So here's my dilemma, I build this awesome fortress, fortified to the brim, and instead of fighting their way through my base, the AI decides it would like to dig a few feet from my base, right to the bunker, within a few minutes there are a hundred or so little robots pounding the hell out of my bunker, and the game is lost only a few minutes in.

What I'm proposing, is a module that acts as a door, instead of being made of metal and concrete, make it a module, like the sliding part of a door, and reinforce it, like the Incredidoor, used in Map Pack 3. with the exception of the actual entrance which would be the strength of a normal door. If there is any confusion on what exactly I mean, I can attempt to elaborate.

Let me see if I understand this. you want a new bunker module door, to compensate for the AI digging around your base to get to your brain, because you put your brain in a bunker module close to the outer edge of your base. That or you want a bunker module that ISN'T actually a door, but is made out of pinned MOs that absorb bullets until they break, rather than being destructible terrain.

Is that accurate? I mean, I'm in favor of new bunker modules of all kinds, they're not exactly the most frequently made things, but in the case of the later, it's just not possible. I mean, it is possible to make, but it's not very useful, you can't really stand on doors, things spas out and bounce around and break. Buy a dropship, and make it stay rather than return, then get another dude to try and stand on the dropship. Back in B22-23 I actually tried making a deployable terrain that you threw like a bomb that did exactly that. things didn't go as expected.

I will say though, I was considering re-designing my old double-enforced bunker modules, and if I can figure it out I might actually add armor plating MO's. Embedded in the module, not on the outside of it (this way things can walk on it until it's exposed. but that might be quite a while.

I think you're exactly right, I want pinned MO's that break once they reach the damage threshold. Placing them on the inside would be best, Although I've seen an enemy stand on the dropship doors before, they didn't quite spaz out like they do when they're on top of a ship, (which I must say is a prime way to take out a dropship when one of your actors has lost his weapons and his limbs).

This could be a useful thing to add just for normal bunker parts too. to add an extra layer of defense for your most exposed walls.

If I understand correctly, you mean after a Dropship has been destroyed? When dropships break they are no longer MOs, they just turn into really weak terrain.

No, I mean the doors that open to let dropships into your base.

Oh. Not sure how that works, but it usually does...

Yeah, I'm just wondering how well this will work out, if it gets made. It seems like it would work. But who knows for sure until it's made?

if you want I can fiddle with the stuff I made before. It was compatible right off the bat without editing as it was apparently, though some of the strengths are off. I could probably copy/paste some parts of a door to make a sort of test wall/platform thing. For reference though, Doors and other MOs have something called a GibWoundLimit. When you shoot something and it actually can damage it, it gets this like dent/wound thing on it, and when it has enough of those it will break apart, regardless of health. I say this because if I make such a thing, I'm going to need a point of reference for how many bullets the thing can take. Say, compared to a door that's in the vanilla game. That strong? stronger? How much stronger if so? I can work with that.

Another thing I'm gonna point out is... Diggers absolutely SHRED doors apart. If they're digging through a wall it would actually be slower than killing the plates with a digger, but if they're just shooting at it, it will last much longer than a standard bunker module. It's actually part of why I was messing with it before.

Another thing to note is, if you have JUST a MO with no terrain between, the AI will try to shoot instead of dig, BUT if there's terrain in the way, they'll use a digger until there is space to shoot, by which time the barrier/plate/door thing will likely have absorbed a bunch of hits from the digger. On top of that this might be a bit resource intensive because every plate will add an additional MO to the map, of which there's a finite number possible. This means if you have to many of them, you can't have as many actors on the map. that includes the enemy. if you go past that limit, MOs will seem to start to randomly explode.

This has me interested in the idea though, so over the next few days I might mess around with this. Most I'll probably do is duplicate part of the door code and graphics though, and make rather big plates. If it turns out there's some configuration of MO to terrain that is actually USEFULL, I just might make a few more serious ones, but that's a big if.

That would be great. For the amount it should be able to absorb... I'm not quite sure, there must be a value that makes it reflect other projectiles, because when i noticed the incredidoor, none of the bullets left gibwounds, but instead bounced off the door and would damage the terrain around it instead, so maybe mess around with reflectivity? The actor limit kind of pushes out the transforming normal walls into plated objects now though.

I'm not really familiar with incredidoor, but that sounds like its made out of a much harder material. Personally I don't like things that don't take damage from basic weapons because it feels to much like cheating. It took me a minute to think about that though, but then I remembered the laser rifle. anyway I'll be working on this off and on.

Alright, I'll check back here regularly, thanks alot, this is really cool.

You know... you could simply modify the material used and have a solid terrain object that can only be cut through using very powerful diggers/weapons/craft collisions, without any buggy actor behaviour from being a pinned MO.

Of course, the AI will still try to dig through it, but it's worth a shot/should slow them down nicely.

That sounds great, how would I go about making it? I have no experience in making modules, only fiddling with ini files to fix directory problems.

you would copy an existing one. Bunker modules are edited with mspaint. the colors of the materials are listed in base.rte\materials.ini.

A material looks like this.



color = color, RGB. it's the RGB of the color in the bitmaps if I recall correctly.

If you're just copying a bunker module it's as simple as open the material layer image, look for the part that is the material you want to replace, and fill it with a color with an RGB that's EXACTLY the same as the material in materials.ini.


For instance open air is 255,000,255
the material 'default' which I think is the 'this space has a background texture, but otherwise is air', is
128,000,128...

Keep in mind the bunker modules do have to be in pallet, and I don't remember if they have their own pallet. It's best to make them by copy/paste-ing an existing one.



As for the thing I said I was going to work on... I just started to, and realized how pointless it is for testing. It would be as simple as just putting a door over what the AI thinks is the path of least resistance and see what happens. and honestly I don't know what happens, but it made me realize... I'm out of practice.

Huh, well I'll start fiddling around with bunker pallettes and see how that goes, and I wish you luck with the bunker part you're working on.