Upgrading weapons

[Rocket]

how are you supposed to get by?

[bb1]

Kill the shield tower, dummy! Heh. You haven't played around with the shieldtower (hell) class yet, have you? The boundary is IMPASSABLE (utterly, it acts as a map boundary so you can not get through at all.. one way IIRC maybe not). The tower, albeit one of if not the toughest stock building, can be destroyed with concentrated firepower. It is unprotected. Except for the gun towers behind them.

[ssuser]

In bz1, I think the only way to fire thru M-Curtain fields and a Shield-Tower type unit is with a beam weapon - flash or blast, though i can't remember if this applies to weapon fire vs. the shield tower - I only played around with this class once. Flash Cannon (stock) is now so wussified a blast cannon is your only option. With dual blasts and a supply of ammo pods you can quickly reduce such barriers to scrap, however.

I think all the powerplant options for bz1 are a bit unrealistic - they all depend on environment, and you can't always count on sunlight, or lightning or wind when you really need it. A better option would have been power stations like in bz2, BUT with some way to specifically link them to the units they are supposed to power, maybe via the smart reticle. Base takedowns would be tougher that way and you would have more flexibility in setting up defenses.

[Rocket]

Kill the shield tower, dummy! Heh. You haven't played around with the shieldtower (hell) class yet, have you? The boundary is IMPASSABLE (utterly, it acts as a map boundary so you can not get through at all.. one way IIRC maybe not). The tower, albeit one of if not the toughest stock building, can be destroyed with concentrated firepower. It is unprotected. Except for the gun towers behind them.

you mean you have to destroy your own shield towers to get in and out of your own base?...

that's... um... ridiculous 

[bb1]

Hopefully you aren't encompassing your base with them, you should be blocking bottlenecks or force people through certain sections of the base.

In any case, they cost 10 scrap per pair, also negating the ability to have a continuous shield wall. That gets expensive FAST; you can't just spend 10 scrap for the first two, then 5 5 5 to build a wall, it is 10 per fence and we don't have enough info to see how far away the shield barrior stays effective.

[Dx]

50 meters in each direction but you can customize it.

[Avatar]

Well, the INF file leads me to believe you'd win the game if you could get a tower at each side of a flat map...  there's no limit mentioned for how far away the second tower could be, just how close to a PS each tower had to be.  I assume the game simply wouldn't let you build one beyond a certain range to keep it real.  Then there's the issue of angles, so maybe the game wouldn't let you build them in anything but a straight line.  Then there's terrain height, so maybe the game wouldn't let you build them on different heights...

So yeah, they were troublesome and left for the last, or working but not the way the Dev team wanted...

The BZC version is a pair as one build just to work around all of those issues listed above.

As to getting in/out it only affects enemies.  BZ2's teamfilters make it invisible to your own side, both ships and weapons.

And yes, just blast the tower, or the PS, or mortar over it.  The lines have a fairly tight range so a mortar can go over, or the tower hit by careful shots.  You don't want them too powerful, just a sort of a flat MCurtain.

-Av-

[ssuser]

Yeah, I would guess that getting the area to be shielded down properly is what left the devs scratching their heads and caused shields to be left out of bz1. Plus you would have to extensively mod the AI to effectively counter them and get thru... Just a line of custom M-Curtains is enough to completely guard a base, the AI can't deal with it. Only fighters seem to attack mine-class objects, and they don't do very well at it either.

[bb1]

Now I can see the shield operators letting vehicles through, but not ordanace...it should deflect weapon fire in totale. I wouldn't want the shields to go down at other times.

/real

[Flash]

You don't jetison a weapon... it is simply replaced by the weapon of the same type.

Don't know how much I can dumb it down from there.

(Sorry it took me a while to get back. We lost a family pet we rescued 14 years ago, just before my wife and I got married. Very emotional for the family, me included. He was sure a good dog. R.I.P Scooter. )

Actually that was pretty good.  
I found I was in the wrong vehicle and it would not accept the ST Stabber. I finally made it off the Planet Mars and now am trying to enter the base and take out the Radar Aray. I have tried two approaches, staying with original vehicle and launching Hornet Rockets but even with a lock, I cannot take out the gun towers.  
I also tried switching from the Rocket Tank to the regular tank and going in (I think) between 6 and 8 o'clock only to be cut down by the gun towers. Any suggestions for the old guy??

[bb1]

Depending on how new you are to BZ... I would say rush in and kill the lightning power with linked weapons. Thumper will choke the stock gun towers because of a glitch.

Fly up the hill next to the base and land on the side behind the L power (not sure if it has more health than a solar power) and it should go down quickly. This will turn the gun towers off.

Otherwise, get to the hill where the scout tells you to eject and proceed. Inside the base, there is an empty APC. You can get in that and use the deploy key (default K) when near gun towers or just near the radar array in general. Snipe the other one or find an empty ship to use and join the party.


-----Off Topic----

Was it ever decided on how the pilots deployed from a stolen APC become yours?

[ssuser]

Heh heh... having CCA soldiers automatically defect to you when you steal an APC is always funny... they should have found a way to switch the pilot type when team switches though, IMO.

Flash... the CCA outpost is surrounded by a wall and there is supposed to be a script in which a scout in the hills tells you to eject into the base, but this part of the code can be buggy and won't always tell you what to do. Anyway, bail out of your tank next to the wall at the BACK of the outpost. Float in and you should see some empty vehicles - 2 tanks, a fighter and an APC, plus there is more stuff in there too, like a tug and so on.. ignore these for now and get into a tank. Once you start shooting stuff an alarm will go off and pilots will come out of the barracks - if you want to keep the extra vehicles for yourself zip back over there and kill the pilots/soldiers after popping a shot or 2 at the radar array. Now... first thing is to blow up those 2 turrets by the barracks that become active at the alarm, Hunt and kill any pilots that eject. Next zip along the wall and come up behind the L-Power so the Gun towers can't shoot at you. kill the L-Power to neutralize the Gun Towers. Next, go back and destroy the extra stuff in the outpost (tug, constructor, etc.) BEFORE you kill the radar array. Ditch the tank and switch to the extra when ammo runs low, you may have more fighters and turrets come in while you are doing this, kill them also. There are some ammo/repairs by the crates you can use also. Finally, blow up the radar array. Your Recycler and Factory will then spawn nearby. Now the neat part is since you have cleared out the outpost you can bring all your units inside and set up a pretty much invulnerable defensive position. Deploy your stuff on the geysers and clear out the remaining stuff (dead gun towers, barracks, etc.), set up turrets near the base entrance with tanks following them and you are all set, all you have to do then is go take out the CCA recycler to win.

[bb1]

I totally did not know there were geysers in that outpost.

You really went through all that trouble? I got in the APC and hit K and the base was levelled. The AI isn't fond of shooting pilots.

[Rocket]

the scout never told me to eject... all i heard was yeehaw! and then he exploded

i thought it was a glitch and i finally made it over the wall.

[bb1]

There's a lot of touchy things in that game.

Remember that one mission where the golems show up on venus? After the Golem killed the recy on a certain run through, I was going to attack the CCA base... only for 2 APCs to spawn tasked to the gun towers. Collins came on saying how Eldrige's APCs were joining the attack and targetting the gun towers... even though the Colorado is dead...

I'm not sure if leftover bad code from another build got triggered somehow, but on my looks through the ZFS I could not find the voiceovers I heard that time in the mission. Maybe I was hallucinating while playing BZ, but I'm pretty sure it was real.