Add Allies13

[Smittytron]

Couple notes on this one:

• I reduced the range and effectiveness of Flame Towers to avoid overhauling the map. Added an explainer comment early in the mission.
• I expanded the room with two flame towers and 15 infantry because rifles in ORA have 2 more range than the original. I wanted the footprint trigger to be out of range of the general.

[Orb370]

Allies 13 Hard.zip

Completed the mission, everything seemed about right. Except...

I made some new friends:

[PunkPun]

Lint check still fails
OpenRA.Utility(1,1): Error: Actor type `v2rl` consumes conditions that are not granted: airborne OpenRA.Utility(1,1): Error: Actor type `3tnk` consumes conditions that are not granted: airborne OpenRA.Utility(1,1): Error: Actor type `4tnk` consumes conditions that are not granted: airborne

[PunkPun]

Needs to be rebased and translations added #20387

[JovialFeline]

Cheers for the rebase. My kid self didn't get this far in ye olde RA, and my first run was a clueless one. Afterward, I played the original, rooted around in an editor, tested some more, and took notes.

The generator flares are a dandy touch. I managed to screw up and barely run out of time on Hard, but could tell from the map what generator I had skipped.

My failure got me to notice a crash that occurs if the mission timer expires. I'll put that in its own comment.

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Besides the crash, I'll mention some other, minor things and you can take 'em or leave 'em. They're not blockers to me and I think some could be intentional, though I don't know which ones if so.

• The TankRifles team can decide to Hunt for southern units if those are close enough when the heavy tank room is revealed. I accidentally managed a split when I first noticed and have recreated that here.
  

• OpenRA quirk, I s'pose. There can be some awkwardness to fights up north because parked mammoth tanks give sight. That's true of the original, but guards can now take advantage of that and shoot from fog. Medics or the spy help, of course.

  • I'm curious if the TankRifles hunt was added 'cause of a similar thing.

• It's possible to blow up barrel clusters in the Doom Room and damage the general without alerting the Doom team. You could originally kill mptrl/DogPatrolB in front of them (as you can in this version), so they're not the most aware bunch.

Outdated stuff:

• Heal crates by the supply cache (cell @ 70, 36), PatrolPath3 (33, 70), and FlameConsole3 (41, 49) are absent.

• The self-destruct consoles for flame turrets don't have that angry confirmation noise, BLEEP5.

• On my first run, I was a bit unclear on which turrets were killed by consoles 2 and 3. Perhaps I would have fared better with headphones? A short camera reveal upon death/console use might be nice either way.

  • Even if the reveal isn't noticed during its lifespan, it will prevent the dead tower from showing under fog.
  • The RevealOnDeath trait may be a good fit if you don't want to add it through Lua.

• The announcer trips over himself at the end. ("Explosive charge plamission accomplished.") If that's worth changing, a GameOverDelay of 4000 is one option.

[PunkPun]

Perhaps there should be an objective added to complete the mission before sarin gas timer? I didn't notice the timer my entire journey through the mission.

It is also a bit weird not that you can kill flame towers with riflemen without the retaliating . Perhaps instead of reducing flame thrower range reduce their autotarget range? as in if you attack it it attack you back at normal range?

[PunkPun]

What of the difficulty in the vanilla mission, was the difference only the timer? When playing on hard I did notice the timer at least as it was announced in chat and in voice

[JovialFeline]

I'm not sure why I thought GameOverDelay would affect the voice overlap. I can only guess I was thinking of NotificationDelay in Conquest. My apologies for that, Smitty.

I did run through a few more times and didn't find any new crashes or the like, despite trying some odd things.

What of the difficulty in the vanilla mission, was the difference only the timer? When playing on hard I did notice the timer at least as it was announced in chat and in voice

Difficulty in RA was more like a handicap setting and Easy/Hard added stat bonuses or penalties to what a player owned. Units and buildings could also get their build times and costs adjusted. The mission scripts themselves don't change (and seem unable to check the difficulty even if a mapper wanted that).

[JovialFeline]

I don't think I have anything new to report, other than one bit. Because of the armor change, Grenadiers do about 4x damage to Flame Towers now and the turncoat gets bullied.

Current:

2024-03-03_09-10-26.mp4

Ye olde Heavy armor for comparison:

2024-03-03_09-11-03.mp4

[PunkPun]

we could just nerf the grenadier anti-concrete damage

[PunkPun]

ok

[PunkPun]

changelog