This prototype experimental addon for 0.7 LosTech will add aerostrike capabilities
- Ability to call airstrikes from any chassis to pilots NIMO and REYNA
- It also adds these capabilities to all types of player-controlled Aerospace Spotters
-- Aerospace Spotters conventional weapons weakened to compensate
***Install***
- Install MechCommander Darkest Hours 4.2
- Install Lostech 0.7
- Copy contents of this folder to your MechCommander install
- Overwrite anything
- Play solo mission, use NimoStar or Reyna pilots,
or buy AeroSpace Spotters - the last only available in select missions for now (example: Second Refusal War P2, P3)
***Mechanism***
AeroSpace Strikes are called with a special AI "tactic" which is embedded in an .abl brain file.
Warrior files call these brains in their first code line. The brains provide their behaviour. In time this leads to invoke the Airstrike tactic at specific times in their subroutine triggers.
***Notes***
- The "Aerospace TAG" component doesn't really call an airstrike, its there to show which unit the Spotter is targeting at the time, and therefore, which is where will the airstrikes tend to fall (with delay). The effect is a line of small lasers that deal extremely low (0.01) damage each.
- The actual countdown to the strike seems to have more than three seconds. Only the last three seconds are graphically displayed.
- The "approaching" sound is not always heard.
- The max ROF for AeroSpace Strikes for a given unit is one per second, which is pretty high - But given the retreat behaviour, such ROF is rarely achieved (a notable moment is when an enemy approaches directly to point blank on a corridor), with one ever 5-10 seconds being way more common.
-- Even if this max rate is fortuitouisly (?) achieved, the high delay means the enemy triggering the attack will have already left the area of effect when it strikes.
- Even if the explosions appear sequential, the actual damage of the strike is dealt all at once, and is concentrated on the middle and not spread out in a line.
- Aerospace strikes, even with the custom pbrainSpot.abl AI file, are notoriously difficult to control. They may deal more damage to yourself than to enemies. Plus enemies tend to be spam, so normally the strikes may do more harm than good.
- The range for calling AeroSpace Strikes is always short, around "75", like the range of a short-ranged weapon. The different AI brains change behavioural patterns, not range of the actual strikes.
-- This makes them more dangerous still, as, unlike Long Tom cannons and similar area-effect weapons, there is no minimum range to prevent hurting yourself.
- Launching strikes tends to send your units in a brief auto-retreat, though they are not smart enough to resist going in there later before the actual attack falls, and be exploded anyways.
- The SpotterBrain.abl (and variations) was meant to be an AI unit. At such, if you use it in player controllable stuff, your units will be difficult to control.
- This is a "first pass" release, values are not final for Lostech version 0.8 and/or later which will have Aerospace Airstrikes integrated in the main release.
