Phonan

It's insane (and rather annoying,) but the bots can finally shoot me down! Most of the time! They'll generally deploy a couple ions which they fire with extreme accuracy, generally killing my Viper rather fast. I also tried picking up a Thor- no luck! It simply blasts a HEAT and kills me! I died three times on New Yosemite- none of them at the hands of AA! And by the way, welcome to the game, Ender and Yutli. (Sorry if I misspelled the latter.)

I was just trying it and I realized exactly what you meant by "Ready for 1.2.6"... Darn!

Well, guys, you can't forget that he was good enough to make "Where Eagles Dare" for us all.

This will be insanely fun! Two things though... A) Is the Grapple now turn-off-able? We want balance, not Super-Vipers. (Never thought I'd say that, eh? Well, I actually only had one question. Now it's time to design my Gunship of DOOM!

Yep. I've had one with two autoguns made for a while (can't take out projectiles, that would be unbalancing.) If you folks want it, I can put it up here.

Well, that should be possible. Make it an "InfantryChassis" and then make the squad only one member. Open up an Infantry unit file and make some changes so the new file looks right. It appears that that should work, but who knows if there are a ton of flaws in the programming. You're an experienced modder, so you should be able to make this work. Heck, you're one of the best Infantry modders, so it hopefully won't be too big a problem.

Thanks for the advice Poesel. Is it possible that the AirshipChassis is simply not allowed to carry player-controlled weapons, just as turrets, for example, can't be player controlled? Is this impossible due to the actual code?

The problem with write-protection is interesting. Has anyone circumvented it? I'm no expert on this, but copy-paste should work fine. I'll see if I can modify it... EDIT- As it turns out... my file isn't copy-protected; far from it! I just deleted the entire contents of the file!

The farthest I've gotten is arming it with automated Ion Cannons by taking the Galaxy chassis, then changing the model file and collision boxes to those of the Viper. One very important thing if one does this is to make the density that of a Viper. Otherwise, flying is a nightmare. However, I have no idea why this didn't work when I tried simply modifying the Viper's subsystems... I suppose I might attempt, for example, taking a Thor and modifying it? I'll get back to everyone when I try this.

Here it is.

I think it would be possible- use fog but make it "black fog." This would simulate night. Anyone else think this would work?

If you don't mind Photoshop, I can give it a try. Don't expect anything spectacular, but I'll take a shot at it if you post the files and exactly what you need.

Just checked it, folks, and it unzips fine for me.

How about ?

That's better.

Biggest understatement in the history of the universe.

I know that you can't run new maps on the demo, but AFAIK, you can mod new vehicles, buildings, etc. and run them. If you need help, there are plenty of nice topics here that explain how to mod. You could also check out the Dropteam Wiki

I believe 12. I don't know if this can be changed as I've never run a server. Not at the moment. I've heard this is in the works, though. Battles are possible in zero-g and underwater. So far, there's no such thing as a space-only battle, as there are no space vehicles! Not that I know of, though it might be possible with some imaginative XML modding. The damage model is much more sophisticated. You have armor values for the tank chassis's front, sides, rear, top, and bottom. The turret also has these armor values. Hits are first calculated against the armor for penetration, then against "subsystems" like ammo, fuel, driver, gunner, etc. to determine damage. Ending up disabled is arguably more common than being killed. This has not been done, though again with some animations and creative XML modding it should be possible. At the moment, it's mostly conventional vehicles. I don't know how "realistic" a walking vehicle could be.

I'd have to say they probably can't, as Clay has said that only player-controlled objects can be Viper-lifted.

The problem with using amphibious hovers as gunboats is that they are very slow in the water. A true gunboat could go much faster. And as to Toby, the density is a good idea (water mines? depth charges?) but for a boat I can't see a way to get an engine to work...

Sorry, Phantom. I do believe, though, that you killed me more times than I killed you. Among problems with being a Viper pilot are that one never gets credit for kills, and that there are only 4 Vipers. Extraction does not add them back to your inventory. Getting stuck after the Viper is dead, though, is unrealistic overkill, I agree. On the other hand, I believe that those fancy tanks are way too hard to drive. Looking forward to having a talented Thor player like you on my side next time. Speaking of evolving tactics, one can only imagine the new methods that will arise for Viper-to-Viper fighting. Thors will be picked up from the ground and hurled at high speed straight at other Vipers. Head on air collisions will occur. Vipers will roll, and make spectacular midair maneuvers so as to grab the other Viper with its grapple. This could usher in an entirely new era of DropTeam. Looking forward to meeting you in battle as well, Chilibird/Iceman, great founder and hero of all Viper pilots. [ March 11, 2007, 07:36 PM: Message edited by: Phonan ]

Phantom, we did have some really nice games going. The first Desert Mesa match was great. We were pulling in points with sniping from the mesas, and had the opposing flag just when they cleared our mines and brought the flag back to their base just as Phantom killed my flag run. On Archipelago, we got slaughtered. I don't know what happened. Our plan looked great on paper- long range shelling with a small advance spotting force. Only problem? The bots refused to fire. Sea Cliffs was furious. We threw everything we had at the objective, tried flanking and sniping, until Phantom flushed out the sniper, who couldn't redrop. We then threw wave after wave at them, making several intrusions, only to be repelled by some nice defense by JBY and Phantom. Great games, everyone. What's been annoying me recently is the increasing use of AA and especially Hermes, completely killing my Viper runs and making artillery a nightmare to use. I'm going to have to figure out some sort of way to counter this, because almost everything of importance lately is guarded by a Hermes. Viper tactics will have to evolve or die (hopefully the former.)

That would be rather nice. Does anyone know what defines whether an object can be grabbed with a Viper? Deployables can't be grabbed, but vehicles can; this may have to do with the chassis type, like TrackedChassis or AirshipChassis. On a side note IG, do you mind if I use a sig inspired by yours? George Orwell provides a wellspring of good quotes.

I believe that, for the benefit of everyone without CZ, we should still hold the Saturday matches on Delta Pavonis. This is just my view.

I've been working on modding an Arty tower, but unfortunately, I cannot make the guns target ground units. If anyone else is trying this and has luck, I'd appreciate knowing how they did it. Of course, I've been modding an AA tower so maybe a turret would work better.