A raid mission-esque battle scenario involving two jammer-equipped Ziz and one ridiculously up-gunned Ziz.
If you think the default Ziz Hunt is boring, and even PokerPop's Hard Version is too easy for you, maybe this is the massive flying fortress raid you're looking for. Featuring the EOS-01F (Fortress) and the EOS-01EW (Electronic Warfare) by yours truly, this is about as crazy as it goes.
KNOWN BUGS
- [Major] Poor performance on lower-end machines (extremely poor on Ziz Pursuit III and IV). This isn't fixable, the only way to solve it is to upgrade your potato like I did, sorry.
- [Moderate] Toggling the minimap may lead to a CTD, especially on low-end machines. Again, can't fix other than asking you to upgrade.
- [Moderate] Medium-tier planes are unable to lock onto turrets at close range (<15~20km), and then magically regain the ability to do so after the Ziz has flown for a certain distance. (Fixed in v1.3)
- [Minor] Missiles from the EOS-01F tend to explode immediately in its face for some reason. Fewer missiles for you to worry about, but that's not really supposed to happen. (Fixed in v1.4)
Additional information for players
Stealth is forcibly disabled with the No Stealth mutator, so don't even think about bringing a stealthy craft to snipe the Zizs with impunity. It won't work.
Bringing super planes with overpowered SP weapons like MPBM or TLS will make this ridiculously easy, if not a little pointless. This mission is intended for base-game middle- and high-end aircraft. I playtested this myself with vanilla planes.
Pay special attention to a few vanilla planes that make the missions way easier than they would be with any other planes, and decide for yourself whether they detract from the experience:
- F-15Z: Self Copy jamming massively decreases the amount of lead thrown at you.
- Su-33, MiG-29OVT: One of their special weapons, the S-25-O, has insane damage. It will easily blast the two Ziz Obficio to oblivion and deal significant hull damage to any EOS-01F variant (Fixed in v1.4).
Additional information for modders
I spent quite a lot of time fine-tuning the EOS-01F's turret positions. Feel free to use it or its SubObj data for yourself (hell, I even made a legend detailing which is which), but I'd prefer getting credited for doing that dirty work if you want to release anything that involves them.
The RadarRange_Air vs SubObj bug was "fixed" by adding a buff unit that bumps your RadarRange_Air to astronomical values (x100). Feel free to take and use it, again I'd appreciate getting some credits for it if you are simply taking it and slapping it onto another map. Not like this is very useful for other maps, but still.
Material request
I would greatly appreciate if someone can make simple Red and Gold skins for the EOS-01T... for obvious reasons. The black that I clumsily made myself seems to work well enough though.
Change log
v1.5: (18 Feb 2022)
- FIXED: Restored the Battle Scenario menu selection text.
- NEW: Added two failsafe Cores to the F-type Zizs for the rare event that killing all the turrets alone doesn't kill it. Killing one of these will instantly destroy the stubborn Ziz.
- NEW: New Ziz Pursuit SP scenario that plays a bit differently from the usual. (You also have 500% HP)
v1.4.1: (13 Feb 2022)
- FIXED: EOS-01F was incorrectly using F3's enhanced AAM. Whoops.
- FIXED: Actually included the MQ-36A/B and playable Ziz files under the Airplane folder. Even bigger whoops.
- FIXED: Ziz Pursuit IV starting music was incorrect.
- MISC: Added dedicated Readme file for playable Ziz.
v1.4: (13 Feb 2022) (Wow, 6 years!) (If you somehow have this, you must update to a newer version)
- FIXED: Added a short (1s) tracking delay to AAM, which seems to have largely fixed its "explode at muzzle" issue.
- FIXED: Standardized firing intervals for every turret type.
- CHANGED: Decreased reinforced CIWS & AAM turret HP (from 4000 to 2000).
- CHANGED: All AA guns are now proximity-fused, but EOS-01F/F2/EW remain incapable of (intentional) missile interception.
- CHANGED: Interception-capable CIWS turrets are clearly marked as "CIWS" instead of "AA Gun".
- CHANGED: Drastically decreased CIWS rate of fire (from 0.08 to 0.5/0.2) to reduce performance issues.
- CHANGED: Drastically decreased damage of CIWS (from 50 to 10/25) and AAM (from 400 to 75/200/300). They will still shred you but are less "get touched and die", especially in Ziz Pursuit I.
- CHANGED: Enhanced AAM (EOS-01F3) deals less damage than the regular variant (200 vs 300) to compensate for their unforgiving nature.
- CHANGED: TGT Ziz can no longer be killed by just shooting its hull (HP is set to 1 billion). You must destroy its various subsystems to deal damage.
- CHANGED: EOS-01EW also takes subsystem destruction damage, but it is not required like EOS-01F.
- CHANGED: Removed hull kill rewards due to the new subsystem damage mechanic. It is now directly awarded via mission script.
- CHANGED: Changed IV map time to 1945 for more visible missile trails.
- CHANGED: Black Squadron (IV) HP tripled.
- CHANGED: UCAV squadron remains in IV instead of being replaced by Black Squadron.
- NEW: EOS-01F/F2/F3 have IbizenThoth's flak cannon as their main guns, and they also receive gradual upgrades on the F2 (hypervelocity rounds) and F3 (3-round burst).
- NEW: AAM rocket glare set to permanently active. No more getting killed by invisible missiles!
- NEW: EOS-01F4 received upgrades to its CIWS (8s bursts vs 4s) and AAM (4-shot micromissiles, 75 damage each, modified MMIC-L5 behavior), instead of being an F3 clone with railguns.
- NEW: EOS-01EW also receives minor upgrades according to difficulty, up to Ziz Pursit III. (IV reuses the III EW)
- NEW: Ally UCAV squadron for I/II upgraded from X-36 to the custom AMRAAM-armed MQ-36A, which is still hopeless against the TGT Ziz but will seriously compete for the EW Ziz kills.
- NEW: Ally UCAV squadron for III/IV upgraded further to MQ-36B, which has one F-15Z clone target and should survive a bit longer.
- NEW: Updated AI behavior to mandate a full-throttle charge on mission start. It is not entirely successful but still somewhat effective.
- NEW: Optional files to restore enemy weapon lethality to be roughly equal with v1.3. (CIWS: 125 / AAM: 400 / IV AAM: 100 / Flak: 1000)
- NEW: Optional files for a playable EOS-01F variant.
- MISC: Removed all the Star Wars reference names.
- MISC: Changed some dialogue and added tips.
- MISC: Added cockpit turret sockets to EOS-01EW skin (pasted from EOS-01T). Not that anyone really cares.
- MISC: Asset file structure has been changed. (Almost everything is completely redundant from vanilla files)
- MISC: v1.3 archive is included for you to hunt down old files for deletion.
v1.3: (3rd Dec 2015)
- FIXED: Planes without astronomical RadarRange_Air stat being unable to lock onto turrets near map borders. Now you should be able to lock onto turrets all the way from the beginning to the end.
- FIXED: Proximity fuse of EOS-01F3/F4 not actually working. (The placebo effect got you too, eh?)
- CHANGED: EOS-01F3/F4 AA gun damage decreased. Believe me, it still shreds you into pieces in record time if you're not careful.
- CHANGED: EOS-01F/F2/EW AA gun no longer considered CIWS. They never hit any missile anyway and their time are better spent shooting at you.
- CHANGED: Main weapon ammo buffed from x4 to x5 in Ziz Pursuit III and IV to compensate for the now effective CIWS anti-missile fire.
- CHANGED: All Zizs explode into a wreck with the LSWM blast effect. Again, purely cosmetic.
v1.2: (29th Nov 2015)
- FIXED: One line of the EOS-01F 10% HP chatter not showing.
- CHANGED: EOS-01EW Detection Hole range massively-increased. No more sniping the EOS-01F with XLAA or TLS.
- CHANGED: Ziz Pursuit I music changed.
- CHANGED: Ziz Pursuit II map changed to MediterrainM1_R.
- CHANGED: Even more tail guns for the EOS-01F.
- CHANGED: AWACS Prophet's starting dialogue now provide some basic idea of what you're up against. Ziz Pursuit I not affected.
- CHANGED: Some radio chatter that you don't really have time to read.
- CHANGED: All of my Zizs are harder to stall now. Irrelevant with the Ziz Pursuit missions but useful if you make them flyable or place them in some other mission where they don't just fly in a straight line.
- CHANGED: All Ziz wrecks now explode with the LSWM blast effect. Purely cosmetic.
- NEW: Ziz Pursuit III and Ziz Pursuit IV added for those who find Ziz Pursuit II not insane enough. These have upgraded guns and missiles. Skins are still placeholders.
v1.1: (21st Nov 2015)
- FIXED: Radio chatter for EOS-01F reaching 50%, 25% and 10% HP not showing.
- CHANGED: EOS-01EW lock jamming range halved to ease frustration.
- CHANGED: Friendly unit type changed from P.125 to X-36. The P.125 was a stand-in for a good UCAV, and I simply forgot the X-36 exists.
- CHANGED: Friendly unit count decreased from 10 to 4. You simply don't need so many cannon fodders, but you can certainly benefit from the performance boost for removing them.
- CHANGED: Very slight changes to AWACS diagloue, you probably won't even notice.
- NEW: Mission split into Ziz Pursuit I and II. Ziz Pursuit I is the "starter" version with decreased EOS-01F health and massively decreased EOS-01F turret health. The original is kicked upstairs as Ziz Pursuit II, and the full-strength EOS-01F received a model name change.
- NEW: Briefing and Debriefing messages are now ACI-wannabes.
v1.0 / No version number: (18th Nov 2015)
- Initial release
Demonstration
I'm probably not trying to do the whole I-IV demonstration anymore, but I've recorded Ziz Pursuit I at least.
Ziz Pursuit I: EOS-01F Ziz Bellum (Basic variant)
Further variants:
- Ziz Pursuit II: EOS-01F2 Ziz Armatus
- Armored turrets
- Increased AA damage
- Ziz Pursuit III: EOS-01F3 Ziz Ignis
- Ziz Pursuit IV: EOS-01F4 Ziz Velocitas
![Ziz Pursuit [v1.5]](https://media.moddb.com/images/downloads/1/94/93452/screenshot_1.png)
Too much guns/10
In some sense, yes that is entirely too many guns.
The framerate drops notably when the EOS-01F fires all those guns.
My framerate dropped considerably after EOS-01F opened fire but I really enjoyed it despite getting my *** kicked several times :D
Hmm brings back fond memories of Aigaion and the rest of the air fleet... *shudders while clutching a comfort blanket* 9.9/10 needs more guns.
No plan for more guns at the moment.
Current plan is to have BETTER guns down the line. The WIP build of EOS-01F3 has proximity-fused AA guns and launchers that basically launch QAAMs. It's pretty crazy, but I got some serious performance issues to solve first (or at the very least see if it's just a problem with the potato I'm running the game on).
Apparently there is a blind spot on the heavily armed Ziz, there's a spot just behind the main fuselage on the Ziz you can park your plane there and start peppering the Ziz with rotary cannon fire, though the drones can screw you over by somehow the gun was aiming at the drone but the shell hit me instead.
Other than that a great challenge too me several tires with a proper aircraft(no crazy flying space battleship with orbital strike) to finally take it down.
Dakka outta ten would dakka again(also recommend you to up the sub weapon ammunition as well, found myself ran out of M61 very quick)
I just added ten more tail guns. Let's see if that will help: I.imgur.com
1.2 should be around the corner, just got some minor stuff to sort out first.
Note to self: It does not.
But on the other hand, my attempts to reproduce your tactic all end up with a fiery X-02 wreck, because I got into the line of fire of the other turrets not on the tail.
I'll have to think of a more proper fix to this.
That is why they call me the mad one sometimes.
Havent tried 1.2 yet but I have another suggestion is to make it stage by stage or phases, shoot down one set of turrets the next one will show up like the ground unit/object EOS-14, only when all stages/phases of turrets is shot down, the whole unit is destroyed.
also make the Ziz itself much more HP if you're going for that idea cause I still can skip all the turret phases/stages and just either pepper the back end with 20-30mms or somehow shot it down from range with XLAA(the ones on Su-37 is sufficient to shoot it down somehow)
I'll have to investigate the EOS-14 a bit, it looks interesting.
On the other hand, on closer examination I don't think the blind spot problem is as bad as it was in v1.1 due to a change that I made for another reason.
I just double-checked your Wyvern vid and saw that you shoved a crap ton of AMRAAMs into the main unit before the jamming kicks in, and I buffed the detection hole range from 5km to 100km to prevent exactly that. You can still get into the blind spot, but you'll have to stay there for a very long time and the other guns and missiles tend to catch on after you spend some time there.
I had did it once without any AMRAAMs does take a bit longer(and only work once, did have that attempt recorded) but one the drones catch up the game lags massively and I crash into the fuselage of the Ziz, the AMRAAMs spam is just to speed up/soften it.
And speaking of quirks, I found the S-25-O to be stupidly powerful against even my armored F-series Ziz. One salvo and the EW Ziz Obficio is almost dead.
At least they're just found on older planes, but when the "older planes" are the MiG-29OVT and Su-33 it kinda doesn't help the case.
Not getting far with the SubObj layer idea at the moment since there isn't a proper trigger for SubObj layer state to announce the unit's status or tell you what to do via dialogue.
On the other hand, I've accomplished a few other things with v1.3.
First of all, the "proximity AA gun" in v1.2 is a lie. Apparently proximity fuse does NOT work when projectile type is set to "bullet", so I just changed it to "rocket" ("missile" would cause false missile alarms) and voila! An AA gun that shreds everyone and everything who try to get close. Damage has been further reduced to tone down long-range lethality, but at close range the barrage of flak explosions will end you shortly. These AA guns are now also terrifyingly effective as CIWS and WILL shoot down your missiles. I have increased main weapon ammo to compensate.
Secondly, I finally rooted out the cause of that "can't lock onto turrets unless flying an F-22 or F-35" bug. It would appear that the RadarRange_Air stat for planes is bugged when checking against subobjects, and the F-35 was able to be unaffected simply because it has an astronomical number (F-35A: 293500 vs F-15C: 33000). While i have reported the bug, I have no delusion that it will be properly fixed any time soon, so I have applied a band-aid fix at the moment in the form of a ridiculously-powerful, invincible data-link unit that only buffs RadarRange_Air. You will now see a friendly ground unit underneath you when you start the mission, it is placed below ground and should not affect the battle other than letting you lock onto turrets properly.
Lastly, I finally got around to change all the Ziz explosion effects to the LSWM blast effect for more spectacular visuals. This should be the most notable in Ziz Pursuit III which takes place in the dark.
v1.4! Who would've thought this could actually happen after all this time? Certainly not me like one week ago.
Huge thanks to r/AceCombat Discord user Katana for making me pick this up again. Survival should receive a small update Soon™ (mostly updating the Ziz in that mission), but then again Ziz Pursuit never followed up on Survival's "I will include in a later update for that addon" promise until now, so who knows.
LOL when I was browsing my ModDB notifications I was like "...wait hold on, is that...?" Kudos for coming back to this and giving it a quick update! Even though very few people may end up playing it...
I was surprised that people were actually talking about it on the subreddit Discord server. So I know at least some people will enjoy it.
... and maybe that guy who added Ziz Pursuit to VT's TVTropes page as though it's official content.