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Full Version: Ares 0.1: EMP Layers (Diffing EMP and Damage Verses)
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BEWARE: METHOD IS COMPLICATED. Not for newbies.

Problem: EMP and damaging shares the Verses, so you can't have a weapon which can only damage a target but not EMP it.

Credits goes to Speeder for finding the problem, Marshall for his glorious Immunity tutorial within the Ares Manual, without it I couldn't do this and DCoder for telling me that Warhead anims are played on the cell and not on the unit.

I found a workaround by delivering only the EMP with the weapon and delivering the damage through the warhead's animation, using the fixed animation damage.

OK, first I show you a working example, where the Tesla Trooper gains EMP which he can't use against Harvesters, then I try to explain how's this works.

Code:
;Rulesmd.ini
[ElectricBolt] ;Tesla Trooper's original weapon, only modifications are listed
Damage=1;was 50, needed to play the animation.
Warhead=TTroopRShock; new warhead to deliver the EMP.

[TTroopRShock]
Verses=100%,100%,100%,85%,0%,100%,50%,50%,50%,200%,100% ;Note: Medium is 0%
InfDeath=5
Wood=yes
; SJM: No piff-piff animation -- electric bolts now spawn spark systems instead.
AnimList=RTTROOP ;New animation
Versus.medium.ForceFire=yes ;Ares Immunity
Versus.medium.Retaliate=yes ;Ares Immunity
Versus.medium.PassiveAcquire=yes ;Ares Immunity, only with these three lines, the weapon will auto-attack even if it's at 0% on Verses. Repeat them for all immune ArmorType.
EMP.Duration=5 ;This is what we want.

[Shock]
CellSpread=.3 ;Add it to work.

;Two new anims
[RTTROOP]
Damage=50 ;Here comes the damage
Warhead=Shock ;Using Shock
Normalized=yes
Image=TSTIMPCT ;But to use the old anim
End=0 ;Damage is delivered per frame, we have to play only the first one with this animation!
Next=TTROOPATT ;And play the else with another one.

[TTROOPATT] ;Our finishing animation
Start=1
Normalized=yes
Image=TSTIMPCT





OK, now the logical part. We have two ways to deliver EMP and Damage: Animations and Weapons. As tested, animation warheads ignore EMP, so we have to use the weapon the deliver the EMP. This leaves Damage to be delivered by the animation. To make targets immune to this EMP weapon, we have to use 0% in Verses. That's where 0%-1%-2%-behaviour customization comes in, enabling all three will enable auto-attack, while still keeping the target immune and play the animation... what we needed. Now we're done with the EMP, let's work on Damage. Adding a simple Damage and Warhead will work... but only against buildings if the Warhead doesn't have a CellSpread. This is because Warhead anims are played on the cell, and not on the unit... and WW's coding considers only BuildingTypes as part of the cell. Units are just occupiers. However, at the GGI, WW also shown that CellSpread below 1 are also works, so a CellSpread .3-.5 is enough to damage only the correct target (Well, .5 is maybe much against infantry). Also, Animation damage is delivered with every frame, so to not have DPS weapons, you have to create another animation to play all the frames and let this damaging one play only the first frame of the animation.

In a nutshell, pros:
EMP and damage customization per ArmorType.
Possibility to create DPS weapons with only using up the Animation Damage findings.

Cons:
Needs one animation per damage
Needs one animation per firing animation
Needs a new warhead as well
Needs CellSpread.
Update: Flaw found out by AG: PROMOTION IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Crap.