Ares and Super Weapons

[AlexB]

Hello all!

"Begun, the Clone War has."
– Yoda

I just committed a new branch, ft-superweapons, and you might want to take a look at it. It groups many features from the tracker, but the most notable one should be:
It is now possible to create multiple super weapons of the same action.

You can create up to two superweapons of the same action. And they will both use the global Rules settings. The AI will not use them right now and there are several known crashes. This entire paragraph is a joke. Ignore it.

If you are an Ares tester, have a look at that branch and at least skim the manual. There are too many new tags to name them here. Be aware of the changes. Not all tags from 0.1 exist any more. Further down below is a migration guide. Essentially, just find and replace actions needed.

The most important thing: There is still time for feedback. Nothing is set in stone and there are several improvements yet to come. Post here what you like or don't like. I can't imagine we'll ignore your comments .

The unmodded super weapons should work as always. If you encounter crashes of inconsistencies of any kind, file a bug report or post here, respectively.

Happy modding!




Some features:

• No cryptic AI Targeting Mode values.
  Ares uses names like LightningStorm, ParaDrop or GeneticMutator instead of meaningless numbers which change if you reorder the SuperWeaponType list.
  
  
• New targeting modes.
  Offensive shoots like the Lightning Storm, but doesn't wait if a storm is active. Stealth targets cloaked units only.
  
  
• Land and Water firing support.
  You define what the SW can fired upon. If you want the Sonar Pulse to fire on land cells too, you can do that quite easily.
  
  
• (Mostly) unlimited ranges.
  Except for the nuke explosion, every ranged super weapons support unlimited range. And you can define circular and rectangular areas.
  
  
• Auto-Firing with targeting mode instead of firing to edges.
  Why should your super weapons auto fire on the edges? Wouldn't that be stupid? Why should one want to do that?
  
  
• Messages support.
  Whenever your super weapon is launched, you can print messages like the Lightning Storm does.
  
  
• Customizable icon overlay texts.
  Whatever text should be on the SW cameo, you can set it with Ares. Launch instead of Ready? Offline instead of On Hold?
  
  
• Deferred explosion on every projectile.
  Only the nuke could have an animation, deferring the actual hit. Now, every warhead can have that.
  
  
• Paradrop plane count and contents fully customizable.
  Every side and every country can have multiple planes with arbitrary units dropping out of them.
  
  
• Ranged or full-map Sonar Pulse.
  Just like the Sonar Pulse from Red Alert. You click the cameo and every cloaked unit on the map emerges. Of course, you can still have the ranged one.
  
  
• Lightning Rods.
  Basic support for Lightning Rods to attract deadly clouds and even reduce the damage caused by lightning – unless you tell your Lightning Storm SW to ignore them.
  
  
• Dominator Deferment.
  The Psychic Dominator always strikes out of nowhere. Now it can be deferred like the Lightning Storm.
  
  
• Animation visibility.
  You define whether the super weapon animation is visible to your team mates or the enemy. For example, the Chronoshift source animation is now visible to your allies by default, too.
  
  
• Disallow units to be Chronoshifted.
  The Chronosphere ignored Warpable=no. With a new tag you can tell it to ignore units that are too large or too powerful to be chronoshifted.
  
  
• Buildings can be Chronoshifted.
  Deployed vehicles can be chronshifted just like units. But all other buildings can be chronoshifted, too. (Default is off, naturally.)
  
  
• Many Hardcoded Values Customizable.
  Lightning Storm debris, Genetic Mutator damage, Psychic Dominator permanent mind control ring anim and many more.
  
  
• Some Customizable Values Hardcoded.
  PreClick, PostClick and PreDependent are obsolete now, replaced by SW.PostDependent.
  

Not yet working (list not complete):

• AI doesn't use the Chronosphere correctly.
  
• AI doesn't use the Iron Curtain correctly.
  
• Several SWs still need some work.
  
• Still some new SWs are missing.
  
• SW.RequiresTarget needs some improvements.
  
• Generic Warhead could be more versatile.
  
• Unit Delivery doesn't support deferment.
  

Migration Guide
Just replace the following tags:

Code:

SW.Deliver --> Deliver.Types
SW.DeliverBuildups --> Deliver.Buildups
SonarPulse.Range --> SW.Range
GenericWarhead.Warhead --> SW.Warhead
GenericWarhead.Damage --> SW.Damage