Alright I am learning Lua and I was thinking if this is possible or not to create a vehicle that needs passengers to be functional.

Example:
Lets say this vehicle only works with a certain faction and in that faction you have a lets say a tank pilot and only the tank pilot can drive the vehicle.

You could have the vehicle set up like DudeAbides Warhammer 40k Tau mod. (The "Devilfish" it has a ACRocket attached to it for transporting stuff.)

And then (if possible) detects if there's a "Tank Pilot" in its inventory.

If there is a "Tank Pilot" in its inventory then it would switch to a sprite frame that has the "Tank Pilot" manning it or on a turret. (like the AADrone has 3 sprites one without rockets, 1 with 2 Rockets and one with 1 Rocket. Depending on how much ammo it has it changes sprites accordingly)

So if the Vehicle is at the frame with the "Tank Pilot" in it then it would be functional.

So is all the above possible?

Its only a question and not a request however if you'd like to make it, go ahead and do it.

I'll do this Lua (if its possible) in time when I learn more about Lua.

I have so many ideas floating in my head and its driving me nuts. I need to learn lua yes or yes to get them out of there.

I know requesting usually gets you no where but I say again, this is not a request so don't say anything like that. This is only a question
that id be grateful to have the answer to. I don't want to try something blindly without knowing if its possible or not.

There was the Apocalipse mod, that Mercenary Weapons mod, or at least a trailer for it... and I think somewhere there was a Dreadnought mod that had pilotable Dreadnoughts... it is possible, but is it worth it?

Is it worth it?

Foa yes it is very worth it. You see my brain thinks about adding all of these little strategy elements and FUN things for CC in one package.

The vehicles could be very useful in larger maps. Using the vehicle scripts from experimental Dummy vehicles and Air support mod can create very useful tanks, jeeps, gunships, etc..... . these things can add strategy elements to the game.

I know CC has.. at a extent, strategy elements but its still just Humanoid things shooting at each other(theres nothing wrong with that.) but in my mind it can be so much more and better. Think chess or better yet Starcraft, the hole rock, paper, scissor thing. where a basic zergling can destroy siege tanks that don't have marine support. (Starcraft has only 3 faction but all 3 are extremely different to each other in the way you play them.)

Let me give you a example of what can be possible in CC lets say you got a :
(keep in mind that none of the following units would have jetpacks. if you want jetpacks you could buy them from the tools section or something. what i mean is that they wouldent be able to jet-pack around unless they had something called jetpack in there inventory so they would require vehicles for faster transportation)

Infantry man:
nothing special really there just guys who can shoot............................................(assault unit)

Engineer:
abilities would include being able to repair vehicles/turrets, deploy sand bags, deploy turrets and create structures. (support unit)

Officer:
abilities would include Morale boost(make units heal), leading troops(they would follow him Automaticly. 4 soldiers would be the limit). (Command unit)

Driver:
abilities include being able to pilot all vehicles within its own faction.

this list could go on and on and on........

Now i know we are use to "delivering units" at the cost of mining gold but what if could produce them on the battlefield with structures(like a barracks or a factory). This could lead to other strategy element like: needing not only gold but metal or something.

You see I really really like weegee's psyclone mod cause it can add to strategy. It has the Floating robot that creates a force field protecting the units inside of it. Think about this: Force field with weaker units inside of it VS a Top notch Tank. The force field would win because the weeker units are not harmed by the tank but then againn if there were enough tanks they could of destroyed the force field.

There's just so much more I could tell you about. These ideas in my head are just not stoping.

So instead of looking at the vehicle by itself think of the BIGGER PICTURE that I'm trying to paint.

Thank you for your reed.

Yeah, here's the mod Foa mentioned - viewtopic.php?f=61&t=19665

In my opinion all those complex tricks like piloted mechs, fueled gunships, multi-mode weapons, limited ammo weapons, specific-units-only weapons, grapling hooks and units without jetpacks can work only in very low-scale tactical battles, pretty much like in vanilla campaign. Or in human vs human multiplayer games where all players are using gamepads. Otherwise you just don't have enough time to micromanage your army.

Also in the world of cortex command:

You should avoid too big maps

Troops without jetpacks are pretty much immobile

You can't have many units due to MO limit and lag caused by AI, so forget about large-scale true RTS

youre right about that, but its very useful in One Vs ALL matches - like when you're down to 20 hp and that mech you called in gives you the edge hehe heh!

I understand that this game has its limits but what i meant by Starcraft was the hole meaning of tactically placing troops in certain positions. I wasn't referring to scale.

I'm not sure how long the maps can be Horizontally but if they are at the maximum length that could give you time to micro for a counter attack.
like say you saw a tank coming your way then BAM pump out a rocketteer grunt, but if your the kinda of guy expecting a rocketteer to counter your tank you'd have infantry inside of it ready to blast out if anything were to happen.

Also on a map you could have multiple levels like 1st floor 2nd floor etc.... so that the match doesn't end up on who has the more troops pushing or something. Also considering the fact that the floors can be burrowed thru you could have a engineer ready to patch it up with concrete or something.
If there's holes in the floor and your tanks can't pass, the engineers also could deploy a bridge.

Since the game has limits of how many MOID's there are doesn't mean you limit the production TIME of your troops. Like say you could pump out 4 basic troops in a minute or 2 but you could of pump out 1 super infantry unit in that same amount of time. That adds to indepth strategy

Not having jetpack makes things in my opinion "normal" on flat maps. I understand that in mountains there useless but in real life mountains are pretty hard to get across, so to me having a jetpack makes things easier really and rendering Vehicles useless in that aspect.

Like say there's a building in you way so you have to call in a dropship to get over or on it. ( yes I know that the AI at this point isn't capable of doing these complex movement's) In that same moment you just made the dropships usefull for things besides A "raming your opponent or exploding over it" or B "spawning units"

EDIT... Oh and to me at least, RTS was never really about the scale of the game, its more about the tactics.
examples:

Total war is a good example of this. I know you'd like to see the game with 10000 troops on the battefield but in reality there's only 12 units per player. The guy who wins is the one who tactically places them troops, archers behind knights, cavalry for flanking etc.....

Starcraft: The limit is 200 but most of the time your managing 1 to 3 clusters of units. Its the Micro that counts.

SupCom however is all about the scale. (my god I have never seen such beauty of huge round ships falling out of the sky and blowing up whats below them)

Age of empire's: Again your managing 1 to 3 clusters of soldiers.

Company of heroes: this one doesn't have those huge cluster unless your being Blitzkrieg-ed. If you look at it closely its all about how and where you use your troops and defenses to eliminate your enemy's supply to then push.

Warhammer 40k: Dawn War: This one is another one that involves managing 1 to 3 clusters of soldiers.

Turn based strategy games are well, turn based but to me there on the same scale as RTS. The only difference is the fact that in RTS you see more troops and there moving in real time. Like say WH40k Dawn of War VS WH40K Squad command.

I know its hard to see RTS on a 2d physics based engine but it is possible. You may not have 3d freedom and size but you do have Vertical/horizontall movement and qua....(cough)...quality.

To me CC is already kinda RTSee. Its just that bazooka beets everything and that's the problem, there's no real tactics its more of you pay more and get the best ♥♥♥♥ to blow the Hell out of the next guy that walks through my bunker.

Here's question, how many troops can we have on the field at any given moment without lag?

10 total.
Consider this.. Soldier vs Tank in a 2D space, with a hard unit-lag cap. Hard balance. Hard balance to keep it from one unit from dominating out. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

Engineers, someone made a repair tool that completely rejuvenates units. [Untitled Tech?]
Patching up holes in walls? Takes a ♥♥♥♥ lot longer than taking them dowen, especially floor/ceilings. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

Jetpacks, they make infantry/engineers viable since they get utterly destroyed by psuedo-vehicles [crabs/script amalgam] , make them move fast, trust me when I say you honestly can't dodge bullets with them. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

Concerns about map length, problems with lag, and and general transportation, the map degrades quickly with everyone, and tanks rolling about. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

Dropships are more or less cantankerous death traps, slow, heavy, engines shot off like jesus is male. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]


The practicality of this mod quickly wanes with your enthusiasm.
The limits on the physics, even the control mostly disallow any sort of graceful microing, and you can spray bullets for miles, quite honestly, just advance a wall of tanks, no one's getting past that. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

And finally an RTS is definitely not about the scale of the units, but the scale of organization, again, the ai is more or less a squad of ♥♥♥♥, it is too hard to reasonably manipulate a squard of 5, or 7 to such soaring heights you expect. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

When it comes to tactics, that's more or less the game, you can't do much with such retarded AI, cumbersome units, and exorbant prices. A bazooka doesn't hold well to a simple clone, or dummy with a stock SMG. [Take weegee's word for it, look at the maps the person makes]

Yeah, retarded unpredictable AI with weird pathfindng and totally unpredictable damage model. For example how you're going to design a weapon that will take down a tank but will be useless against troops? Concrete sprayers are quite hard to use. You basically can't construct something complex (correct me if I'm wrong here).

And speaking of clusters of units, in CC you usually don't have clusters of units, you have just one unit under your control. Leave your cluster alone, and you'll probably find dead bodies in a moment. If you don't believe me, try CCRTS and you'll see it for yourself. With it you can just tell them where to go, and then die miserably there one by one, because they'll probably fail to arrive there in group. Or you can try SHIELD missions, that's where you need to micromanage hard. And even there you'll find yourself controlling a single ninja-rambo, while others are well enough hidden to live till the end of the mission. The only reason whe Psyclone shield work is because you put troops nearby and leave them on heir own, and the with the help of the shield they are pretty safe.

CC is unbalanced. And you'll probably won't make it more balanced by adding more layers of complexity. Ten dummies simultaneously led by AI will wipe you out while you're choosing your underbarrel grenade launcher, or trying to dig out your tank out of terrain

And we're not even talking about enormous effort such mod will require. I know a few thing about enormous effort, trust me )))

Anyways, weegee's a silly, cool guy who I keep forgetting is pretty alright.

Great modder, silly person.

You guys are starting to sound mad . (no offence )

I've been playing CC since way before I joined the forums so I'm aware of a couple of the mods from back then in B23 and B24.
This game and LBP2 have been the only games that I can play all day any day. I've never ever gotten bored with either of these 2 titles. When I play any other game, I always end up getting bored of them and coming back to CC or LBP2 and I paid less then half the prices of those big titles like CoD, GodoW, GearsoW etc.... what I mean I have yet to meat any other games that share such i huge amount of replay value.

What I meant by patching up the walls doesn't mean you have to use a concrete sprayer. I was thinking more along the lines of gun that shoots actors that turn into ramps bridges and so on. You could have the gun work like this. The actor could be a object that sets its own anlge with this tid bit of lua
self.rot = 0. That way the object you shoot always stays upright and never falls sideways. Once the actor hits the floor it becomes part of the environment.

What I meant by cluster is the fact that in Total War your only controling 12 units and not 10000. In CC you usually have around 10 to 15 units. see the comparison there.

At all heights of this, I'm not trying to say that I wan't to turn CC into a RTS. I just want to add to the CC experience, just because there are scanners in the vanilla game doesn't mean you haft to use them. Same thing with my mod.

also troops are meant to die in CC. That's one of the thing that I like so much about it. Disposable troops.

I also didn't say that i would make the units without jetpack's, I just meant to say that it was optional, Gold prices would be accounted for.



That's the hole point of having multiple levels, so that one guy doesn't just spam tanks at you but if he got's tanks you should have air or a mini nuke by then.
Fire bullets for miles, deploy a shield to counter that one.

I've never had to dig out a Experimental dummy vehicle ever before.

All in all I'm not trying to force anything. I just wan't to add optional things for you to do and accomplish stuff. Some players find joy in playing Farcry 3 taking there time using mines, tricks, stabbing without getting spotted, use fire, Ambush and other stealthy things but then you got some players who just go in guns blazing and kill's everyone in seconds. There both Fun, but some people prefer somethings to others. Like when they removed friendly fire from CC, I though it was very practical and fun but some people hatted it with all there heart and even left modding CC.

If you want to spam then spam, if you wan't to use a super unit John Rambo and kill everything then be my guess. If you wan't to plan under enemy pressure then Plan strategy's.

See The Point I've been trying to paint.