Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

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pooty
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Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

So Snarf and I were discussing fixing the Karma Drop ship:
Image
Which was broken when playing on the server. Snarf says he's very close to fixing this...woo hoo! We can drop the mino wherever we want. I don't think it will lift MAS (Levi/Tiamat/Kraken/Pallas) which is fine IMO.

This is par to the Airpower (APVERIV.u) package https://unrealarchive.org/mutators/unre ... bc64a.html
which includes everyone's favorite flyer the Predator helicopter and the Reaper Helicopter.

So lets discuss some proposed changes to those:
1. Predator - lower the damage of the plasma main weapon. Reduce range/radar Hud so you can't sit out of sight and mindlessly spam. I think removing the radar would probably do it..you can mindless spam at nothing if you want..gives away your positon.
2. Reaper - same for Range, and get the Stealth (invisible like Stealth badger) mode working on the server.

I also want to look at the Avril MKII as compared to the Battery Launcher. We've got the Bender MkII on Shyron btw. I don't think the other fighters in that package are really usable on typical maps -- they are like the spacefighters.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

I got it working with MAS vehicles too :) I found there is a flag MAS vehicles have set that was stopping them from being lifted. I discovered it by playing around on FullVehicleLoadoutTest 1-on-1 vs bot. I could lift Perces but not Tiamat or Pallas so I looked at what was different between them.

When I lifted Perces, the bot was in it, in one of the turrets. I flew about 3 seconds before the bot killed me while still attached :lol:

That brings up an interesting point: should it only pickup empty vehicles? Should it steal enemy vehicles? What about locked vehicles? Probably not right? If you can steal locked vehicles you can fly over to enemy base and steal their mino


When you press fire it shoots a volley of missiles using an unreal script state machine. If you move while it's firing the volley, the missiles continue to fire from their old location. I'm not sure it can be fixed and might need a fundamental change.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

I think it should:
1. Pickup any empty, unlocked vehicle
2. Pickup any locked, friendly vehicle -- "Hey bring me the mino at 5!"
3. Not pickup enemy occupied vehicles, or enemy locked vehicles.
When I was playing with it, you could occupy and shoot from a transported vehicle, so you can kind of make a flying mino....

Do we want it to pickup MAS? Imagine picking up a Kraken and putting it somewhere high/inaccessible might be too much?

As for the firing problem, maybe the drop ship shouldn't have any weapons, its purely transport, and rely on its carried vehicle for weaponry?
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH »

pooty wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:01 am
Do we want it to pickup MAS? Imagine picking up a Kraken and putting it somewhere high/inaccessible might be too much?
I'd say try it out, so if you put one up on a hill somewhere I'd like to believe they'd be equally as vulnerable to flyers.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:57 pm
pooty wrote: Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:01 am
Do we want it to pickup MAS? Imagine picking up a Kraken and putting it somewhere high/inaccessible might be too much?
I'd say try it out, so if you put one up on a hill somewhere I'd like to believe they'd be equally as vulnerable to flyers.
I thought I had this working for MAS but it's glitchy when running on the client. You cannot see anything attached to the dropship (but everyone else can). When you eject it, it appears like magic. I'm not sure we should allow it, or maybe first rev allow it to see how it goes?

Also occupied vehicles have a few problems. Here is a video. This is on server so you can actually see MAS attached. On client (which is us when playing online) you'd only see the dropship. I need to make a video so you can see what I mean. It's weird. Other vehicles don't have the problem.

Besides the above, the main issue with occupied vehicles is that I had to work around an engine bug to make all this work. When the vehicle is ejected, I don't actually eject it. I destroy it and create a copy in its place and then update it's properties like health to match what was there. If anybody is in it when it's destroyed they are dead. I'll see if I can work around it but not sure if it will work. We might need to restrict to unoccupied only. One possibility is the dropship has 8 passenger seats. Maybe if the vehicle is occupied when being attached, they become passengers in dropship? Hoping I can work around it so it just works.

And it's not actually MAS that have the problem. It's vehicles with flag 'bCannotBeBased' set which forbids them from attaching to the dropship. Most MAS has it, but e.g. PercesMAS doesn't.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

I think being able to fly tanks/other vehicles is pretty good by itself. I say that the MAS stay grounded...they are powerful enough without putting Terminator in a Kraken way up on some hill -- or I could see a Tiamat on a tower in Dria. It'd be fun to try but if it requires changing a bunch of vehicle code probably not worth it.

So, based on what works I'd say
1. Pickup any empty, unlocked vehicle (friendly or enemy)
2. Pickup any locked, unoccupied, friendly vehicle -- "Hey bring me the mino at 5!" I like the idea if its occupied the driver/gunners become passengers.
3. Not pickup enemy occupied vehicles, or enemy locked vehicles. (However Drop Ship + EMP makes it interesting)
4. Respect the bCannotBeBased flag, so no moving MAS. (I bet changing this would affect things like spiders flipping a deployed MAS)
5. Remove the rockets, the drop ship is an unarmed transport ship -- if you're going to be moving a Mino/Rail Tank you should have your driver ride along...I don't think there's any bones for putting in gunner seats...so unarmed is fine.
6. You could probably add the edoChute to the driver/passenger (The code is in the Predator) so that they could bail out and parachute down if needed.

Anyone else's thoughts?
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

pooty wrote: Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:54 am I think being able to fly tanks/other vehicles is pretty good by itself. I say that the MAS stay grounded...they are powerful enough without putting Terminator in a Kraken way up on some hill -- or I could see a Tiamat on a tower in Dria. It'd be fun to try but if it requires changing a bunch of vehicle code probably not worth it.

So, based on what works I'd say
1. Pickup any empty, unlocked vehicle (friendly or enemy)
2. Pickup any locked, unoccupied, friendly vehicle -- "Hey bring me the mino at 5!" I like the idea if its occupied the driver/gunners become passengers.
3. Not pickup enemy occupied vehicles, or enemy locked vehicles. (However Drop Ship + EMP makes it interesting)
4. Respect the bCannotBeBased flag, so no moving MAS. (I bet changing this would affect things like spiders flipping a deployed MAS)
5. Remove the rockets, the drop ship is an unarmed transport ship -- if you're going to be moving a Mino/Rail Tank you should have your driver ride along...I don't think there's any bones for putting in gunner seats...so unarmed is fine.
6. You could probably add the edoChute to the driver/passenger (The code is in the Predator) so that they could bail out and parachute down if needed.

Anyone else's thoughts?
1-6 are all done. Video of some bot play

I did give it rockets, but they are wimpy. I spent a long time today trying to get the original mechanic working where it moves the vehicle without needing to destroy it and spawn a new one. I don't think it's possible. But if it were we could have the players stay in the vehicle when it moved.

I think this is mostly done. I'll start looking at the cloaking thing next.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

Excellent job! Thanks! The chutes are a nice touch. I am pretty geeked about it.

So on the predator (and reaper), I think the two primary culprits are the main "Plasma" weapon, and homing missles. I think the radar Hud thing is pretty cool, and it'd be nice to keep it make the Predator/reaper more recon/transport with decent weapons vs. a high altitude spamming platform like they (mostly) are now. Those helicopters are pretty fragile, they destroy on impact (so if you ram them with say a falcon/pheonix/raptor = dead), and don't have many hit points 350... so one battery and usually 1-2 shocks kill it.

But back to the weapons:
Main weapon: "Falcon Laser"
MinAim=0.900000
MaxLockRange=30000.000000 (Avril Range is half that 15000)
LockAim=0.975000
FireInterval=0.140000 (4.28 projecticles a second)

Speed=30000.000000
MaxSpeed=40000.000000 (Holy shit that's fast, Mino is 19000, Falcon is 29000 for comparison)
Damage=40.000000
MomentumTransfer=1000.000000

So about 171 hp/sec. Not sure where someone in game claimed 300+, but some vehicles MomentumTransfer I think adds damage.

There's also LockCheckFreq (which is set in the Avril not in Predator, so I don't know the default) but this means you have to keep the targeting reticle on the target for homing.

So I think for the main weapon, some easy changes:
MaxLockRange=15000 (Now in the Range of Avrils the other way, can't sit safely 20000 away)
, or maybe make it even less?
[So for that those that don't know UT script, range is given in UU just a measurement system in the game. https://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Unreal_Unit ]
FireInterval=0.36 (Half of what it is now)
MaxSpeed=24000 (just a guess, it shouldn't be as fast as falcon plasma since they are guided closer in) The guiding is cool, and I think that's what differentiates from being a helicopter falcon.

Damage would be half what it currently does, and sitting way off in the fog firing just gives your position away

I'll detail the secondary weapon (missles) in another post later...

Snarf (and anyone else) thoughts?
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by captainsnarf »

The mysteries of network replication. It took a while, but I finally have stealth mode working for the reaper. I'd have a pic but there is not much to show :D

Here are changes I made so far:

reaper

fix invisibility

main cannon:
fireinterval=0.4 (was 0.2)
damage=30 (was 55)

missile weapon:
maxlockrange=10000 (was 30000)
damage=100 (was 165)
damageradius=300 (was 550)

hellfire missile:
maxlockrange=10000 (was 30000)
fireinterval=5.5 (was 1.5)
damage=50 (unchanged)


predator

main weapon:
Maxlockrange=10000 (was 30000)
fireinterval=0.36 (was 0.14)
speed=24000 (was 30000)
damage=40 (unchanged)

missile weapon:
maxlockrange=10000 (was 30000)
fireinterval=2.5 (was 1.5)
damage=115 (unchanged)
damageradius=550 (unchanged)

hellfire rocket:
maxlockrange=10000 (was 30000)
fireinterval=3.5 (was 1.5)
damage=50 (unchanged)

passenger turret:
spread=0 (was 0.01)
damage=35 (was 25)
fireinterval=0.1 (was 0.2)


reaper also has a passenger seat but there is no gun. Probably for the best since it has cloak.
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Re: Airpower Vehicles (Predator, Reaper, Karma Drop Ship)

Post by pooty »

Did you clone the package, or just edit the APVERIV one? Most of the maps with the Predator/Reaper use the full package vs. embedding.

And I wondered if the cloak on the reaper prevents Missile locks? I think you can still get missile locked in a stealth badger, but really the stealth should void the missile locks too.
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