Projector

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

Cost: 250
Prerequisite: Warfactory, tech center
Role: Deception
Strengths: N/A
Weaknesses: N/A

A true testament to the deceptive nature of Nod, Projectors are small and cheap mechanical units that project themselves as other Nod units and base defences. In addition to the appearance, the projector mimics the behavior of the real vehicle to make it impossible for enemies to tell the difference between projectors and real units. Once they come under fire though, the deception is quickly broken as the projectors break up quickly to even light fire. The projectors are not armed with any real weapons.

A group of projectors faking as an attack force:

The player who controls the projectors can tell the difference between them and real units when the projectors are selected. A selected projector displays a row of boxes at the bottom part of the selection box, while real units do not. Enemy players won't be able to see the boxes, thus unable to tell the difference. Below is an example picture with projectors and real units:

_________________

Crimsonum · Seth **Joined**: 14 Jul 2005 **Location**: Fineland

I can't believe no one tried this before. SuperJoe, I admire your creative use of rules.ini codes. Good job.

PS. Mind telling us just how it works? #Tongue

Unless you want to keep it to your mod Smile

_________________

Ickus · General **Joined**: 25 Nov 2002 **Location**: @__@

wait what? I am curious how it was done. hrm,

_________________
Delirium..

Orac · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 7:31 pm Post subject:

Is it done like fake buildings in RA?

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

The projector fakes as a different vehicle in stages. When you first buy it it appears as a tick tank, then you can deploy it to fake a deployed tick tank. Undeploy from there and it fakes a reaper, and so on, until it has gone over all the 5 fakeble vehicles (tick tank -> reaper -> artillery -> hellfire mlrs -> mcv -> tick tank...). Most of the unit stats are shared between the different forms except movement and weapon behavior. Alternative would be to have each fake vehicle seperately available to buy in the sidebar, but I thought that would clutter it up a bit too much.

_________________

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

Hmm I tweaked the faking order a bit to make vehicles that don't normally deploy into anything (reaper, hellfire mlrs) to fake something worthwhile when deployed. So now it works like:

Tick tank -> deployed tick tank -> reaper -> laser turret -> artillery -> deployed artillery -> hellfire mlrs -> sam site -> mcv -> deployed sensor array -> tick tank...

Now the projector can be used to make your base defences seem alot bigger than they really are. I wonder if this makes the unit even too powerful for a low cost of 200 Laughing

_________________

Crimsonum · Seth **Joined**: 14 Jul 2005 **Location**: Fineland

Aha, that's very clever. I would raise the cost to 3-400 and give it a very low strength.

_________________

Ickus · General **Joined**: 25 Nov 2002 **Location**: @__@

ah, yea i figured you'd be abusing the free unit logic or the deploys into w/e the key is. Seems more like a shape shifter.

_________________
Delirium..

gufu · Posted: Sun Sep 26, 2010 10:25 pm Post subject:

Hah! Awesome idea. Reminds me somewhat of Emperor:Battle for Dune's Ixian Projector Tank. I assume that it was of some inspiration?

_________________
DUNK!

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

I increased the projector cost to 250, since real laser turrets and samsites are pretty cheap too, 425 and 500 each. You can still get 4 projectors for 1000 instead of 5. The projector has only 50 hp + light armor so 1-2 shots from pretty much anything will break them up.

Yep Gufu I just recently played Emperor again after many years break. I took inspiration from it for other things beside the projector too Wink

_________________

GameMaster0000 · Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:40 am Post subject:

good creative idea man.

One problem that it also confuse you self which one is fake or real, you make it has unique voice to make player recognize that is fake or real.

_________________

Tiberian Sun : True Power - Reality Power Of 5 Factions...

Orac · Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 7:44 am Post subject:

I'd use the limpet bleep for that, imo.

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

I took that small robotic vehicle (that releases gas that makes units go crazy) voice from Yuri's Revenge for it.

_________________

gufu · Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2010 1:35 am Post subject:

SuperJoe wrote:

I took that small robotic vehicle (that releases gas that makes units go crazy) voice from Yuri's Revenge for it.

Chaos Drone, eh?

_________________
DUNK!

freedom fighter · General **Joined**: 14 May 2009

Oooo, nice idea.

*takes note for mod ideas*

_________________
The future belongs to The Forgotten!

ArvinCool · Tiberian Beast **Joined**: 01 Jun 2008

this is fun online

_________________
"I'll be staying strapped cuse my mac-eleven make my nuts bigger"

OmegaBolt · Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:24 pm Post subject:

The fake units should look a little different from the originals, otherwise even the player could mistake them for the real thing.

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

They have a different, robotic selection voice. You could also put them under different control group for quick access. Beyond these I don't think theres any way to change the visual appearance to be different to the owner and enemy players.

_________________

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

Found a solution that allows you to tell the difference visually between projectors and real units. The projectors display row of pips when selected, while real units don't. I've updated the unit profile with this. I used similar thing with the fake / real ion storm missile launcher for the Forgotten.

_________________

MT · Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 3:58 am Post subject:

Cleverer and cleverer, SuperJoe. A good idea to start with and now made to work well ingame. I'll have to try these right away when the mod is out.

Nyerguds · Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2011 3:56 pm Post subject:

SuperJoe wrote:

Yep Gufu I just recently played Emperor again after many years break. I took inspiration from it for other things beside the projector too Wink

The fake units from an Ixian projector DID have real weapons though. I always took out the Emperor Worm with a ton of projected units #Tongue

So, do these units/structures shoot but with no damage, or don't they shoot at all?

_________________

Cranium · Defense Minister **Joined**: 05 Dec 2009 **Location**: USA

SuperJoe wrote:

Beyond these I don't think theres any way to change the visual appearance to be different to the owner and enemy players.

yeah, it's a shame that AuxAnim = and AltImage= are used for building types only. "Maybe something CCHyper can look into". But this is brilliant anyway. I like what you've done with this mod so far. Smile

_________________

The enemy shall be injected with toxic poison - Venom

j4m3sb0nd · Commander **Joined**: 10 Nov 2004

Great but indeed perhaps too cheap in-game since it could make or break game depending on how the opponent judges your arsenal. Either your having the unit with so little evident money would give it away or on the other hand they could not tell when to attack when they could do so successfully, since for just $200 you could have a whole field of these units posing as defencively significant units.

SuperJoe · Commander **Joined**: 03 Sep 2009

j4m3sb0nd wrote:

Great but indeed perhaps too cheap in-game since it could make or break game depending on how the opponent judges your arsenal. Either your having the unit with so little evident money would give it away or on the other hand they could not tell when to attack when they could do so successfully, since for just $200 you could have a whole field of these units posing as defencively significant units.

I already increased the price once from 200 to 250. Think if it cost more it would start to become useless, since the cost difference to a real unit that actually has a weapon wouldn't be as much. For example a real laser turret costs 425 and a samsite 500.

_________________

j4m3sb0nd · Commander **Joined**: 10 Nov 2004

Understandable, though it can transform into things appearing of vast worth, the delay in transformations might be an added disadvantage of the unit to justify the price as well.

Morpher · General **Joined**: 28 Jan 2005

Whilst things may appear to be of vast worth, they are effectively useless combat wise so too much increase of price and you might as well save a few more credits on buying something that looks the same but also has firepower.

_________________