I'm not sure how hard/easy implementing landing gears would be, but I like the idea. A campaign mission where the player would have to land to rearm would definitely be interesting.

The reason for having a high cost and limited ammo is how easy it is to abuse the UAVs. It is trivial to order a unit, quickly drop the ordnance, and get all your gold back by returning to orbit. If the unit is expensive losses will hurt the player even if they occur rarely, but the best solution would of course be to charge the player for the ordnance as well. Unfortunately I have not been able to figure out a good way of doing this. I just realized that the value of the UAVs can be reduced by adding negative cost items to the inventory. Thanks for bringing this up!

Well, I can think of 2 ways the landing could work.

The first is a tad more complex, the landing wheels. Basically the script would disable the original plane controls and replace them with simple <-/-> left/right
movement controls instead of throttle. Then by taking mail2345's humvee car code from here for the wheels, hovering and driving with some added speed limits and preventing it from accelerating mid-air and eating terrain.
The whole craft would switch between modes like that Turbokat jet I made and it would only be able to do it if its speed was less than... 10 for example.

Or if the whole wheel business is too confusing, you can make it hover.
Its much more simple, Lafe's vehicles can provide some help how to do that.


The other way is having the UAV go into a vertical landing mode which would go like this step-by-step:
-You're flying normally to your landing area.
-Once you're above the landing pad (do note, a pad, not a runway in this case)
-You slowdown and press the "landing mode key"
-After that, when you're slow enough, like 5 speed, the UAV will slowdown to 0 horizontal speed and now you can only go either up or down vertically.
-It also should be mentioned that the plane auto-alligns its angle to face forward so you wont land in a wierd position. Also helps in taking off.
-Go down and land softly
-??? (reload guns? repair?)

Now for getting back in air:
-Fly upwards with the landing mode until you've cleared the landing pad and have a clear path for flying.
-Press the "landing mode key" again and the UAV will recieve a slight boost forward and now you're flying again.


Hmm. Personally I kinda like that vertical landing thing since CC's limited space and it would allow for more compact craft storing without needing to worry about a runway although it does have a certain charm going by the runway and flying off. But I'd most like do the vertical landing thing if I were you.
Its fairly simple and pretty easy to do afaik. And the latter would most likely need less code. Atleast less complexity.

Btw, whats with the small drone that was included with the new version?
It says its some sort of turret/target coordinator? what does it do?

I'm probably just nitpicking, but don't you mean X or Z to Drop bombs/Fire rockets/Ignite booster rocket?

I agree the amount of space a landing strip would take up is a problem so VTOL might be the only solution (except maybe making a mini-cc where everything is half sized).

When you mentioned wheels I immediately downloaded mail's hummer to have a look, but found the code to be completely unreadable. So I made some experiments on my own and came up with this: (Please note that this is a work in progress etc.)



It works a lot better than I thought it would, but the GlobalAccScalar of the body has to be zero so I'm not sure it can be used together with the UAV.




In the first version all turrets iterated through the actors list every now and then to find a target, causing the game to lag if too many turrets were placed (not sure how many though). In the new version only the crab called Turret Control will do this. When a target is found the controller relays the target ID to a suitable turret, and the turret engage the target as usual. This way it is possible to have a lot more turrets in a map without causing lag (at least I think so, never actually bothered to test it properly).


Also, nitpicking is always appreciated.

Eh, I was always a bad documentor.

This looks incredibly comical.

Bloody hell! That tank/apc vehicle is amazing.

From what you say and what I see on the picture, that beast seems to handle terrain pretty well. Would the code of this vehicle work for a two wheeled vehicle aswell? Such as a regular car?

I've always dreamed of having a car that you could drive around the place carmageddon style in CC with a mounted machine gun on top of it, but my mind fails to understand how'd the Lua work for making the vehicle drive and allign itself over a slope and most importantly not to get stuck when not supposed to.


Say, do you know how you're going to do the VTOL? I have a clean view how it could work so ask if theres something on your mind.

Would you, perchance, be able to integrate Grif or Zalo's radar system into one of the UAVs? I never seem to be able to properly judge exactly where it is I am on the map, resulting in common incorrectly timed manoeuvering - often resulting in death. I am quite sure it would be possible... and would allow for more long-ranged weapon UAV variants whilst retaining practicality in all variants.
Alternatively, any indication of enemy position whilst using a UAV would be quite good as well.

I'm liking the idea of porta-AA and I think the planes should have contrails (I added some in my own file but its kinda flawed (working on the offsets)

Thank you all for the feedback.

The armored car is just a Crab and three MOSRotating where all four parts are held roughly in the same position relative to each other. Less that three wheels would also work, but it would be a little bit more difficult to negotiate obstacles. Terrain destruction is minimal as long as the wheels stay on top of the terrain, but sometimes the wheels are forced into a terrain object and you have to start working on dislodging the vehicle. These problems might be solvable though.

One surprise was that the AI can control it pretty well.


Thank you for the offer, but at the moment I'm actually leaning towards not implementing VTOL for the UAV's and instead making a gunship of some sort. Something like a AH-1 Cobra but with a rocket engine instead of blades to keep it afloat. There is a way of faking sharp aim from a rocket/dropship without having to use multiple actors, making it possible to have a machine gun on a flexible mount (plus wing mounted rockets and/or missiles of course). I think a craft like this would be perfect for operating from a small landing pad. What do you think?

The only thing I'm missing is a decent sprite.


I agree about the contrails, but all my attempts failed because of what happens with the emitters when the sprite is flipped. Would be interesting to see what you come up with though. The AA turrets are Crabs, so you can easily make them walk using the legs from the Turret controller.


Using Zalo's minimap is a really good idea. I will probably do some tests later.

I have an idea for a gradual landing system:

Alti is the desired altitude

(run this code when you first go into landing mode)
self.Alti = self:GetAltitude(0,4)

(run this script constantly while in landing mode)
--checking for altitude
if self:GetAltitude(0,5) < Alti then
--apply Velocty
self.Vel.Y = self.Vel.Y - 1;
self.Alti = self.Alti -1
end
if self.Alti < 5
self.Alti = 5
end
that will enable you to go on a steady decent

please note, my syntax probably isent quite correct,
i just typed that basicly from scratch and havent tested it yet.

It'd be awesome if you could work with Deathbringer and make a UAV that fires his Jericho missile.

I should start by making my Jericho Home-able. Right now its giving me some headaches­.

Btw, that apc looks funny but amazing. Does it have some suspension or what? The middle wheel seems to be more retracted than the other two.

It has suspension, sort of. The wheels will roll over the terrain and the body will follow, making it almost look like proper suspension:




A special thanks to Zalo and 411570N3 for making me realize how to implement a minimap:


(The dots under the UAV is the minimap, in case that was not obvious.)

The way that thing drives is godlike.
Cant wait to get my hands both on driving that and making a car out of it.

Also I've also felt it pretty nasty to fly without any idea how close the terrain I am or even where the end of the map is making for some funny "OHSHIT THE GROUND/BORDER! HIT THE BRAKEEEEeeeeeeeesssss *boom*" moments.
That minimap should make things a bit more predictable. : )