Think Red Alert 2 !

Making a functional Tech Airport

You would have to be blind not to notice the two large ... pads ... on the Tech Airport. However, for some odd reason these are non-functional and appear to be decorations only. Well, with a little surgery we will change that. Today's lesson will be on upgrading the Tech Airport so that it will repair and rearm aircraft that you land on it.

The first thing we must do is modify the ART.INI file to tell Red Alert Two exactly where aircraft will be landing on the Airport. The following code will allow you to do this:

[CAAIRP]
Normalized=yes
Remapable=no
Foundation=3x3
Height=6
DockingOffset0=190,-178,0
DockingOffset1=190,198,0
Buildup=CAAIRPM
NewTheater=yes
DemandLoad=true
ActiveAnim=CAAIRP_A
ActiveAnimZAdjust=5
ActiveAnimDamaged=CAAIRP_AD
ActiveAnimTwo=CAAIRP_F
ActiveAnimTwoZAdjust=-100
ActiveAnimTwoYSort=362
ActiveAnimTwoPowered=no
DamageFireOffset0=-3,5
DamageFireOffset1=-65,32
Cameo=HELIICON
ZShapePointMove=60,30
DemandLoadBuildup=true
FreeBuildup=true
CanHideThings=True
CanBeHidden=False
OccupyHeight=2

As you might guess, it is the "DockingOffset" lines which tell the aircraft where to land. The values here are fairly close to dead center for each of the pads, though you will notice that aircraft will land slightly off-center from time to time. Larger aircraft, such as the FORTRESS Bomber will look more natural on these pads as they are larger than the ones on the Airforce Command. And yes, these center values were derived from a lot of trial and error. Enjoy!

Now we move onto the RULES.INI file where we will do some of the more interesting work. The following code shows the changes made to turn on the repair and reload functions. As Westwood notes, these functions were written for four pads, but using less than four pads works fine. Important lines include "NumberOfDocks", "UnitReload" and "Helipad". These are the lines which turn on what we want.

[CAAIRP]
UIName=Name:CAAIRP
Name=Tech Airport
Strength=800
Insignificant=yes
Nominal=yes
Points=5
Armor=concrete
Explosion=TWLT070,S_BANG48,S_BRNL58,S_CLSN58,S_TUMU60
MaxDebris=15
MinDebris=5
DebrisAnim=Dbris1sm,Dbris1lg,Dbris4sm,Dbris5sm,Dbris4lg,Dbris7sm,Dbris8sm,Dbris5lg,Dbris4lg
DamageParticleSystems=SmallGreySSys,BigGreySmokeSys
Capturable=yes
NeedsEngineer=yes
Unsellable=yes
Ammo=5
SuperWeapon=ParaDropSpecial
LeaveRubble=yes
BuildCat=Tech
Prerequisite=GAREFN,GACNST
Adjacent=2
TechLevel=-1
Sight=5
UnitReload=yes
Helipad=yes
Owner=British,French,Germans,Americans,Alliance,Russians,Confederation,Africans,Arabs
AIBasePlanningSide=0 ;gs 0 for Good, 1 for Evil
Cost=1000
Power=-50
Crewed=yes
ThreatPosed=0 ; This value MUST be 0 for all building addons
NumberOfDocks=2
HasStupidGuardMode=false

 

So now when you capture an Airport you get a forward airbase, though one with limited space. We'll talk about some other interesting options that you can add to the Airport in the next section.
 

Now that we have a fully working airfield it's time to look at all of those optional extras. All of this depends on how much you want to push things. So far all we have done is enable the pads, but we can go a lot farther. We could allow the Airport to manufacture aircraft, or to provide a radar. If we let it be a factory we should also let it be spyable. The following simple code turns on these functions:

Factory=AircraftType
Radar=yes
Spyable=yes