C&C95/Tiberian Dawn- Punishing Players for Abusing Savegames

[MattAttack 8]

I have read Nyer's ccmanual mission making FAQ about a million times.  About the 900,000th time, I noticed something in the [teamtypes] section:

 

tanks=GoodGuy,1,0,0,1,0,15,[glow=red,2,300]1[/glow],0,0,2,E6:5,APC:1,2,Move:5,Guard:30,0,0

(I couldn't get it all the text to line up properly, so I'll use the red glow.)

 

- [glow=red,2,300]g[/glow]: The number of teams of this type that will act concurrently (i.e.,

      x,x,x,x,x,x,[glow=red,2,300]5[/glow],x,x,1,E2:3,1,move:2,0,0 will get you 15 grenadiers at

      waypoint 2). When this number is greater than zero, it will cause the

      team to be produced, regardless of any trigger.

 

I was intrigued and started messing around with this.  I saw that if you didn't have autocreate enabled on this team, it would be automatically created without a trigger, follow it's orders and be replaced when the team was completely destroyed.  I really liked this as not having to make a trigger saves space in the .ini and was a nice way of speeding things up.  I began using this to great effect in some of my missions.  One day I was testing a mission where this procedure was used to create a patrol of 1 nod buggy and I noticed for some reason there were 2 buggies patrolling.  I went through the .ini to see what caused this and was stumped.  I eventually noticed that whenever I saved and loaded, another buggy patrol was being created.  Every time I saved and loaded.  "Wow, that's just not fair!" I said (believe it or not  ) I have a couple of extremely difficult missions that hinge on this effect and saw that merely saving and loading would make them exponentially more difficult.  Today upon watching RC1985's speedrun of Nod 11ea I saw something that caught my eye and looked at the .ini as I always do if I want to see how something is done.  Interestingly enough I saw this was going on in this mission.  Regarded by many as one of the most difficult of the original missions, I guess it's no surprise.  (save/load 3 times at the beginning and a medium tank will start attacking your southern units!)

 

I just found this interesting and figured I'd share it.  Over and out!

 

[MattAttack 8]

whoops... I forgot to attach my example map.... just save/load a bunch of times and you will be drowning in buggy patrols

Punishment.zip

[Nyerguds 121]

Uhh...  it says "produced", not "created". That refers to the AI building units in that team.

 

Triggers aren't what causes units to get built anyway. "Create Team" just picks units on the map and makes a team out of them; you can perfectly have Create Team triggers but no AI capable of building stuff. That trigger creates a team. It doesn't build the units in it. The only thing causing units to be built by the AI is that value in the Teamtype you just pointed out.

 

That save/load thing seems like an odd bug, though  :O

[MattAttack 8]

sorry, I keep forgetting to differentiate between units produced and teams created.  I shall remove my inappropriate underline.  But anyway that number is creating the team automatically.  That makes sense why I thought autocreate didn't work when this was 0. If I understand you, it will recruit existing units if it's 0, but it just won't build them?  Gotta test that.....

nevermind.... I tested it and I guess teams won't be autocreated (either by recruiting existing or building units) unless both autocreate is on in the teamtype as well as the [glow=red,2,300]# of units[/glow] being set to 1 or higher.

 

The only thing causing units to be built by the AI is that value in the Teamtype you just pointed out.

in the example, they're being recruited from existing units on the map.

[cn2mc 183]

The higher numbers for this value are basically what makes the AI keep men in their base, spares. Otherwise, yes, not having this flag on will mean the team will not be produced, regardless of production and autocreate triggers.

[MattAttack 8]

The higher numbers for this value are basically what makes the AI keep men in their base, spares.

I partly disagree with this.  I'll have to test and see if increasing the number makes the AI  produce more spares, but they always seem to make a couple of extras.  I had the enemy AI reinforce a team of engineers via Chinook and observed them producing an extra engineer in their base....

Otherwise, yes, not having this flag on will mean the team will not be produced, regardless of production and autocreate triggers.

This I disagree with  completely.  I have successfully created produced a million teams which have [glow=red,2,300]this number[/glow] set to 0.  Not autocreated mind you, but by any trigger that will "create team."  (if I correctly understand what you're saying.)

 

And I hope we're all in agreement of what the "production" trigger does.  Besides allowing the AI to build structures, it allows the production of units.  I like to think of it as turning on a light switch in the CY, barracks/HoN and WF/Airstrip letting them do their production thing.  Of course it's a light switch that can't be turned off.

[cn2mc 183]

So maybe I just mixed up my numbers, I haven't scripted in like years. But, about the spares, I'm pretty sure that those are built at all factories the AI has. So there can be many instances of the same team just idling around their barracks/factory. That I encountered with my The Other Side mission - I wanted to have the AI start building stuff at their base when you cross the river, but they ended up building the same team out of both hands of Nod.