TD's "turtle-shell" SAM

Millennium

Tiberian Dawn had this feature where the SAM would retract into a bunker when passive, giving it a high resistance to damage. When detecting an air target, it would do sort of a "stance shift", coming out of the bunker, losing its armor bonus, and firing on the target. When the target was destroyed or out of range, it would go back into its' "shell".

Is it possible to achieve this effect at all in RA2 (with Ares)? Or at least a good simulation of it? Maybe with a charging animation that shows the SAM deploy out of its shell, but that still wouldn't give a defensive bonus. Maybe a gattling system that first fires on itself to lower its own defensive value?

Let's brainstorm!

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Bu7loos · Commander **Joined**: 27 Jul 2011

Conditional unit to unit transformation ? tho that is a big headache for codding or just a structure that deploys into another structure, tho this is edible if you use advanced rubble but you will need an engineer to shift states.

G-E · Defense Minister **Joined**: 09 Feb 2015

I don't know if charge turrets work on buildings, but surely an animation that appears to emerge from some cocoon would be possible... I don't see any good way to alter the strength or other stats for each phase, and that would be seriously micromanaging anyway, no one would stop shooting at it until precisely the vulnerable moment.

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BaRaka · Medic **Joined**: 09 Jun 2014

Maybe with an Idle animation to Attach a bonus-on-armor Effect ? Either by Damage on animation, or with a particole.
Or the other way around - firing animation will give a decreased Armor Bonus.

Millennium · Posted: Sat May 23, 2015 4:32 pm Post subject:

Well... particles and animations cannot give AttachEffect (yet). I'm trying a firing animation right now for the visual effect, and a Splits/ProjectileRange=0 weapon for the ArmorMultiplier.

It definitely needs some more work, but with proper artwork I think it would not look too bad this way.

I'll be back later with screenies!

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GenesisAria · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 1:47 am Post subject:

Well there are ways you could do it with shp. But it would act a little odd. Charge turret might work, but it'd pop up, fire a volley then pop back down until ROF is ready for next volley.
I don't think it's even worth worrying about the defence buff at this time, just make it tougher vs ground units or something (it would pop up anyways if air showed up, unless they were manual deploy).
Perhaps they could work with firestorm? Not entirely sure how that works, but if you wanted manual toggle you could use the charging/discharging logic to make them stay on?

If anyone does work out deploying "pop-out" turrets, that's what the Nod laser turret really needs as well lol...

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ApolloTD · Commander **Joined**: 19 Nov 2003

Sure you can fake it like tesla coil but you won't have turning turret then.

Besides its gonna be single shot and goes back to closed mode and repeat. Instead of pop up and keep firing on targets in range until no more.

Whole armor boost is impractical atm and gimmick at best, only working idea might be to reduce armor when it fires instead but yeah... Gotta fire at target and yourself HF coding that minor feature.

Millennium · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 10:07 am Post subject:

Firing at self isn't hard:

Code:

[NASAM]
IsGattling=true
Gattling.Cycle=yes ; keeps reapplying while in attack mission
Weapon1=SAMRise ; 1st step of the firing process - SAM rises out of its shell.
Weapon3=RedEye2

[SAMRise]
Damage=0
Projectile=DummyProjectile
ProjectileRange=0
Warhead=SAMUpWH

[DummyProjectile]
Ranged=yes

[SAMUpWH]
AttachEffect.ArmorMultiplier=0.5
AttachEffect.Duration=5
AttachEffect.Cumulative=no

You're right that the charging animation is not very good for this feature though... maybe if the turret animation itself depicted the turret coming up, instead of turning...?

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Mig Eater · Posted: Sun May 24, 2015 10:48 am Post subject:

Over the last 15 years I have seen many people try to recreate the pop-up SAM. The best solution that I've seen is custom firing anims on the weapon, before you were limited to only 8 facings but with Ares you can now have 32 tho.

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