Unit: Spec Ops Team

[MazterJo]

Here is the Spec Ops Team I used in my Ultimod Pack. They contain their Civilopedia graphic and you can choose not to use them. All you have to do is:

Create a SpecOps Team Folder in your art/units folder.
Unzip the SpecOpsTeam.zip into the folder.

Move the .pcx files to art/civilopedia/units folder
(if you want to have them in yur civilopedia but you must change the respective civilopedia and pediaicons text in the text folder)

Here is the SpecOpsTeam.zip
Removed after 125 downloads after correcting the invalid .flc error

[MazterJo]

Here is an animation of the team doing an airdrop.

[Rulerofdaerf]

isn't this one of the ctp's paratroopers?
:crazyeyes

[MazterJo]

You bet. They are black paratroopers. It would be pretty lame to use the white colour as a Special Ops Uniform so i changed it to black.

[MrNapoleon]

MazterJo you did great work ! It seems that you have a talent in designing units......so go on with it !

;-)

RULE THE SERVER GUARDIANS !

http://www.guardiansclan.de

[Moeniir]

Has anyone gotten this unit to work correctly in game? I've opened the "Drop" and "Run" FLCs using FLICster, and they do not apear to be Civ3UnitFlcs. They appear to be standard Flcs created with Animation Shop directly and saved... The creator field in the header is 0 (which should crash the game, or it did pre-patch), the entire Custom header (the FlicAnimHeader structure) is empty as well, and the files show the telltale 6 frames per change that AS causes when the delay is set to 6 (the default).

This is a great looking unit, but I'd suggest re-building it using the latest FLICster, v1.0.0, available in the Utility Files forum. If you need any help, just post.

HTH,

[MazterJo]

Your right. This animation was done in Animation Shop only but it works fine in my game. How is FLICster used? I heard it's for splitting the .FLCs and since i did not do any splitting, I did not tink i mite need it. Well I'm gonna go back to the drawing board and try it again. Thanx for the info.

[Moeniir]

There's been quite a bit published in the forums about the need for a tool (such as FLICster) - the short version is that the Civ3 Unit animations use a custom version of the FLC format (which I refer to as Civ3UnitFlc, to differentiate from a standard FLC), which puts all 8 directional animations into one file, and includes a special header which AS destroys. The original FLICster solved this by turning a Civ3UnitFLC into a set of 8 standard FLCs, one for each direction. After these were edited (via AS or similar) it re-merged them and added back the special header. The latest version is much more sophisticated, and lets you skip AS altogether and export an animation to a PCX file as a storyboard (and other layouts).

At any rate, you should have noticed in AS that the last direction (west) always has fewer frames than the others... this is due to the custom FLC format and the way Ring Frames are counted. I won't go into it all here, but the info is available in the forums if you care and I haven't bored you to death yet

Prior attempts to use directly-edited FLCs in game have resulted in mostly crashes. Mebbe the patched version is more forgiving. At any rate, I'll try to test your unit in game myself, and see what I find.

[damunzy]

Not to be a prick, because the unit looks great, but real, current US Paratroopers don't land with their feet spread wide. A current US Paratrooper would do what is called a PLF, a Parachute Landing Fall. The PLF is where the paratrooper arranges his/her body so that it strikes in a way to minimize impact to one particular area of the body. The paratrooper would hit feet, calf, thigh, pull-up muscle, all on one side of the body inorder to spread out the shock of impact. Now this type of landing wasn't the original way design of the US Paratroopers. Some of the originals had the paratrooper landing like the animation above and soome even had them rolling forward (as weird as that may sound).
Also, I don't know what the standard is for other countries. This is the standard for the USA.

[MazterJo]

Yeah, Thanx Moenirr. You're right my unit crashes on most games. I got yur FLICster and I'm working on it.

Thanx PaleHorse, guess we all learn sumthin evridae. Well currently i'm still working on the unit and after i'm done. I'll give it a shot.

[Moeniir]

For those who missed it, MazterJo has published a new version of the paratrooper which doesn't crash a t the top of this thread. Factual questions aside, this is a sweet looking unit! Here's the drop sequence again, with shadows:

[MazterJo]

FLICster is a MUST tool for anyone who wants to create animations or modify them. It is an extremely useful and easy to use tool with a simple and appeling interface and layout. Take it from me. Get it from the Utility Section of this site.

For Moenirr

[Plutarck]

Great work, MazterJo!

I'll rave on the wonders of FLICster late, but just wanted to let you (MazterJo) know that I've included this animation in my optional unit animation add-on pack for the LWC mod (for my Special Ops Team unit).

My sig has the link for the thread

[mumphry]

yeah, master joe, this seems like a cool unit. But unfortunately i've been unable to use it. I did everything you said to do at the top of the page, but maybe you forgot to make a tech advance that let's you build the spec ops teams? I'm not sure what's wrong but i know i can't build it. Also, what are it's A/D/M stats?

[MazterJo]

hey mumphry.. you must have downloaded the old version of the file.. try downloading the new version as the old version causes the game to crash.. There is a text file called SpecOpsTeam.txt that has the updated instructions on where to store the files.. But make sure you change your civilopedia.txt and pediaicons.txt files in the text folder..

[MazterJo]

Here are the stats are used in my mod for the Spec Ops Team...

Icon = 5
Preequisite = Refining (This makes oil appear on the map)
Required Resourses = Rubber and Oil
Attack: 12 Defence: 2 Operational Range: 8
(Spec Ops are Highly Offensive units and the reason why they have pathetic defence is that they are not meant for defense. They airdrop and the op range is the distance)

Flagged!
Use all terrain as road (since they are highly trained troops they should move easily in jungles as thru mountains)
Radar (they gather intelligence, so they should have the advantage in sight)
Amphibious Unit (they can move thru coasts too)

well these are what i used, you can always use your own values.

[MazterJo]

I'm glad you all liked my work. But dont it would have looked good if not for the feedback. I jus back to skool and I have way less time on my hands. I'm trying to complete my mod pack the ultimod pack which is not doing too good because there are a lot of bugs in it. I do not recommend downloading it even until i re-create it.

I kinda tot of makin another type of submarine which will be similar to the USS Cheyenne, a Los Angeles Type Nuclear Submarine(SSN). But it'll take a while since i'm in skool.

Thanks for the rating.

[Toecutter]

Good as a fantasy spec op soldier, but if you want to create a more realistic one, paint the chute white or olive green. No army parachutes are ever painted black. Also change the the uniform to camouflage pattern instead of "anti-terror" black.

[HOOAH]

Hey man great unit. : I have a great interest in special ops, so thanks. Since you did such a great job, do you think you could make a U.S. unique unit like the spec ops unit. Perhaps call it Green Beret. And since Green Berets are skilled at taking on enemy forces larger than their own unit, maybe the Green Beret can have the ability to spread the damage over a number of stacked enemy units, instead of the foremost unit. What do you think?

[MazterJo]

That's a pretty good idea. It won't b difficult making the green beret but how do yu get them to inflict damage on multiple stacked units. The only way that i can tink off to do dat is to increase the bombard rate of fire so that it can bombard multiple times. Anyone else with a better solution?