Beng's Laser General Mod addon - C&C: Generals Zero Hour

Readme File:
Beng's Laser General Mod for CnC Generals Zero Hour
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Version 1.00 final Nov 2007

This just adds some souped up capabilities and new units to the Laser General, making use of some unused sounds and models too.

Installation: Put the 0bengslasermod.big file in your Zero Hour program directory.

Known bugs:
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In the generals challenge laser general map, the game sometimes freezes. I suspect this happens when i have too many spy drones on the map. Or it may have something to do with the sound, i am not sure. To play it safe don't deploy more than 10 spy drones.

Infantry:
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Laser general's paradrop power now drops a mix of infantry types, not just rangers.

All Laser General's infantry can rappell from chinooks.

All can climb cliffs and swim when the Worker Shoes upgrade is bought from the strategy center.

Rangers get laser rifles which have a slightly longer range than normal rifles. Their flashbangs can now target vehicles, whose drivers can be temporarily stunned by them.
The flashbang upgrade also enables the rangers to shoot at aircraft with their lasers, like Infantry general's men.

Missile Defenders have longer ranged laser-guided missile ability. It also works on aircraft by the way.
With the Laser Guided missiles upgrade (buy from airfield, or from a sentry drone in the single player USA missions), their missiles get EMP effects and can kill garrisoned infantry (1 with each shot).
Their EMP missiles are also useful against sneak attack tunnels, put some on guard in your base.

Pathfinders with the worker shoes upgraded can snipe vehicles like Jarmen Kell. You don't need a button to tell them to do it, they will do it themselves.
They also become stealthed even when moving with worker shoes, but move more slowly. They can still detect stealth whilst inside vehicles and buildings.
They have longer vision so can shoot at more distant targets.

Col Burton with worker shoes can swim.
He can also detect stealth, but only at a short range.
He can capture buildings like a ranger.
When he has elite (2 stripe) rank he can heal himself and nearby infantry.
The Advanced Lasers upgrade gives him a laser gun, and a laser designator so he can call in air strikes using his laser designator. Use his air strikes to get rid of base defences so he can enter the enemy base.

Infantry laser guns will reveal stealthed buildings when they are shot, so have one ranger force fire on the ground under the stealthed building to reveal it, leave him to continue shooting the ground under it (damages the building less than shooting the building itself), whilst another ranger captures it.

Drones:
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Drones will autoheal with the Drone Armor upgrade.

BattleDrone gets a very effective anti-projectile point defense laser and its own laser gun.

Scout drone has a missile jammer and a target designator. When it finds an enemy, it's master is able to shoot at it from a greater distance away.
Rangers inside Humvees equipped with scout drones also get the weapon bonus from drone spotting.
Targets painted by the drone's laser designator can be more quickly destroyed by any friendly units, not just it's master.

Hellfire drone get's the laser tank's laser gun.

The above improved drones cost more to build but are well worth it.

Sentry Drone gets radiation emitter instead of sentry drone gun when upgraded.
The Laser General sentry drone stays stealthed even when using the radiation emitter.
Park it along routes used by the enemy or where GLA rebel ambushes happen.

Spy drone has a missile jammer.

Vehicles:
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All vehicle laser weapons are upgraded to do +25% damage with the Advanced Lasers upgrade (buy at war factory).

You can buy and use the Paladin tank science. Both standard Laser Tanks and Laser Paladin tanks have improved weapons.
Both tanks can shoot at air targets though the Paladin does this much better (Paladin can shoot ballistic missiles including scud storm and nuke missiles).
Paladin has a cannon as well, which can shoot garrisoned infantry. It gains toxin effects with Upgrade_AmericaLaserMissiles, and when in addition you buy
the comanche pods upgrade, the shells do Anthrax Beta. Paladin tank can also contain 5 infantry, who can shoot only out of it when the bunker upgrade is purchased.

Standard Laser tank can be upgraded with a gattling cannon that detects stealth and improves it's anti-air ability (the gattling can shoot at ballistic missiles).

Avenger can shoot down scud storm and nuke misisles and artillery shells. It gains experience too.
It can contain infantry and it can be stealthed.

Humvee gets am anti-air laser (also useful against ground targets) instead of a Tow Missile.

Ambulance can cure aircraft flying near it and can take 5 passengers.

Microwave tank can clear garrisoned buildings and jam vehicles. It also has it's own point-defense laser.

Dozer can climb cliffs and move through water.

Aircraft:
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All aircraft have a self-defense laser to protect them from missiles.

Stealthfighters get powerful long range lasers to attack enemy base defences.
With the laserguided missiles upgrade, each stealthfighter can destroy a base defence building.
When the bunker buster upgrade is purchased they get 4 laser-guided neutron-EMP bombs to clear buildings and kill vehicles.
Use the neutron bomb button to target their neutron bombs on enemies.

Laser Raptors use laser guns instead of missiles. They also have a button to let you fire ony burst of the laser so you can kill 6 infantry on each sortie.
The raptor is good against most kids of targets but not as good against base defences as the Stealth.

Auroras launch an air-launched cruise missile with a delayed action nuke warhead that tends to explode after 20 seconds, just as the GLA hole is starting to rebuild, giving you more time to remove it.
If the missile lodges inside a building, enemy units nearby will shoot at it and damage their own building. Only dozers and workers can defuse it before it explodes.

The C-130 Cargo plane is armed. Build your supply dropzones in such a way that the planes fly over the enemy base after dropping the supplies. They start from the edge of the map closest to the dropzone.

Comanche has a burning laser instead of a gun. This can target air units too. It keeps its normal 4 rockets.
The Rocket pod upgrade gives it laser pods instead of rockets, that have a flame effect.
The Rocket pod upgrade also puts a Pathfinder inside it who can snipe infantry and vehicles and detect stealth. Bug: After you fire the laser pods, the sniper will be shooting the ground so tell him to stop.

Buildings:
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The Firebase is the best defence building in the game.
It has a nuke EMP gun, an anti-air anti-ballistic missile Flugabwehrkanone, and a long range fire support gun that it will use to help other nearby firebases fire at targets.
You can also manually fire this gun using a command button (like the missile defender's laser missiles).
Note that if you use this button to target a unit that is out of range, you should then press S or press the Stop button to stop the firebase trying to shoot at it as i suspect this may cause the frame rate to drop.
The Firebase has it's own self-defense laser and is practically immune from projectile attacks.

Laser turret buildings have increased range and rate of fire. They can also shoot down scud storm and nuke missiles. They can build a point defense drone to stop enemy missiles.

Power plants produce more power when upgraded with control rods. (8 normally, +16 with control rods = 24 total power when upgraded).

TARDIS:
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Your dozer can build a TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), a small blue box that lets you teleport units instantly through the space-time continuum. They can then exit from any Tardis you own.
You are allowed to build 3 of these devices when you have a strategy center.

Each Tardis can teleport itself anywhere on the map, but be warned that this requires a lot of power to do. The Tardis has an integral cold fusion reactor that adds power to your base, but when warping through space-time it has a net drain on you base power.

Also, when it appears in the new place, it takes some time before it can function properly and it is vulnerable to enemy fire during this time.

When powered up and working normally, it is stealthed.

It has a tesla coil bolt to defend itself from enemies but it looses stealth when firing it.

When you buy Upgrade_AmericaAdvancedTraining it gets 2 additional weapons:
A silent mode radiation emitter like the sentry drone, and an EMP pulse generator which recharges after 30 seconds. The EMP pulse will disable enemy vehicles and buildings in the area for 20 seconds and make them also more vulnerable to your attacks (like the avenger laser).

The Upgrade_AdvancedLasers makes its weapons do 25% more damage.

You control the weapon selection via a secondary command console (switch to it like switching to the GLA worker's fake building command set).

Version changes:
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1.00 final changes
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To add the laser units to GLA and China single player campaign games, the GLA barracks and China supply center can now build laser general dozers.

The GLA barracks will give you spy drone, pathfinder and stealth fighter sciences when you buy the booby traps upgrade. A laser general command center is needed to make spy drones.

The China Supply Center will give you spy drone, pathfinder and stealth fighter sciences when you buy the Advanced lasers upgrade. A laser general command center is needed to make spy drones.

Upgrading with advanced lasers makes America spy drones become the laser general type.

The particle effects for the radiation emitter weapon used by spy drone and tardis are now affected by the map particle cap settings, so you will only see them if the map's particle cap limit is disabled and your graphics detail settings are set to custom and a high amount of particles. I did this to try and help those with slower computers. When particle cap is enabled, you won't see the green rings but the unit will flash green when it emits radiation.

In the generals challenge laser general map, the arty platforoms have battleship guns. They will fire a salvo at a spot every 25 seconds until you tell them to stop.

Firebase point defence laser range toned down so it is easier to force fire your own firebase outside the point defence laser range of an enemy laser general's firebase and hit it with the EMP effect.
Firebase gets a missile jammer to make up for the toning down of it's anti-missile laser.

Colonel Burton can carry one infantry unit, so in the single player mission where he and Lotus race to the lab, he can swim across the river and capture the GLA base and carry a worker back across the river to build a tunnel network. Note: Do not destroy the tunnel network across the river, it is needed by a script in that map. It will ignore Burton anyway.

Sentry drones can now shoot wihout having to stop and deploy.

Oil derricks made a bit stronger.

Moab B3 bomber is armed with lasers and is stealthed when not firing.

Laser general's reinforcement pad plane is now the armed B52.

Vehicle scout drones have point defence missile jammers. They will make missiles miss, and also they have a laser target designator that lets yuor units shoot faster at the painted object.

Civilian chemical bunkers and factories give you the Anthrax bomb if you capture them.
Civilian Nuke bunkers give you the nuke carpet bomb if you capture them.
Bear this in mind in the Generals Challenge Boss map and in the Dr Thrax and Prince Kassad maps.

1.0b4 changes:
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Raptor jet's "fox 1" button now targets objects rather than the ground so you can pick off individual targets like infantry with different shots.

New building: Long Range Sam Site: build limit: 2, requires war factory.
Lower rate of fire than patriot battery, but much longer range and much more powerful missile warhead.
It has some effectiveness against attacking Aurora bombers if engaging from a head-on aspect angle because attacking aurora bombers cause all weapons fired at them to target a spot behind them, as though targeting a decoy flare, but the SAM site missiles have a laser proximity fuse that detonates them as they pass by the aurora on their way to the targeted spot behind the aurora.
If you are using auroras to attack a SAM site you can overcome this by beaming the SAM site (putting it on the left or right of the plane so it attacks from the side rather than head on) until it has fired and missed, then attacking the site before it has a chance to reload and fire again.
Do this by force-firing the plane on some ground far away to get it to move towards that spot at attack speed, but force fire a new spot before it gets close enough to launch it's cruise missile. When the SAM site has fired and missed, target the SAM site.
Together with other anti-air defences the SAM site improves your anti-scud storm and anti-nuke missile defences.
It can be upgraded with an A-10 AWACS drone which has it's own anti-air weapons and helps direct the SAM site so it can attack targets at a greater range.
The A-10 drone auto heals with the drone armour upgrade and comes with point defence lasers.
The SAM site is vulnerable to ground units and can be captured, and it's low rate of fire means it can be saturated by multiple simultaneous incoming air attacks, but otherwise it is a good offensive defence.
Build it in range of the enemy's supply piles / supply centres to shoot down the enemy chinooks. Or build it in range of ther enemy airfield to stop his planes taking off.
Build it in the path of incoming bombers (anthrax, A-10, EMP, cluster mines, etc), scud or nuke missiles, or aircraft, to shoot them before they reach your base.
Note: The generals powers bombers always come from the edge of the map closest to the enemy command center.

New vehicle: mobile gap generator.
This vehicle jams the enemy's radar map to a radius of 300, making it hard for him to use superweapons, generals powers, etc in that area.
It works against human players but not so much against scripted AI because AI can shoot into the shroud. Human players have to use radar van scan or spy satellite or send units to spy the area in order to dispel the shroud so they can fire superweapons.
The vehicle also has microwave and ECM beams to jam enemy vehicles and base defences, plus it can hack and jam enemy factories like a hacker, but from a longer range, and it can contain 8 infantry who can shoot from it, like assault troop crawler.
It is also stealthed and detects stealth.
The drawback is it consumes 5 power.

Laser general's planes are now fitted with pilot excape vehicles. When a veteran plane is shot down, the pilot escapes in the pilot escape vehicle, a powered glider, which he can fly back to base before ejecting from it and descending via parachute.
Do not eject the pilot over water or cliffs.
The pilot escape vehicle can be upgraded with countermeasure flares, drone armour, and advanced training which makes it gain veterancy faster.
It is armed with a machine gun and rocket launcher (like combat bike).

Laser general's pilots can hijack enemy vehicles.

1.0b3 changes:
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Civilian buildings auto repair.
Oil derricks can be upgraded with camoflage and an EMP mine field.
Arty platforms with advanced lasers upgrade get the firebase's guns.
Stealth fighter laser made more powerul, with laser missiles upgrade it can take out a stinger site AND it's hole.
Burton's air strike bombs now set trees on fire.

1.0b2 changes:
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Fixed disabled text strings (thanks to "Me Myself & Pi").