New feature for dogfights: Tractor beams for your craft! They allow you to effectively decrease the maximum speed of a UFO during interception, preventing their escape. If you have powerful enough beams targeting the UFO, you can even cause it to land or splash down in the water!
The new ruleset parameters are:
- tractorBeamPower: 0 - Set this parameter on a craft weapon to determine how much it slows down the max speed of a UFO when it's in range and the weapon is active. Defaults to 0.
- ufoTractorBeamSizeModifiers: A global set of mod values to determine how much each size of UFO is affected by a tractor beam. The default is 4x for very small, 2x for small, 1x for medium, 1/2x for large, 1/4x for very large.
If the UFO's max speed minus the sum of all the active tractor beams multiplied by the size modifier is less than your craft's speed, the UFO cannot escape. If that sum multiplied by the size modifier is zero, the UFO either lands for between 30 and 120 minutes, or is destroyed when over water (except in TFTD, where water = landing), granting you points as if you crashed it.
See here for the commit on GitHub.Sample ruleset and strings:
craftWeapons:
- type: STR_TRACTOR_BEAM_UC
sprite: 0
range: 65
launcher: STR_TRACTOR_BEAM
tractorBeamPower: 1000
ufoTractorBeamSizeModifier:
- 400 # very small, tractor beams are 400% or 4x as effective
- 200
- 100
- 50
- 25 # very large, tractor beams are 25% or 1/4x as effective
extraStrings:
- type: en-US
strings:
STR_TRACTOR_BEAM_ENGAGED: "TRACTOR BEAM IS ENGAGED!"
STR_TRACTOR_BEAM_DISENGAGED: "DISENGAGING TRACTOR BEAM"
Edit 171110: This is an official part of OXCE+, so the links for my repository above are deprecated. This post will remain for documentation.