could have buildable hunterseekers though.
Morpher wrote:
I enjoy the concept a lot, I just feel it should work better than clicking all around the minimap screen for a while untill it's all revealed, just to me feels a bit cheap and nasty. Leaving recon to your faster and more agile units such as buggies and bikes also gives them more of a role in my opinion. The Spy Plane would work better if it simply worked like the RA1 Soviet Spy Plane, I guess the nearest thing you can do to that is just using HunterSeeker logic which makes it random.
I will test it around and see if it feels right. Think the stealth revealing camera might make it feel like it has a purpose. Though it would require force-firing on the ground if there was nothing to be targetted in the area. _________________ Last edited by SuperJoe on Fri Feb 15, 2013 2:30 pm; edited 2 times in total QUICK_EDIT
Btw try giving the hunterseeker Primary=RepairBullet. You will get a hunterseeker that will keep swapping it's target all the time, making it move kind of oddly in every direction. Wish you could put a longer delay into the target swapping and it might be able to reveal the shroud better.
EDIT: For this to work the hunterseeker needs to be a real aircraft, not a vehicle with aircraft locomotor. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
What happens if you give the unit some odd tags like BurstDelays or a stupidly high minimum range?
No change. The hunterseeker logic doesn't care much about what weapon it has, it will keep acquiring a new target extremely fast. You can even remove the weapon from it altogether and it will still target something (and IE when it reaches the target). The negative damage of the RepairBullet weapon makes it unable to target the target it chose, so it chooses a new target, and get stuck repeating that.
Here's a pic of a debris test for the stealth scan. Looks quite funny. Does the debris need to deal damage for the stealth to be revealed? I've set all the damages and verses to 0 and nothing happens.
Does the debris need to deal damage for the stealth to be revealed?
Yes, but also negative damage (heal) works to reveal cloaked units.
You could also add a long lasting ExpireAnim which deals tiny amount of damage to constantly uncloak units nearby.
e.g.
[RevealDebris]
ExpireAnim=RevealAnim
;Dp one damage every 10 seconds and reveal cloaked units
[RevealAnim]
Damage=1
Rate=10
Maybe a very short EMP would be useful too. It wouldn't use that many debris and wouldn't be that much prone to lags.
Though you could abuse it to make AI units forget their target. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
With Damage=1, DamageRadius=0 and a warhead with all verses 0% I managed to remove the damage from everything except buildings, yet it still reveals all stealth. Tried alot of things already but can't seem to be able to remove the building damage. Spread is 0 on the warhead. Must be that the debris hit an extremely small area with no spread so units are spared, but a large building gets hit since it covers the entire nearby cells. I even put tons of infantry into one massive ground and kept throwing the debris in there, but none of them got damaged.
Though I am happy with this version, buildings basically take only 1 damage per bombing run and units take none so it won't make them retaliate againts the spy plane. One funny thing is when you do a spy plane scan over water, all the splashes Oh well have to accept some oddities. I wouldn't go with negative damage since it could be abused to heal your base over a long time and it looks odd when the structures flash as if they got repaired. And like you said, EMP is way too exploitable vs. AI.
I used PrimaryFireFLH=0,0,-890 on the spy plane so the debris appear right next to the ground, causing immediate stealth reveal. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Managed to remove all traces of damage (even on buildings) by setting Damage=1, DamageRadius=0 and all the verses -100%. I recalled using these same numbers in the spotlight trick. They seem to work for debris too. You need to have set MinDamage=0 though. Doubt it is worth a tutorial in itself, but if you want a warhead applied but no damage done at all, use those numbers. Now the only oddity left is water splashing if you fire the stealth reveal near water. But I can live with that. _________________ QUICK_EDIT
Nice, you still need to force fire on the ground tho? _________________ Last edited by Mig Eater on Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:02 am; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
Cool.
But imo the effect should last longer, so you can actually use it to plan an attack on cloaked units or to create for a certain duration an uncloaking area. e.g. to clear a small entrance/bridge if you don't have an MSA right there.
A small "camera active" animation on the plane might be good too. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:06 am Post subject:
That might be possible with a longer ExpireAnim, I guess that also affects the units. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
=======================
Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
=======================
WeiDU mods: Random Graion Tweaks | Graion's Soundsets
Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
Contributions: EE Fixpack | Enhanced Edition Trilogy | DSotSC (Trilogy) | UB_IWD | SotSC & a lot more... QUICK_EDIT
Can I ask how you made the weapon since I've been planning on giving this effect to the Spy Plane in RA2 but I haven't found out how. _________________ ~ Excelsior ~ QUICK_EDIT
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
Spy Plane
Oh well have to accept some oddities. I wouldn't go with negative damage since it could be abused to heal your base over a long time and it looks odd when the structures flash as if they got repaired. And like you said, EMP is way too exploitable vs. AI.
