Edit> ok, no tele, but mebbe other stuff.

Apologies for the mspaint.

Basically, instead of dropping ship after ship, you can drop one of these, and when it deploys, you get another choice in the "craft" section, of teleporter #1, or #2, etc.

MUCH more expensive than dropships, possibly with a shield or armor or something. And ideally, with some way to blow up enemy teleporters. The main thing is that you dont risk dropships, and the chance of killing your own guys is far far less.


Also: Stick a teleporter in the brain chamber? If you have all your guys outside, and just ONE guy sneaks through a long maze, your brain can be dead before anything can catch up.




See, for some reason, CC constantly crashes after a long time and a LOT of gibbed dropships, and I think it just MIGHT be because a lot of the dropship gibs don't turn into terrain properly. My first clue was that chunks continually get lodged in the kill-shafts on either side of my brain setup. (Lets the CPU kill itself when it gets too close) and when i drop a body on top of them, they get jarred down and fall off the screen, instead of ever being turned into terrain.

Enough dead dropships might spawn enough gibs to crash CC, I figure. I dunno.

This MIGHT work as a craft that comes preloaded with a ton of actors.
But otherwise, no.

I disagree. Give it a longer timer than a dropship, say 7-10 seconds, spawns 1 unit per cycle.

You can drop a few bodies with a ship, but for lack of clutter, this would be good.

I just watched the CPU on "Death" smack a good dozen dropships into each other, or my dropship, or just simply had the autopilot fail, and create a layer of dropship gib THICKER THAN THE TERRAIN. And when THAT happens, it kills anything under it, near it, or unlucky enough to get smacked in the head with a hunk of metal flying gracefully through the air.

Now if it were bodies piled that high, it'd be funny. But it's simply dead dropships. Shooting people is fun, having a pile of metal land on you AND the guy you want to shoot is simply annoying.

I'm sure data's going to optimize the gib thing for the future. For now I believe he's focusing on LUA and some other things to be implemented. This will be much easier to do within the next couple builds I'm sure.

This will only work after a few modifications to the actual CC coding... programming... what ever ya wanna call it either way itll only work if we change what Data himself makes...

Though i do agree itd be usefull... (I suggested something similar to this before)

nah it be better if it worked like the despencers.

Good idea, the dispensers with a Crazy huge and long muzzle sprite to simulate teleport beaming!?! Wicked crazy idea bbzzz!

Well, having teleporter bot delivery also opens up map types that DON'T have an open sky.

Like say, a totally underground campaign map where you tunnel under a super entrenched enemy base on a mountain, and hack a teleporter or install one of your own. The next map, you dig your way upwards into their base, steal a doohickey and escape in one of their rockets.

It's not a "WE NEED THIS NOW" feature, but it makes sense. Besides, I lose a good percentage of my OWN troops to sloppy autopilot on dropship. And the CPU manages to lose anywhere from 1/3 to 2/3 of its troops after a while.

Giving the uncontrolled bots orders would be nice too, such as selecting an area, expanding it a bit, and selecting "guard this area". For small areas, the bot paces, for large areas, the bots form up on the sides looking outwards, and for larger areas, they patrol.

LUA does certainly seem very important though.



And I've seen the natural end progression of "more powerful, longer range, faster" in original tribes mods. They resulted in a half-dozen guns, all nearly identical infinite range instakill sniper rifles. Turns the balance to crap.

Teleporters are not possible, at least not with any control over what units pop out.

They're also very unlikely to ever appear in the game. I recently talked to Data and Prom, the two developers, and both want to back up anything they do with some degree of realism. Teleportation goes well beyond that.

AI is going to improve. I find it funny that people don't think it will. Honestly, do you think Data spent seven years working on this just to have gameplay crippled by horrible AI?

Bots can already be given basic orders. There are two problems with more advanced orders: 1, it would require a reworking of the control scheme, and gamepad players are already running low. 2, Data doesn't want the game to focus on RTS elements. It's meant to be an action game, not a resource gathering or AI planning game.

Also, *Lua. It's not an acronym.

Realism? I guess it's RELATIVELY realistic to not have porters.

How about factory? It could create the bots part by part (no soldiers from factories I guess) and create guns row by row. But it would allow for underground maps. I like the idea of underground maps, as you might have noticed.

The thing is just that ALL of my skirmishes end with a thick layer of dead dropships. Sometimes the CPU manages to land them on top of each other, which is funny, but messy. Using the reflective-bot mot, and I've lost more of those things to dropship parts, enemy engine flames, and FRIENDLY engine flames.

Mostly I just shoot them down with horribly unbalanced weapons.

I imagine that part is going to be polished, so that the people don't lose more troops to dropships than to the enemy.

Hmmm, what would happen if you mixed dropships and rockets?

Dropships are good for uneven terrain.

But if you have a flat patch, how about troop carriers of various sizes? 1-2 bodies, and 3-5 bodies. It flies down much like a combo rocket and dropship, with arms on the sides with big engines, and underneath small thrusters/engines/landing struts.

The troops are visible inside, standing on the bottom, and when it touches down, the engines swing up, the sides swing down to walkways out, and the bodies unfreeze (the freeze for transport for easier physics processing) and go active and usable. After they leave, you give the "liftoff" order, the sides swing up into place, the engines swing down, and it burns back off the top of the screen.

Also, deployable factories along the same vein, possibly.

Except, you can only do so much within the modding structure of CC.

Rockets and Dropships are entire different object classes; and parts of different object classes seldom mix well.

For the underground maps- Underground elevators?

It sort of makes sense. Troops landing on the surface and just walking in through the hidden/defended door.

Or just come up with something like- the enemy troops are using a factory, and they don't even realize troops keep landing up top or something.

Hmm...

People seem kind of hung up on "doing it with mods to the current structure." The game is still in development, and I hope SOME more stuff gets added. XD Specifically in this case, underground maps, and in general, protected spawn points that are less prone to getting squished by dropships. (Intentionally or not.)

Bodies are created at some point, engine-wise. Like they are made in/near a rocket, then given sideways velocity. I rather suspect the transports simply have the weight of their cargo added to them, as far as handling goes.

I can't see it being much harder to simply create the actor on a pad, be it via factory or whatever. Heck, when you place stuff in pre-skirmish, it just pops into existence, all that's really necessary is a reason for it to be created (factory, teleporter) and maybe an effect, unless ALL the levels will have dropships delivering EVERYTHING. The main requirement would be a new way for the user to select delivery there instead of the dropship.

If every level is the same though, games get kind of boring. Even a lot of RTS single palyer games deviate from the "build troops, zerg" maps with the occasional "indoor map, only scripted reinforcements" level. Makes you actually USE medic-type units.

Except, we don't HAVE any medic type units.

Nor is the delivery system likely to change at all.

You CAN create actor spawners. That's entirely possible within current modding structures. You can also create underground maps. People already have. Or, at least, one person has.

The problem is that the AI does not know how to function properly on underground maps, and actor spawners only spawn limited types of actors. There's no customization possible.

Also, we get "hung up" on the current modding structure because EXPECTING anything out of future builds just sets you up for disappointment. Expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised by anything.