Hover Tank Collection
=====================
by Wormbo
Homepage: http://www.koehler-homepage.de/Wormbo/
Forum:    http://www.unrealadmin.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=167
Nekomata model by Crusha K. Rool
Nekomata skin by Ulrich 'Hellfire' Thmmler

Description
-----------
This vehicle pack is mainly aimed at mappers and includes six hover tank
variations. To try out the vehicles and because players might want to use the
hover tanks on existing maps, a mutator is included that replaces ground-based
standard vehicles with hover tanks.
The following hover tanks are included in this collection:

Firebug
A small and agile one-seater equipped with a dual flamethrower turret. It is a
bit faster than the other hover tanks and can perform a flame jump. Its weapon
not only quickly disposes of enemy infantry, but can also be used to defend
against incoming AVRiL rockets - bots are quite good at this.
The mutator replaces the Scorpion with the Firebug.

Nekomata
Fires standard tank shells from a barrel that can only be aimed up and down.
Horizontal aiming requires turning the entire vehicle. Turning is a good idea
though, as the front/top parts of the chassis have much better armor, reducing
the amount of damage taken from hits there. The gunner seat controls a large
caliber machine gun firing explosive rounds.
The mutator replaces the Hellbender with the Nekomata.

Hover Goliath
A technical anecdote: The UT2004 Goliath is internally called ONSHoverTank, due
to the way it works. It is actually implemented as a hovercraft that simulates
tracked tank physics. The Hover Goliath demonstrates how the UT2004 Goliath
might have worked, if it didn't try to immitate real-world tanks.
The mutator replaces the Goliath with the Hover Goliath.

Odin
The super vehicle of the collection. The Odin's primary weapon is an ion cannon
that charges right before firing. Unlike the Ion Plasma Tank and the effect of
the Ion Painter, the Odin's ion cannon turret fires a thick beam without any
additional splash damage - the beam itself damages anything in its path. Like
the Nekomata, the Odin's main weapon is unable to aim left or right, requiring
the vehicle itself to turn.
The Odin has two gunner seats controlling twin-beam link turrets to the left
and right of the main cannon. Their primary mode is dual firing bouncing plasma
projectiles, while secondary mode fires auto-locking link beams. These beams
will heal friendly nodes and vehicles, but drain energy from enemy nodes and
vehicles to power the Odin's self-healing system.
Even though is it much less powerful, the Odin spawns instead of the Leviathan
when the mutator is active.

Poltergeist
Another one-seater, and it also has a fixed-forward turret. The Poltergeist's
primary fire mode works like the UT3 Darkwalker's. It's a heat ray that stays
active for a fixed duration, then needs to recharge. Secondary mode is a shock
wave with a short range that covers a large area in front of the Poltergeist.
If timed correctly, it can take out incoming AVRiLs.
The mutator replaces the Paladin with the Poltergeist.

Nephthys
You could consider the Nephthys a "semi-super vehicle", as its weapon is quite
powerful, if used correctly. Primary fire is similar to the Paladin, but the
projectiles apply a small gravitational pull to nearby objects and release
electric discharges. Secondary mode charges up a gravity vortex - if you ever
played the Chaos UT mods for UT or UT2003, this will sound familiar. The longer
the vortex is charged, the stronger it gets. Fully charged, it can make a large
area inaccessible for about ten seconds, which can be quite a long time if that
is a spawn area around a power node or core.
The gunner seat of the Nephthys controls a lightning gun that works just like
the hand-held version, just with a slightly higher rate of fire and damage.
The mutator replaces the SPMA artillery with the Nephthys.


Installation
------------
Simply extract WVHoverTanksV2.u and .ucl to the UT2004\System directory
and the mutator is ready to use. There is no configuration, just add it to the
mutators list to activate it.
If you want to use the mutator or include the vehicles through some other mod,
it is recommended to add the following line to the [Engine.GameEngine] section
of UT2004.ini to allow proper demo recording:

ServerPackages=WVHoverTankV2

A map using the hover tanks directly will not require the ServerPackages entry.
To enable the mutator from the command line or via map vote, add the URL
parameter ?mutator=WVHoverTankV2.MutHoverTanks to the map options. If you also
use other mutators, separate them with commas in the list after "?mutator=".


Notes for mappers
-----------------
To use any of the hover tanks in an Onslaught map, you only need to load the
package via the actor browser and you should find vehicle factories under
Actor >> SVehicleFactory >> ONSVehicleFactory >> HovertankFactory. For use in
VCTF maps you will have to use either an ASVehicleFactory or Crusha K. Rool's
UltimateVCTFFactory.
(see http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/User:Crusha/UltimateMappingTools)

Many mappers prefer "myLeveling" custom content to reduce the number of files
when distributing their map. However, considering the size of the hover tank
collection, it might be a good idea to keep the package as separate file. That
way players only need to download WVHoverTankV2.u with the first map that uses
the hover tanks. When they download the second map with hover tanks, they no
longer need to download the additional file, because it's already in the cache.
