View Full Version : New units: F14 and F/A18


BeBro
Sep 20, 2002, 07:25 AM
Download here: http://www.civ3.gamigo.de/bebromods/fighters_v1.zip

(download size is ca. 550kb)

Anims for the F14 Tomcat Interceptor:

F14TomcatDefault.flc, F14TomcatAttackA.flc, F14TomcatRun.flc, F14TomcatDeath.flc

Civilopedia pictures:

F14Tomcatlarge.pcx, F14Tomcatsmall.pcx

Anims for the F/A18 Hornet Multi Role Fighter:

F18HornetDefault.flc, F18HornetAttackA.flc, F18HornetRun.flc, F18HornetDeath.flc

Civilopedia pictures:

F18Hornetlarge.pcx, F18Hornetsmall.pcx

You will notice that there are no bomb anims included. The reason is simple - the bomb anim of the standard Civ3 Jetfighter unit displays only the falling bombs, not the plane itself. Therefore, you can simply use this animation (JetFighterBomb.flc in Civ3/Art/units/Jet Fighter) for other planes too - copy it into the folders of your new F14 or F18.
The same goes for the sounds: please use the soundfiles of the Jetfighter from Civ3/Art/units/Jet Fighter.

I have included config files (.ini) for both planes, which refer to the sounds and the bomb anim of the standard Civ3 Jetfighter unit. If you plan to use other sounds, or another bomb anim, do not forget to edit those config files accordingly.

Also, I have included little icons of the planes, which you can paste in the units_32.pcx located in Civ3/Art/units). These icons will appear then in the build lists of your cities.

I hope you like the units. I do not give a complete description of their installation here, if you do not know how to create new units, please read the first post in this thread:

http://www.eqforge.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22289

There is also a little readme file (which contains mainly the same as above ;)).

Since this is the first time I release unit anims for civ3, some feedback would be nice. I hope I made no mistake with the files, if there are any problems, please post here, then IŽll fix them asap.

Edit: some preview pics are here: http://www.eqforge.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31842&perpage=20&display=&pagenumber=1

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 07:33 AM
Is it possible to post previews of the units?

BeBro
Sep 20, 2002, 07:36 AM
Well, I edited the link to the preview thread in the post above, however, there are only pics, no anims. IŽll do a little gif anim and post it here...;)

BeBro
Sep 20, 2002, 07:43 AM
:)

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 07:46 AM
Ooooo!

That's Verra nica! On a side note, I assume you've added these to your own game. How do you make them different from the F-15 for Americans? How have you set them up?

BeBro
Sep 20, 2002, 07:47 AM
(run anim)

BeBro
Sep 20, 2002, 07:49 AM
That's Verra nica! On a side note, I assume you've added these to your own game. How do you make them different from the F-15 for Americans? How have you set them up?

Currently I replaced only the standard jetfighter with the new animations to see how they work. But on the second page of the preview thread there are some suggestions regarding the different unit stat...;)

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 07:52 AM
Thanks BeBro. I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the F/A-18 in my Canadian Civ. We use CF-18's as our multi-role fighter. I will check out the preview thread right away.

Very nice work. I will definitely keep an eye out for future units from you. By the way, do you have plans for future units?

BeBro
Sep 20, 2002, 07:58 AM
I already work on a F16 Falcon, which is nearly finished too ;)

Then I will create a XCOM mod with lots of scifie stuff - units, city styles ect, but this needs a lot of work (only some first unit anims are done so far, but nothing is for release now, IŽll wait for PTW).

I plan to create other units from time to time (maybe other jets too), but beside the projects above, nothing is promised yet...;)

dannyevilcat
Sep 20, 2002, 07:59 AM
Originally posted by Kingpin
Thanks BeBro. I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the F/A-18 in my Canadian Civ.

That's exactly what I wanted it for, too. Even though they're American made, and they have more of them than us, and ours aren't as advanced as theirs... but they're just so cool.

BeBro, you are a giant among men... (am I laying it on a little thick? :D) I love these units. Why, I haven't been so eager to get my hands on a unit since Balou's modern infantry.

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 08:07 AM
Here's a suggestion on how to set these up. Let's see if I've got this strait from the ideas in the pre-view thread:

F-14 Make this carrier based. Lethal Sea Bombardment.
F-15 Make this land based. Air superiority only. Maybe beef up it's attack strength
F-16 Make this land based. Lethal bombardment. Beef up it's bombardment strength.
F-18 Make this carrer based. Multi-role. Or give it to the Canadians as all-purpose.

Anyone else have ideas. I'm still not totally sold on these...

kenshi
Sep 20, 2002, 08:22 AM
I'd propose the F-14 to be the air to air superioirty fighter with lethal sea bombardment.

The F-15 would be the ground attacker instead.

The F-16 would be the ground based all rounder, where as the F-18 would be the same. The F-16 should be cheaper and have the largest operational range though.

The F-18 I reckon would be the carrier version of the F-15. I recall reading something that denoted the F-18 as the first strike fighter.

[c0w]GoesMoo
Sep 20, 2002, 08:52 AM
As ideas for others to use/adapt, I have decided for my own scenarios:

Dedicated ground attack aircraft:
Il-2 -> A-10 -> F-16 -> F-117

These aircraft have decent defense and are dedicated to strike missions. They cannot perform air superiority missions. They are lethal against land targets only.

Air Superiority aircraft:
Mustang -> Arrow -> F-15 -> F-22

These aircraft have high attack and defense ratings, perform air superiority missions and recon. They have lower bombard capabilities that attack aircraft, but the F-15 and F-22 have PGM strike ability. They are lethal only to sea units.

Naval Aircraft: F-14 for air superiority, F/A-18 for strike missions.

These are for the US only (me =). F/A-18 is lethal to land and sea. The F-14 is lethal to sea, but has a low bomb ability.

For the ROW (rest-of-world):

Ground attack:

Prop-fighter-bomber -> Harrier -> F-117

The Harrier is capable of operating from carriers, and so has "load" ability.

Air Superiority:

Fighter -> CF-100 -> JetFighter -> EF-2000

When the JAS-39 comes out, I may use it as a very cool multi-role carrier aircraft with air superiority and bombing abilities. Think Rafael =)

Now, for the JSF =)

kenshi
Sep 20, 2002, 09:28 AM
Not a bad idea.

There was a Strike fighter a while back, where someone cut and paste the fighter mode from a Valkyrie (Macross Unit.) It used to be my F-14 but I changed it to the Joint Strike Fighter. (Replaced old F-14 now.)

The F-22 was supposed to be an Air to Air Superiority fighter, as you have there. I had the JSF replacing the F-14 and the F-22 replacing the F-15, oddly enough.

With the new units though, the JSF will replace the F-15, and the F-22 replacing the F-14. The JSF was meant to cover all purposes though, being able to be carrier based or VTOL as well as a strike fighter. The F-16 I will keep in the game, along side the F-18. Unless someone makes a Super Hornet.

The Arrow plane I made as a generic first Jet fighter. The Original Mig-29 became Russias UU.

There is the problem of having too many planes though, which the AI tends to mess up royally well.

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 09:40 AM
The AI can't handle having more than one unit at a time for the same role. It will always choose one over the other. I wonder how it will handle have four fighters operating simultaneously...

To make my case, I had once set up flamethrowers available at the same time as infantry. The idea was that an occasional flame-thrower would liven things up. To my surprise, the AI made them exclusively. There were stacks of flamethrowers roving around baking my cities.

To make a long story short, I hope the AI will make a few of each type of fighter. I guess we'll see what happens.

kenshi
Sep 20, 2002, 09:46 AM
The AI will always pick the one with the best Stats. If there is a special trait, such as hidden nationality or something they will do it.

But aside from that, they will always pick the best stats from units with the same Stratagies ticked.

Kal-el
Sep 20, 2002, 12:15 PM
How do you make the F-14 and F-18 exclusively Carrier based? and prevent the Jet Fighter, F-15, F-16, F-22, etc. unable to land on the carriers yet at the same time being able to rebase?

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 12:23 PM
If you make the jets you wish to be land based only, you can remove the load ability. You wont be able to load them on a carrier in a city then. You'll still be able to rebase them to a carrier, however.

Some guys check the wheeled ability so they are not able to be carrier based. I'm not sure if that works.

Kal-el
Sep 20, 2002, 12:28 PM
yeah thats the problem, you can still rebase these units to carriers unless you remove the rebase option, but that seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I have tried everything I can think of, and as long as it has the rebase flagged they can land on the carriers. I really wanted to prevent my bombers from landing on Carriers, but to no avail. I thought maybe somebody had come up with a solution I hadn't thought of. :( Oh well.

I wonder what the AI would do if you gave them the exact same stats but gave the F-15 lethal land and gave the F-14 lethal sea. Do you think that would promote AI diversity? Its so tricky trying to get the AI to behave intelligently. :crazyeye: :p

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 12:33 PM
Kal-El,

That's exactly what I'm going to try with these jets. I guess we'll see what happens. It might take several games to find out because it's hard to find an AI carrier and be able to watch what it's using. I've only ever been attacked by F-15s once. And that was land based.

[c0w]GoesMoo
Sep 20, 2002, 02:24 PM
It is rather disappointing w.r.t. to the load ability, but oh well. I have seen the AI use carriers very well, primarily when I created them for the AI players at the start of the game. I declared war on the "Romans" because they repeatedly failed to remove the destroyer I trapped in my territory :satan: A short while later, I saw my ally, Britain, sent jump carriers into the waters around "Rome" and launched jump jets (Harriers) at the Romans repeatedly. I think the biggest problem is getting the AI to make carriers in the first place.

Cantankerous
Sep 20, 2002, 05:48 PM
OK, the best way to make a plane land-based-only (so that it cannot rebase onto a carrier) is to give it a transport capacity of "one". Since transports cannot be carried by another transports, the Civ 3 programming will not allow the plane to rebase onto a carrier, but will allow the plane to rebase to any other city.

Since you probably don't want your fighter jet to be able to transport units, you overcome this by flagging the unit abilities of "carry only foot units" AND "carry only air units". These two abilities have the effect of cancelling each other out.

Thus you have now "land-locked" your aircraft.

(NOTE: I would like to take credit for coming up with this idea, but in fact I was not the one that first thought of it. I believe either Cyclonic or TVA22 had the original idea.)

Kingpin
Sep 20, 2002, 06:15 PM
Hey! That's brilliant! Assuming it works...

Kal-el
Sep 20, 2002, 06:40 PM
that is beautiful!

[c0w]GoesMoo
Sep 20, 2002, 08:19 PM
Hehe, I just tried setting the "wheeled" flag, saw it didn't work, and sat down to figure out a way to make this work. From the past, I had tried to build an LHD which carried air and land units and remembered it not carrying either, tried it out, found it works, rushed to my browser, and woo hoo others have also found this trick Yeah, Cantank's idea does work, and yes, it is beautiful. I just hope the AI doesn't get too confused. Oh well, not tonight, but tomorrow night, we find out :) Anyone who finds out, please post!

Kal-el
Sep 20, 2002, 08:32 PM
that is always the big question. how will the AI handle our little work-arounds.

kenshi
Sep 21, 2002, 01:38 AM
The Lethal Sea and Land bombardment should in theory make the AI build the two different unit.

The problem with making the F-15 land based totally is that you can only put it in cities. There was an Airbase unit out that I used, but to my chagrin, I could not add bombers or any un-carrier-able planes on it.

Nder
Sep 23, 2002, 12:23 PM
Originally posted by kenshi
The Lethal Sea and Land bombardment should in theory make the AI build the two different unit. One would think it would, but will it? That is the real question. :confused:
The problem with making the F-15 land based totally is that you can only put it in cities. There was an Airbase unit out that I used, but to my chagrin, I could not add bombers or any un-carrier-able planes on it. Well, hopefully once PtW comes out this won't be a problem with the Airfield Worker Improvement.

zulu9812
Sep 23, 2002, 12:46 PM
It's a shame there's no way to stop planes rebasing to other cities, so that you they could only rebase to carriers. And doesn't anyone think there should be a rebase range? Rebasing from one carrier to another on the other side of the world seems a bit rediculous, even if, technically, it's over the course of a year.

CurtSibling
Sep 23, 2002, 01:17 PM
Two steel eagles to enforce Abe Lincoln's airpower!

Nice!

And they will fit in with the graphic look too!

:D

Rocoteh
Nov 14, 2002, 10:50 AM
I consider F14, F-18 and F-16 the best air
units made for CIV 3.
Will there be any more units from you BeBro?

HotDog Fish
Nov 14, 2002, 04:45 PM
These are great! I'm using the F-18 for the Canadian civ for awhile (I still like using the mountie) but what's the point of all these American fighters when they have no MiGs or Yaks, Sukhois and Tupolevs, to fight with? But these are great units and are very well done

Noname
Nov 14, 2002, 07:55 PM
Thanks BeBro. I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the F/A-18 in my Canadian Civ.
If that's the case, can I use it for a Australian, Swiss, Spanish, Kuwaiti, Malaysian, and Finnish Civilisation too?:D

The Hornet is not operated exclusively by Canada.

BeBro
Nov 23, 2002, 06:24 AM
Originally posted by Rocoteh
I consider F14, F-18 and F-16 the best air
units made for CIV 3.
Will there be any more units from you BeBro?

Thanks :) Currently there arenŽt more units available made by me - IŽm busy with my X-Com mod, which will include of course also new units. But IŽm quite sure IŽll make other units too in the future, when IŽve more time...;)

HotDog Fish
Nov 23, 2002, 09:24 AM
Originally posted by Noname

If that's the case, can I use it for a Australian, Swiss, Spanish, Kuwaiti, Malaysian, and Finnish Civilisation too?:D

The Hornet is not operated exclusively by Canada.
True, but our CF-18's are highyl specialized...and are currently our only fighter jet in service

thestonesfan
Jan 04, 2003, 10:49 AM
Okay, I'm probably just an idiot...but how the heck do you get planes to attack from a carrier?

GrandAdmiral
Jan 06, 2003, 02:46 AM
The same way you do it when they aren't on the carrier. Air bombard or intercept. You should look in a different thread such as newbie, reference or something like that. This one just pertains to unit customization. You will get bettter answers if you do so.

thestonesfan
Jan 06, 2003, 08:23 AM
Hmm. That's funny...but none of my planes can do anything but rebase to them. I guess I'll look elsewhere.

GrandAdmiral
Jan 06, 2003, 02:42 PM
Are you playing a scenario?

thestonesfan
Jan 06, 2003, 02:56 PM
Yes...but everything is set for the Carrier exactly as it was before. That's what I can't figure out.

GrandAdmiral
Jan 07, 2003, 02:46 PM
Its probably the fighters. Make sure they have all the correct abilities checked. Make sure bombard and intercept is checked. Look at the orinal fighters stats and abilities and make sure your operational range and bomardment range is greater than 1.

thestonesfan
Jan 08, 2003, 07:10 AM
Ok...I'll check. I have to be missing something. Thanks!

Sims2789
Jul 31, 2003, 03:22 PM
COOL UNITS!! :)
are you planning on making an F-22? i've heard that they are going to be semi-stealth. our tax dollars har at work so that we can fight another war in a far-away oil rich desert country! :)

thestonesfan
Jul 31, 2003, 03:30 PM
He's already made one.

snsfro
Jul 31, 2003, 03:42 PM
That's smart, bring the thread back from the dead to ask for something already made...and to perfection I might add!

Tepez2447
Jul 31, 2003, 04:27 PM
'ey, he didn't know, sure he could've posted in the main but this works. But i'll be nie and get back on topic for everyone...

bebro, you do you think you'll be redoing these 2?

BeBro
Jul 31, 2003, 05:06 PM
At least I planned it....;)

The Su 27 will be updated this weekend (I planned it earlier, but then had so much work with my xcom mod)

Those other jets will follow over time :)