[WIP][Server] Orbital Warfare Overhaul

Well did you know a couple balance mods actually came out before air shooting dox? For example: Uber actually seemed to get the idea from elodea's balance mod, and Statera had a seperate dedicated AA bot that who used pot shot AA (bullets), named I believe the smasher.

I actually thought dox could always shoot air from the start. It was other people that wanted to limit it.

Now that I notice, theres already a GW version for the realworld logical changes. So I dunno what I missed........

Part of why I wanted to keep dox shooting air was from ye ol Totala days when everything that could shoot, could shoot at anything else. The other part is that with the unit cannon preview on the original KS video, I thought it'd be important for dox to target air layer if they were coming out of pods and landing... now that I think about it maybe they don't need to shoot air to be able to shoot ground while in the air...?

After that, I just thought that people endlessly changing everything about the game don't actually wanna play the game that uber made. Just the engine and basic mechanics. Although I'm fascinated by the effort everyone's gone to making all these mods. If nothing else now, it'll pave the way for amazing stuff later.

IT'S ALL PART OF MY MASTER PLAN! MUAHAHAHAHA!

Dox aren't even in the mod files.

Nope, it was implemented sometime in gamma, heck the dox at one point was the grenadier, until everyone yelled at uber to make it a seperate unit. XD

There used to be a missile bot, but uber didn't really work to balance it.

Edit: And I know what you mean about all units firing at all units.. but when only one unit does it, it's just a bit random.

Hey guys, new update! We've got a new unit, the Tesla tower. An advanced turret, it can shoot down aircraft, destroy bots, and blow tactical missiles out of the sky! Watch out Hailfire spammers! There's a new counter to be aware of!



We also have new strategic icons, that are in-line with Uber's strategic icon style, some new particle effects, and better build bar icons, also in-line with Uber's style.

I've mentioned this before but in my games wraith don't actually shoot down incoming tactical missiles. They just sat there and did nothing while they (and my fleet) were being destroyed.

Ah not sure if the bugs been fixed yet. Will have to ask emraldis to take a look at it again if this is still the case. Infact I think wraiths were broken in a recent patch and we are still working on fixing it.

(You may want to look into that quoting as youve misplaced my name in the quote there.)

Should be fixed in the latest build...

Loving it, but I'd suggest a bit brighter, thicker bolts. Also a contact animation would be nice if possible. (Think nuke explosion for nuke, arty explosion from shell, etc..)

Just tested the tesla tower and the bolt looks a lot more noticeable in-game so that wont be changing likely. The contact animation is something that we could look at though.

So I was persuaded to watch a game with this mod last night - I'm sold. Uber pls make vanilla kthxbye

I don't know, I do feel that the lightning effects could be a liiitle thicker, or at least give them more of a glow...

Cool vid!!

So is this new tower basically for tactical missile defense? How does its AA compare to the flak cannon?

Worse than the flak cannon, but it can hit ground and tac missiles as well.

Hey Emraldis, it's been a while, but I'm back to PA after a 9-12 month hiatus. The last time I really played more than a couple rounds was right after the first draft release of Galactic War. You're mod has gotten quite a lot of attention, and it's the first big one I've tried since coming back to PA.

I have a constructive suggestion focused on something *other* than balance or units. Project Hierarchy.

For the gamers who want a little more granular control over what they add to their game I suggest breaking the mod into 5 sub-mods plus a parent mod that calls the other 5 as dependencies.

• Orbital Defense - includes the Anchor, Guardian, Sentinel, and mines.
• Orbital Supremacy - includes the Excalibur, Hammerhead, Wraith, and the Avenger.
• Orbital Bombardment - includes the Hailfire, SXX, and Halley.
• Orbital Surveillance - includes the changes to radar satellites and deep space radar.
• Surface Defense - includes the Lancer, Tesla, and changes to other existing ground units.

I started playing with PA modding last night and was pleasantly surprised to see how easily PA and PAMM handle the mod folder structures. I've been debating for a long time if I should get into PA modding the way I did other RTS games. It's exciting to see it so accessible, but it's also terrifying to think I might be giving up so much of my precious free time if I do.

Are you using an invisible projectile with trails to create the lighting effect? I'm curious because I made a lighting effect for ZeroHour that was very VERY similar to this. The way they subtly swish reminds me of it.

Sounds like you might like a read of this

Yeah, that's how I did it last time. I had an animated model with a a few invisible bones that would quickly jink around. Then, when the in projectile was fired I left a particle trail behind the bones that resembled the contrails from fighters. (actually, during development there WERE contrails) Add a lightning texture to those random trails and it had a very nice tesla effect... very much like the one pictured above.

edit: I had more bones than trails... for larger T2 and T3 lighting strikes I added additional trails to the bones.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/remix-escalation/images/remix-screenshots156#imagebox

For the tesla effect we made use of ubers new beam weapon effects. In a recent patch uber made it possible to add effects to beam weapons whereas previously they were invisible and insta hit. Hope this helps a bit.

Edit:
Take a look at the new sniper effects as well for reference.