Hijackers

Vehicle thieves can steal enemy units, effectively hijacking them on the battle field. If you enable hijacking by setting VehicleThief=yes on an InfantryType, you can customize it in various ways:

[InfantryType]►VehicleThief.EnterSound= (Sound name)

Specifies the sound played when a hijacker captures an enemy vehicle. This also works for infantry with CanDrive=yes when reclaiming neutralized units. Defaults to none.

[InfantryType]►VehicleThief.LeaveSound= (Sound name)

Specifies the sound played when a hijacker leaves a vehicle when it is destroyed. Defaults to none.

[InfantryType]►VehicleThief.BreakMindControl= (boolean)

Whether the vehicle thief can hijack units that are mind-controlled. The link between the controller and the unit will be broken when the hijacker enters. Otherwise the hijacker cannot steal the unit. Defaults to yes.

[InfantryType]►VehicleThief.OneTime= (boolean)

Whether the vehicle thief will be consumed in the process of capturing a unit. Otherwise the hijacker will emerge when the captured unit is destroyed. In every case the hijacker will be reimbursed when the unit is grinded. Defaults to no.

[InfantryType]►VehicleThief.KillPilots= (integer)

The number of pilots the vehicle thief kills when entering a unit. These pilots will have no chance to escape the unit when it is destroyed. Use -1 to kill all pilots. In Tiberian Sun the hijacker will prevent any crew from escaping a destroyed vehicle. Defaults to 0.

In Tiberian Sun the vehicle thief was not allowed to hijack units that had NonVehicle=yes set. Ares does not use NonVehicle, because it affects many other features as well, which might be undesirable. Instead, you will have to use the new dedicated flag VehicleThief.Allowed to change whether a unit can be hijacked.

[TechnoType]►VehicleThief.Allowed= (boolean)

Whether this VehicleType or AircraftType can be hijacked by vehicle thieves. Defaults to yes.

Note

Vehicle Thieves cannot drive neutralized vehicles by default, but VehicleThief=yes can be combined with CanDrive=yes without problems.

After hijacking, units owned by a human player will go on Guard mission, while computer controlled units will go on a Hunt mission.

Hijackers remember their health and their previous veterancy level. When the vehicles they stole are destroyed, they respawn with a random health up to half their previous health, and their old rank.

Hijacking works well together with Mind Control now. If a mind-controlled unit is captured, the connection to the controller is broken and there will be no bogus links left behind. Likewise, mind-controlled hijackers will capture vehicles for their original owning houses, not for their capturers’. The mind-control link will be transferred to the captured vehicle, if it isn’t immune to mind control. Otherwise, the mind-controller loses control over both hijacker and its victim. Same is true for the opposite case: When a hijacked and mind-controlled unit is destroyed, the link is transferred to the hijacker, if it isn’t immune to psionics.

Vehicle Thieves cannot hijack friendly units or vehicles neutralized by the Kill Driver warheads. See KillDriver and CanDrive.

See Mouse Cursors on how to customize the cursor to indicate a vehicle can be hijacked by defining TakeVehicle.

New in version 0.2.