03-11-2003 09:29									#1
	ion cannon? Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

i have a pretty cool idea for a unit in Civ:CtP but dont know if its plausible and/or how difficult it would be.

its taken from the "ion cannon" concept from the command and conquer games. for those who dont know, its a satellite that shoots a massive laser beam from space down to earth that causes mass destruction.
i was thinking of having a satellite unit only buildable from a space city. its only function is to bombard ground/sea based cities, similar to the space bomber. except, its bombarding damage is massive (as big as a nuke), capable of destroying any and all fortified units and city improvements (dont know what sort of numerical value could accomplish this). however, since its just a laser, it creates no pollution or dead tiles like the nuke does (so the city can still be worth capturing).
sounds extreme but there are ways to balance it out. for one, each civ can only build one of these things. when a civ starts building it, all other civs gets a warning and when its finished another message is sent out (as is done when a civ starts building and finishes wonders). another warning is given when this ion cannon comes within shooting range of another civ.
it will have an attack and defense rating of 0 so its easily destroyed
it will have bad movement rate (to allow the victim to take evasive action when it comes in close proximity)
and finally when it shoots its beam (bombards), it requires heaps of turns before it re-energizes for another shot.
if it gets destroyed, the civ cant build another one.

im thinking the AI would need to be modified to be eager to also build such a weapon and use it. and the AI should also be smart enough to take evasive actions when an enemy ion cannon comes within close proximity of it.
also, i think this idea can only work for CtP1 cause it has the space view.

thats my idea. i dont know how difficult or if its plausible. if a mod creator is interested in such an idea that would be so cool if u could make such a thing. ive got no experience with mod making and wouldnt even know where to start!

	04-11-2003 00:34									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Well, that would be quite an ambitious project.

I believe that bombarding is hard-coded to be limited to one square, so you couldn't have long range bombardment. With carefully written SLIC you could probably manage to make the bombardment do just about whatever you wanted it to. The biggest problem would probably be the AI, but since they do know how to use space bombers, you might be able to manage to get that working.

If you've no experience with mod making then it's not too late to get some. Unfortunately, there aren't enough CTP modders around any more that anyone will do it for you.

There are documents about modding here on Apolyton, and also a guide on my website (link at the top of the post).

	04-11-2003 22:09									#3
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Is it easily possible to allow only ONE of a UNIT? Don't remember seeing such a thing...

Cheers,
Xmucane

	04-11-2003 22:12									#4
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

No, it wouldn't be easy. Again, you'd have to use some clever SLIC to do it, I suspect. The problem of preventing someone building something is a knotty one in CTP, and AFAIK no neat solution has been found. In CTP2 it is much easier...

Last edited by J Bytheway on 04-11-2003 at 22:19