Switeck's ai-only nuke silos


What's the Swi_nuke.ufo for?
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Swi_nuke.ufo needs to go in the TOTALA directory in order to work, and can be used with or without my patch. 

The ai nuke silo is meant to be an AI-ONLY unit. It includes an F1 picture, and makes no numerical referances in the game to being different than a regular nuke silo. (Which is more than I can say for the decoy commanders...) However, you can CAPTURE it and use it yourself. If you ressurect a dead ai nuke silo (using one of the 3rd-party ressurector units), you will get a REGULAR nuke silo not an ai nuke silo -- this is not a bug, this is as intended. These nuke silos take just as long to build as the original nuke silos, but do not have to build nuke missiles. Instead, extremely long build times simulate the time it takes to build each missile.
 The ai can, and possibly will fire a nuke at you 3 minutes after the silo is built. Each nuke missile that it fires costs the ai 500 metal and 18,000 energy. Although this isn't much compaired to the cost of a single nuke missile (2,000 metal and 180,000 energy), it's more than the ai can typically afford. The hacked nuke silos take 180 seconds (3 minutes) to reload, the same time it takes a regular nuke silo to build 1 nuke -- this way, unless the ai has built many many nuke silos, you will not have nuke missiles constantly raining down on your head!

AI-only nuke silo bugs:
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The AI-only nuke silos have a serious problem: there is a bug in their COB script unless the author went to special trouble to redesign the COB to fix it. 

The nuke silos stay open most of the time and appear ready to launch at any moment - until roughly 3 minutes is passed. Then the nuke silo closes. After that, the nuke silo does not open properly before firing. For Arm's hacked silo, the nuke still fires but out of a closed (but opening) silo. For Core's hacked silo, the nuke blows up INSIDE the silo - not damaging the silo (because it is immune to its own weapon) but possibly killing anything around it.

KNOWN Messed-up ai-only nuke silos:
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Speed's    NUKEA and NUKEC inside AI_nuker.ufo (found in TADD's Ai_Patch2.exe)
BSR's    AAISILO and CAISILO inside AIboost.ufo (found in BAI.zip at TAMMO)
             ^-(These generally didn't have to worry about resource problems...)
MadRat's AAISILO, AAIEMP, CAISILO, and CAITRON inside AIboost.ufo (found in AIBooST_113098.zip at TA Medics)
Switeck's  NUKEA, AAIEMP,   NUKEC, and CAITRON inside AI_nukes.ufo (found in swiai.exe at TAMMO)
             ^-(These are my earlier unfixed versions!)

My newer AI-only nuke silos are the only properly working AI-only nuke silos that I know of!

AI-only nuke silos:
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The Ai's special nuke silos (in Swi_nuke.ufo) are designed so only the ai can use them. You *CAN* capture them and use them yourself, but you CANNOT normally build the silos. They do not have to build nuke missiles and instead rely on LONG reload times (of 3 minutes!) to simulate the time it takes to build a nuke missile. Each nuke missile fired from the silos costs 500 metal and 18,000 energy, so it should take the ai a little while to get up enough energy to fire the first nuke missile. Also included in Swi_nuke.ufo are 2 more ai-only units: the Arm ai Stunner EMP Silo and the Core ai Neutron Silo. These cost less to fire than the ai nuke silos, but are considerably less useful and as a result should be built less by the ai.

The ai-only nuke silos behave strangely under player control - ordering them to attack seems to do nothing, because of the 3 min reload delay. After 3 minutes, the silo fires 1 nuke if you have enough resources. This 3-minute delay is calculated from the moment you order the silo to ATTACK, not from the moment the silo was last fired, built, or captured. Although this is a real pain for the player, clicking attack on a bunch of targets for the silo and forgetting about it still works fine - every 3 minutes something will die. ;) It's a good idea to tell the silo to attack the second you capture it - preferably at an enemy. Anytime before the 3 minutes runs out you can retarget the silo using ATTACK again without causing another 3 minute wait.

The missile build menus for the nuke silos are in fact fake and unneccessary - they are there to make the silos look the same as normal silos when captured. You can build missiles, but other than consuming resources building missiles do nothing!

I've also added (and fixed) AI-only EMP silos and Neutron silos as well. A really annoying thing about the AI-only silos is they use a total of 3 weapons id's. There's no way around that either, for the ai to use nukes its nuke silo has to act like a bertha - drawing resources at the moment it fires instead of slowly like stockpiled weapons do. And that can *only* be done by adding a new weapon. Arm's and Core's ai-only nuke silos could use the same weapon, but they would not have the distinctive missile (telling you whuch side nuked you). I replaced the AI-only Neutron Silo's weapon with the same weapon as the AI-only Core Nuke Silo. I did this because I could not get the ai to properly target its neutron weapon at ONLY mobile Arm units. Because this doesn't add a weapons id, I left the AI-only Neutron Silo in this ufo file. 

Unit info:
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unit  unit      unit          weapon  weapon reload    silo open  Total time   Cost per    Original missile
id #  abbr      name           name    id #  time(Sec) time(Sec)  to fire(Sec) Shot(m/e)   buildtime(Sec)
---   ----    --------        ------   ---   ----      ----       -------    ------------   ---------
420   NUKEA   Arm  Retaliator AINUKE   230   180 Sec   ~12 Sec    ~192 Sec   500m/18,000e  180 Sec
421   NUKEC   Core Silencer   AICNUKE  231   180 Sec   ~ 6 Sec    ~186 Sec   500m/18,000e  180 Sec
422   AAIEMP  Arm  Stunner    AAIEMP   232   130 Sec   ~ 6 Sec    ~136 Sec   250m/ 1,800e  130 Sec
423   CAITRON Core Neutron    AICNUKE  231   180 Sec   ~ 8 Sec    ~188 Sec   500m/18,000e  180 Sec
 62   ARMSILO Arm Retaliator  NUCLEAR_ 122   180 Sec   ~12 Sec    ~192 Sec  2000m/180,000e 180 Sec
(ARMSILO is the original Arm silo, here for comparision. Its weapon name is NUCLEAR_MISSILE.)

The unit name for the ai-only silos is the same as the original to make the ai-only silos look like the originals.
Cost per shot has been reduced from the original missile costs to 1/4 the metal cost and 1/10th the energy cost.
(This has been done because the cost is extracted all at once instead of slowly like the original silos.)

It's worth noting that the Ai-only Stunner affects the AI-only Core nuke silo and the AI-only Core Neutron.
BUT the original Stunner does not affect the ai-only units.

Almost all 3rd party units are affected by the AI-only Arm Stunner, even ARM 3rd party units!

A noteworthy side effect of making the ai-only nuke silos not use stockpile=1; line is that they become slightly faster-firing when they reach vetran status. This should be another reason to destroy or capture the ai's nuke silos as quickly as possile!


Design notes:
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Also, if anyone can make a hacked antinuke silo for the ai only, please send it to me or tell me how so I can add it to this patch!

This fix was made by David Sellick (Switeck@hotmail.com) with help from Creeperman, CyberKewl, and Speed.
You may use and/or alter these units as you see fit, but please give us credit if you do.