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Decided to give Scions a weapon similar to the ISDF Laser. Although only while i'm posting this did I realise that it exists and is called the Guass Gun, and what i really should be after is a chain gun variant.

Hopefully I get around to making it a not-so-obvious clone, effect-wise.

Alright, so i'm working on a mod, and we're going to have a new race.

The aliens are going to have a gun tower called the Storm Column, that essentially has a storm cloud over it that zaps enemies that come close, ala the animated gif



My idea is to make a mine weapon that is placed in front of the building that constantly fires invisible shots like the fountain while rendering clouds above the building. Once an enemy comes close, the shots will detonate and fire down their bolt at the enemy.

Getting rid of the mine would be a simple task of having the building have a small destructive field of 1 damage when it dies, which would be enough to kill the mine due to it being on one health.

The problems with this:

1) As the mine is on 1 health, if an enemy fires a mortar, goodbye mine.
2) An enemy or allied vehicle could park itself over the mine, blocking the shots from reaching their altitude.


Possible solutions and their flaws

1) Set the mine to have a ludicrous amount of health, and have the explosion deal that much damage
Flaw: The explosion could accidentally catch a vehicle, building or even the player piloting the gun tower, resulting in quite a loss

2) Use the spraybuilding class for the shots and have a setAltitude to prevent it being blocked.
Flaw: While a good idea for getting the shots up there, spraybuildings are unable to have an effect render, so we'd miss the cloud effect we're after.

3) Ditch the mine idea and have the column launch the shots directly.
Flaw: This would actually have been my preferance, except it wouldn't create a cloud over the column while it was inactive

4) Have the cloud effect spawn from the shots detonating, having a cloud that could last forever (or near enough)
Flaw: If it's going to be constantly firing, that would be a lot of clouds, and a lot of effects rendered. Good fight, framerates.



So, anyone have any ideas on how i could pull this off?