Using camoflage for armour based triggers.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

You know how the trigger conditions 'has item tagnamed x' and 'has item equipped tagnamed x' ignore armour equipped in the armour slot, making armour based triggers purely cosmetic unless you have another item such as id papers or dog tags in your inventory to trigger the condition?

Well if you assign your armour a value in the effect\dervived\camoflage field (in the entity editor) and then use the trigger conditions such as 'has more than 0 derivedstat camoflage' you can set up triggers that will fire when you equip certain armours. Great for making disguises that will turn an enemy camp friendly or a kill zone (such as a toxic cave) which will kill your player immediately unless wearing environmental or power armour. Or even a deathtrap that does constant low damage unless you're wearing the appropriate protective clothing (an artic map requiring artic clothing perhaps).

Though if you're making a campaign you'll need to supply a tribal prefab or tribal recruit, if you want someone who can wear raider and reaver armours.

Since, as far as I'm aware, the camoflage field doesn't affect anything combat wise you can have the different armours set up with a seperate camoflage value for each type.

[OnTheBounce]

Hmmm...very interesting.

I take it that you were using "Quantity Unit" rather than "Quantity Team/Player" conditions? In other words, does this suffer from the same drawbacks as the age/sex/location -- er...well, minus the location bit -- and race-based triggers?

Y'know, since the engine seems to detect those unimplemented thing-a-ma-jigs while not doing anything w/them actively you may have made a very useful discovery, Requiem.

OTB

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Well at that point in my map the player has only the one character so I'm using the quantity player, but I'll go test it with quantity unit and team. I did think about using the derived stat armour class, but I assumed you'd run into the same problems with the engine adding up all the squad's armour class, plus in a campaign everyone's player characters are going to have different ac depending on their agility. With camoflage, since it's an unused field you don't have to worry about the game adding things up since only the armour you edit will have that particular value.

As for situations where you need the whole squad wearing the disguise/protection then unit based triggers and zones would be needed as well. But I'll go experiment some more.

Edit Just checked it works fine with the unit command, but it does add up your squad's camoflage using the player setup. But that's fine, that can be useful, say at the start of a mission where you need to collect a disguise for each of your squad members. I guess it's a question of what you might want to use it for and where.

[quietfanatic]

That's great, I was using rad resistance for that scenario before.

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

Just one thing though about using Tribal prefabs, you can't modify them. Or rather you can but if you do you won't be able to choose a portrait and if you've linked one up along with a background, the link will be broken and though you'll keep the characters name you'll lose the portrait and background info.

[quietfanatic]

That's annoying. Otherwise, is there any thing else you can't modify for a prefab? (unless there is another way to give the main, created character a tag name in a campaign.)

[requiem_for_a_starfury]

I assume that you lose portrait etc because the tribal isn't available as a MP race. So it would be the same for other non MP races. Otherwise a prefab can do anything a normally created character can do. Plus you can modify prefabs, give them extra tags or skill points per level, modify their carry weight and raise their base skill points etc.

There's no other way to give the main player a tag name. I wish they had coded it so the main player, however created, automatically got tagged 'player' or something .