[Squad] Hell Breachers / Mech Divers (v1.1.4)

[Truelch]

Hell Breachers
(originally named "Mech Divers")

A cup of Liber-Tea.

Let's free Super Earth from these undemocratic Vek!

Download
Latest version: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Squad


Emancipator Mech (Prime)

Equipped with Dual Autocannons and Stratagems. (for more explanation about Stratagems, see the Stratagem section below)
The Dual Autocannons can shoot from either side of the Mech.


Patriot Mech (Prime)

Equipped with Patriot Weapons (Machine Gun / Rocket Pod) and Stratagems. (for more explanation about Stratagems, see the Stratagem section below)
Patriot's weapon is a weapon with two modes:
- Machine Gun: shoots a projectile that deals more damage if the target is damaged.
- Rocket Pods: shoots a limited-use powerful rocket diagonally.


Shuttle Mech (Science)

Equipped with Delivery and Reinforcements passive.
Delivery has multiple uses:
- Strafe attack: leap and shoot lateral and front tiles while moving. The damage is reduced for each possible target (any unit or building), to a minimum of 1 damage.
- Drop supply: leap, reloading any Mech under the leap will have its limited-use weapons reloaded. If there's no Mech, it'll leave an Reload Pod that can be recovered by any Mech to reload.
Reinforcements call down new Mechs piloted by rooky pilots (AKA reskinned A.I. pilots, not able to gain experience) when a Mech is destroyed. The new Mech will arrive at the start of player's next turn, unless it's upgraded. (in that case, it happens instantly)



Patriotism (trait)
Both Primes of this squad are true patriots, ready to absorb damage they do to building during player's turn if they are adjacent to them.
They can't protect from explosions, bump damage or damage caused by enemies though!


FMW
Stratagems and Patriots Weapons are Fire Mode Weapons (FMW), which are weapons with the ability to chose among multiple fire mode. To select a fire weapon, arm a weapon. A little button on the right of the weapons' list will appear. Click on it to reveal all available modes, then click on the mode you want to use. Hovering over modes' buttons will display a text specific to that mode.


Stratagems mechanic
The Stratagems are a collections of various call-ins, ranging from weapons' drop to orbital strikes.
One Stratagem is added to the available list at each mission's start.
See below for the different types of Stratagems:

[Stratagem] Weapons' drops
Target a nearby empty tile. A weapon will be dropped at the start of the next player turn. Any unit on this tile will take 1 damage. If the unit dies, the weapon pod takes its place, otherwise the pod is destroyed!


[Stratagem] Deployables
Mech Divers' deployables are special in the sense that they are fully autonomous, so that the pilot can focus on their mission.
While their AI target enemies, they tend to ignore friendly fire, so be aware of that!
These deployables act after Vek.

[Stratagem] Air strikes
Air strikes are a type of stratagems that target an area. An Eagle will come to the battle field to drop its payload to the designated area, which is faster than an orbital strike (see below), but still not instant: it'll happen after the player end his turn but before enemy turn.
The Shuttle Mech can fulfill the Close Air Support role and replace the Eagle by being targeted first. Doing so, the air strike will happen instantly, and the Shuttle Mech will be able to leap away from the blast zone (without using its turn).

[Stratagem] Orbital strikes
Orbital strikes are similar to air strikes, but since they are fired from the Carrier, they take more time to be delivered on the battlefield, happening AFTER enemy turn. You'll need some anticipation (and luck) to use the orbital strikes effectively.
Unfortunately, Shuttle Mechs aren't equipped to deliver such powerful payload, so unlike an air strike you can't use them to do a faster orbital strike.
(Note: maybe I should make them a free action, like the weapons' drops)

Achievements
I'm doing my part!: Kill an enemy with a drop pod.
Extraordinary Patriotism: Have a new Mech spawn for each mission of your run. (changed due to passive's rework!)
Remember Malevelon Creek: Kill 10 Robots in a game. (ally robots also count)

Credits
Thanks the Discord community for helping me, especially tosx and Metalocif!
And of course, thanks a lot for tob260, doing some playtesting / QA and also mental support! ;D
Thanks also Generic, Pilot_Arrogant, Lemonymous, ATLAS for his fantastic FMW lib that I (ab)used and everybody else on the ItB Discord server!

Disclaimer
This mod is highly experimental. I fixed all issues I knew in vanilla, but it's likely that other mods would crash with this mod, especially with the revive mechanic.
You've been warned!

Versions

Code: Select all

Version 1.1.4:
- Fixed FMW retro compatibility with mods using older (official) versions

Version 1.1.3fix1:
- Continue bug has been fixed. (hopefully)

Version 1.1.2:
- Added more bots to the achievement: mostly deployable bots, but also mission bots.
- Cleaned up unused image files.

Version 1.1.1: fixed the error black screen that popped randomly at the start of a mission.

Version 1.1.0: BIG UPDATE! See the post I made below.

Changelog
Version 1.0.0: Release!

[Truelch]

Made a big update improving gameplay and visual, adding new stratagems and fixing bugs!

Gameplay changes
Adjusted some core cost so that selling secondary weapons doesn't provide a "free core".

Patriot Mech
- HP reduced by 1 (from 3 to 2)
- Reduced base damage by 1 (from 1 to 0)
- Reduced rocket damage by 1 (from 3 to 2)

Shuttle Mech
- Delivery: Reduced leap distance by 1
- When leap distance is upgraded, you can actually drop resupply on multiple tiles!
- Reinforcement passive: only one mech can be spawned per mission. (both for balance AND big fixing (see below))

Stratagems
Non upgraded Stratagem can stack up to 2 stratagems maximum. The upgraded version can stack all the modes.

I made this because it was very easy to stack stratagems and there was no real incentive to actually buy the upgrade

Added two new stratagems:
- Orbital Walking Barrage: target a tile and a direction. The targeted tile and the following one will take damage during orbital strikes phase. In the next turn, the barrage advance by one tile, dealing damage to the new tiles, until it detects a building, making it stop.
- AX/LAS-5 "Guard Dog" Rover: a flying drone carrying a laser weapon. Friendly reminder: deployables in this squad are autonomous units that will ignore allies during damage calculations. They avoid damaging buildings however.

Smoke and Napalm airstrikes have now a push for their leftmost and rightmost tiles.
Also, all airstrikes (also including the 500kg bomb) are dropped just behind the Shuttle Mech, instead of being target at the starting position of the Shuttle Mech.

I made this to enable more creative use of airstrikes.

Stratagem weapons have a shop version now! They can be acquired in a Time Pod or in the shop at the end of an island.
In this form, they have all a new unique upgrade.
(TODO: display all weapons upgrades)
Note: these versions of the weapons are NOT removed at the end of the mission, unlike the ones acquired in hell pods.

All stratagems modes can be tested in test mech scenario!

Weapons drop can be called by the Shuttle Mech (just like the airstrikes). Additionally, if the Mech is underneath, it receives the weapon instantly!
Weapon drops will only deal 1 damage to units underneath. Even though it was fun, it made it made the Orbital Precision Strike a bit obsolete.
Note: I made an experimental change so that items can spawned if the unit underneath has been killed in the process.

Visual improvements / polish
Made custom mark preview for airstrikes.


Stratagem weapons:
All stratagem weapons have a custom icon now!


Mg43 will display how many shots it'll fire:

Credit: I've based these icons on Lemonymous' multishot icon. (I hope you're okay with that)

Added an effect when the Railgun is charged:


Now, the starter pilot (similar to corp pilot) and the rookie pilot (the reskin of the A.I. unit) have two different portraits. The rookie pilot keeps the current one, and the starter pilot has this new portrait:


Patriotism preview correctly the redirected damage with custom icons. (it also has icons if the protecting Mech is inflicted by a.c.i.d.)

Orbital strikes have better preview icons.

Dual cannons have custom projectiles depending on the range.

Hell drops effects have been homogenized and now have the Mech drop sound. (and also the dust effect for the ones that didn't had it)

500kg Bomb has more impactful effect (thx Metalocif for the suggestion!): added a Board Shake, some Bounce and better outer explosion effects.

Miscellaneous
- Added tosx' Frozen Hulks as bots in "Remember Malevelon Creek" achievement calculation

Bug fixes
Reinforcements passive had issue when more than one Mech were respawned, so it's maxed to 1 per mission now.
Respawned Mechs come with a A.I. pilot (rekinned in a Hell Breacher rookie pilot if the option is enabled) with a random stratagem.
As a consequence, I've changed the condition for the Extraordinary Patriotism achievement: have a new Mech spawn for each mission of your run.
Also fixed an issue where at the start of the second phase of the final mission, a respawned Mech would be positioned outside of the map.

Patriotism had an issue with moving skills and wasn't able to correctly damage Mechs that would protect buildings. It's now fixed!
Fixed also the issue where the damage calculation would not reset, so following protecting Mechs would take more damage than expected.

Fire mode ammo consumption is fixed.

Weapons drops can no longer be targeted to water tiles. (or lava, chasms, ...)

AI of autonomous deployables will also consider push effects when avoiding buildings damage. But they'll still happily do friendly damage on allied units!

[Truelch]

WARNING
I got some feedback from my Hell Breachers.
Quitting and coming back to a run has crashed someone's game and "wiped" their save profile. (not sure how)
I'm investigating it at the moment.
Not sure if it's my mod by itself or with a bad interaction with another mod.

Recommendations while this isn't fixed:
- limit the amount of active mods while playing them
- make a back up of your profile if you value your profile

Sorry for the inconvenience and I hope it did happen to you. (and if it did, please contact me)

EDIT
I uploaded a new version (v1.1.3fix1) that should fix the continue issue.
Please contact me if you notice other bugs.