[Rel] Proper t1 Multirole Gunship

By: SquishyPon3, TrophySystem

Adds t1 gunships.

Called "Dragonflys"

Uses kestrel model and build icon, Uses it's own strategic icon, it looks like a t1 kestrel's strat icon would.

Cost little more than an ant at 240 metal, heavy health at 240, slow at 18 speed but faster than tanks barely, has 80range missiles for 50 damage, and 50range machineguns for 15 damage. Does less damage than an ant at range, little more than an ant at closer range.

Multiple uses. Used with land armies to contribute dps while holding off some air. Used by itself to harass perimeter establishments with some of your own fighters. If not sacrificed, can soak some damage while doing some damage and then be repaired. If with an army, can be repaired by the combat fabbers within.

It doesn't do high strike damage, that is for bombers. It doesn't react quickly, that is for fighters. It does add healthy health and dps and variety to your army, and is the premier bulk air unit for mass.

Give feedback on balance. It was significantly harder to balance than thought, considering the large gap in ground AA damage, ground health, air AA damage, and air health.

Thanks to: SquishyPon3, for helping with a load of the work and structure, and jumping onto this idea so quickly as I just suggested it before I went to work and he did a great portion before I even got home. This was just a great practice with editing unit jsons for me, and shadowing files with proper structure. Many a mod I tried before I couldn't structure properly both the modinfo.json and the folder structure and thus they never worked

I could do this, give me a bit... Though I'm still a little confused as to how to make units actually work in the game yet. (I think I may have finally gotten my hover tank into the game but atm there's no way to test it sooo...)

Edit: I've actually been wanting to make something like the Core's gunship, rockets, yay!

They remind me more of a "hind helicopter gunship" but the concept of a generalist air unit to make air armies that are weak against pure AA but strong when applied to any unit without sufficient AA or just bot forces (although their rate doesn't kill bots "fast" persay but does defeat them nonetheless) or when in enough numbers can defeat AA first (reguardless of air or ground AA) and then the surviving gunships can continue chipping at surviving enemies.

Oh, also, if you want to make a 1 unit mod, I can work on that tomorrow. I can make it quite jiffy (might need to add "stinger and spinner" mild adjustments too), and applying it I can work on if you have made it before then I can work on implementing your work into a mod readable by a server. If you get to it before then, we can test and adjust and you can post it under your name with partial credit to me in the corner somewhere.

Alright I made the mod, not sure if it'll show up, but it should show up in the basic fac... I'm still a little iffy on making new units but here's basically what you said. (Didn't do anything to the ground AA though.)

It won't have an icon though, if it'll even show up at all...

just left for the night. I'll try it with a direct port in the morning to check for crash or launch, see what it does, and perhaps get around to ground as although it works without, the ground is just a bonus and is basically stinger missiles vs flak vehicle. Maybe I should adjust the tower too.

I may make a special icon for t1 kestrel too, maybe just the size scaling and chance kestrel to double black line if not already.

any name suggestion? Maybe the gyro? Or to match the theme, dragonfly?

I'm not sure, I just gave it the name: "Hornet" as a placeholder.

that's the name of the t2 bomber lol.

my op was asking for opinion. I am suprised you jumped on this so fast. Eager modders and the spread of modding will give this game a beautiful golden age.

Oh haha, you're right, I forgot about that... How about the wasp then?

And yep! I really hope the unit works as problems keep sprouting up whenever I attempt to add a custom unit..

I'll look for all the quotes.

I did work on it, trying to structure it. You see, that is actually where my weakness lies. Structuring the format. I feel like I understand how shadowing works in every other game, except this one. I must be doing something explicitly wrong, as I get the game to load with a blacked out planet and a commander with no build options albeit he can move. Really, I did something right enough, as the game DID load with the server mod detected.

The work I did do, was make a new strat icon for the little guy, rename him the dragonfly, copied over the original kestrel build icon, tweaked the balance numbers because some like metal cost weren't touched, and had to make many new directories to shadow correctly for the strat icon and such.

I just don't know what went wrong. Message or PM here when you are available so you can try to troubleshoot it.

EDIT: Good news, not really but sort of, is that the mod doesn't cause the black textures. Maybe the error with the lack of commander build options is simpler than I thought. The implied bad news, is what the f*** is wrong with my PTE build with mods disabled that is causing no planet texture on an nvidia gpu?

I think we may be having the same issue, check over here https://forums.uberent.com/threads/graphical-issue-with-new-pte-build.60369/

I'm not sure, adding units seems to be really problematic, such simple mistakes mess up the whole thing... I've never had that problem, I have had the problem with the commander having no build bar. But I have no idea what causes it...

I figured out what causes the missing commander ui, try to see if there's anything missing in the unitlist.json, a comma, a quotation mark, anything to screw it up. One missing comma and there are no buildable units at all.

Thanks, I will check for syntax, I actually didn't change that though, just simply looked at the middle of it.

EDIT: you missed the comma after gunship basic Lol well its good to know.

EDIT EDIT: EVERYTHING I DID WORKED. Man I thought I was a messup. The strat icons mostly work as per thought of, the balance is good except I made it too slow, but for the most part its winsauce. Actually, the speed is alright for the most part.

Oh. The hummingbird missiles actually can't damage land structures. I need to tweak their "value" that does that.

They look really cool when micro'd, but really hard to effectively micro after a few seconds, they start to wander into fire afterwards, but for the first few seconds they actually strafe side-by-side gently dodging commander shots.

Yes, but I did, I added the gunship to both the unitlist.json and the js.

Oh and you found it! Thanks, sorry, it's always something so small.

Edit: There's one problem down, now lets see if it shows in the basic air factory... It'll look like a little box outline if it does.

Oh no Pon3, I did EVERYTHING. I gave it the kestrel build bar icon. I made what would be the logical strategic icon for it too, a hummingbird icon outline with the kestrel center symbol. I messed with a lot of things, I will perfect it and hand it back to you.

Oh nice! I'm glad it worked, I finally made a unit that worked perfectly fine, with your help on further balance and strat icons and such! (Other than the unitlist.json but that's small, at least easy to find out, most of my other units just won't show up...)

We should partner up on some of this stuff perhaps.

Although some of your other work is very hopeful. This was an existing unit with movement and such.

Anyway, how do I send this to you to tweak and publish? I might even like to see if it can be put on mod manager (although mod manager doesn't have a server side tab yet, simple enough to make in my opinion if we start putting server mods up)

Well yes it was an existing unit, but I still needed to add it to the unitlist.json and the js also tweak a feeew things... but even normally, using a unit as an example I seem to screw up something so small and it takes me a whole day to find out what I did wrong. This time it was something really simple and easy to find!

Anyway, to give it back to me just go to your "server_mods" folder and compress it to a .zip file then you can upload it here, though there's no reason to really, not yet, because I don't have good internet until about 11pm when I have unlimited broadband with 2.0mb/s

I wish to play using it. Also, I might just actually tweak ground AA after all.