I made an aircraft carrier complete with air units, a cannon, and a mortar. It pretty much resembles a conventional flat top with a simple con tower and is both command able and pilot able. It's basically a hover class with elements borrowed from the Cerberi Demon minus a shield. I had to modify the aircraft from some existing air units along with modifying some odf's for the weapons dispensers to deploy the air units like the original Demon, but it seems to work quite functionally; even on land. The aircraft odf was based on the Cerberi missile and gun drone only I used my own single piece aircraft model (created using the object union tool to weld several model parts into one solid aircraft object). The original sav class used by the Demon for some strange reason wouldn't pick me up so I didn't use that odf. The carrier aircraft are ideal for off shore attack as the drone AI has an 800 meter scan range, but I'm going to increase the engage range to like 750 meters to hopefully keep the carrier a safe distance from the actual enemy base, and deploy the missile cruisers to help protect the carrier units. The cannons are the fireball type and the mortar is an FE plasma type; very cool and behaves like the mdm mortar only it seems a bit more powerful on detonation.
I made a 2nd aircraft carrier only this one carries helicopter drones. I'm really amazed how easy it was to copy and modify the carrier odf and weapons odfs and change the jet drones to helicopter drones. I may change the helicopter weapons as they use the default Cerberi drone weapons to something like laser guided missiles and perhaps my modified solar guns; increased range mostly. I may modify the stock laser guided missiles xsi model to a design of my own. They seem simple enough to change without too much editng.
I also made a water based missile cruiser complete with torpedo's, a cannon, and mortar from which the aircraft carrier was based. I decreased the speed on both water units to make them move much slower then conventional hover craft to better simulate the slower speed of watercraft.
I'd also like to make a hollowed water based transport ship that deploys high speed attack type hydrofoil boats from a wide front opening in the ship; I'm guessing that should be doable about the same way the carrier deploys air units. I got the transport more or less completeted, but for some reason no weapons appear as with my aircraft carrier. At first I thought that it was due to using ship names hydragfoil and hydramfoil; I added iv the beginning but still no luck at getting the hydrafoil missile and guns to deploy. Strangely, the cannons and mortar weapons also don't appear either. Guess I'll have to go back and check everything, i.e., the ivhydrafoil, ghydram, ghydrag, ivhydramfoil, and ivhydragfoil odf's to see what's missing/wrong.
Update: Apparently, the issue laid with some naming errors on my part and I mistakenly saved my ivhydrafoil model without any hp's; hence no weapons but still pilotable. I also had to rename the 2 drone ships ivhydram and g to ivhydram and g. Unlike the carrier and torpedo ship the hydrafoil and the drones forward speed were increased quite a bit to make them super fast. The model themselves were relative simple one peice designs: Body, Eyepoint, Com and a single hp_rocket or gun. I was really was surprized at how easy making such units really is given the actuall model requires 3 models, 3 model odf's, 2 weapons odf's, and the associated inf files.
I plan to make the water units self repairing as getting a service truck to service a water based unit would be next to impossible, or can I somehow make a service type ship. Can this be done?
PS: I also made a small and large attack sub based off of TV's odf design with my own model design. I plan to release all of these models publicly at some point, but first I need to design a water based building facility and the support structures associated with it. Which reminds me to ask if a water based recycler would work when deployed under water? Tanks, BNG.
Geeze, I had to copy the models from my laptop as when I tried to create the same models on my other PC I couldn't get the odf stuff right. Then I realized why; the odf I made the workable units from started out as a non AI based aircraft class file that I modified again with tankfriend, tankenemy. Any ways, when I changed these parameters I converted the aircraft class to a hover class type odf. The original odf had 2 guns, a cannon, a rocket and a special weapons config.
The modified odf basically became a custom odf as the result of my editing work. My carrier deploys custom aircraft when it attacks other units. I increased the max health and ammo to increase the total number of drones deployed and it looks quite impressive as I also increased the flight altitude of the drone aircraft to 15 meters high.
On my hydrafoil transporter the drones altitude was left at 1 meter high to simulate surface skimming drone units. Both are nasty little attack units that tend to overwhelm conventional fighting units with sheer numbers of annoying air and surface drones. I like it!
On my torpedo ship the unit tends to favor using the plasma mortar and fireball cannon over the twin torpedo's it also carries along with the FE spore mine. Still, it's a slow but nasty little water based fighting unit. Each the these 3 units is pilotable and I setup wire and icon images along with inf files to boot.
I think that I'll try making a mortar class type battleship with long range mortar for off shore base bombardment. Does anyone know of the longest range mortar that I should try using for this unit? The Scion mortar comes to mind, I really like the plasma mortar for it's visual appeal. Could someone kindly suggest a few other mortar types to experiment with? Tanks, BNG.
From my AI guide
QuoteSAVFriend/Enemy
AI Type: SAV (unique)
Aggressiveness: Very High
Morph to Attack
* Unpredictable AI
* Sub-attacking pilots has priority over sub-attacking anything else.
* Emits damage field that kills pilots
* Will try to position itself over pilots, effectively killing them (ignores height)
* Requires 'NeedPilot = 1' entry in ODF to be pilotable.
Used by: Fury SAV (fvsav)
http://zeroangel.overminddl1.com/reference/bz2ai.php
Try MorphTankFriend/Enemy or RocketTankFriend/Enemy AI's. They're quite good when you need your craft to deploy/undeploy as well as they support the weaponmask feature.
As I recall the original Demon odf has a reference to SAV; at least the flight altitude part. However, using a hover class entry as well. What seems really interesting is the variety of parameters that can be modified in the models odf, i,e, aircraft class to some other class as well as the multitude of other tweakable settings. I'm intrigued by the sheer number within a single file.
My units are beginning to resemble a fairly decent naval force. I think I'm going to find it necessary to redesign some regular maps to integrate water bodies/rivers to accommodate the new units. Then modify the odf settings to make getting them on land more difficult; I guess it has something to do with lowering the accelthrust to make it more difficult for them to climb stuff.
Does anyone have any ideas on how I can modify a recycler/factory to work on a body of water? Along with other support buildings; a minimal total number would be desirable verses the standard number required. I understand how to make both a recycler and factory based off the ISDF, but could a sea based equivalent be produced under 1.3? Tanks BNG.
Well, when I last checked (during PB3), you were able to tap multiple other buildings off of a single building. You could, in theory, make a single base building which includes armory, factory, relay bunker and recycler services.
Also, I think you could modify a recy/fact to work on water, but it would have to be placed there, not built there. I dont know if the falling through water bug is still present when there is a building on a water square but if it is one can simply work around it by carefully placing the building, as well as placing an invisible surface at the height where the water is expected to be.
Could I just elevate an equivilent piece of terrain in the water to place my sea base? Also, can the hp_powerup be further out to make the ships build over the edge into the actual water? Seems possible, but is it workable for both player and computer? So far I have subs, a cruiser, a unit transport, and an aircraft carrier. Are there other water types that I should include with my naval task force?