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OpenTS Manual

VehicleThief

Lets a soldier be ordered onto another house's vehicle and walk into its cell to take it.

Specification
Applies to
InfantryType
File
rules.ini
Section
[<ObjectType ID>]
Value
boolean
When omitted
no

A VehicleThief=yes soldier can be ordered onto another house’s vehicle, and it takes the vehicle when it reaches the vehicle’s cell. Stealing a vehicle covers the arrival and what changes hands.

For a player-controlled soldier, the enter cursor appears over any vehicle that belongs to a different house, a landed aircraft included. The test compares houses, not alliances, so an allied player’s vehicle qualifies too. The setting gives no enter cursor over these:

  • any vehicle, when the soldier’s weapon heals;
  • a structure, including a deployed vehicle;
  • a type with NonVehicle=yes;
  • an IsTrain=yes type, which gets the select cursor;
  • while the HarvesterImmune truce is on, a type listed in HarvesterUnit, which gets the select cursor.

The setting also changes how the soldier moves and picks targets:

  • It may step into the cell of the vehicle it is heading for, unless that vehicle is an IsTrain=yes type.
  • While it is heading for a vehicle within 15 cells, it keeps that vehicle as its target and does not scan.
  • When unarmed, it looks for vehicles, never buildings or aircraft. Target selection gives the full targeting rules.
  • On the hunt mission, it walks to each target it finds on a capture order instead of attacking it.
  • When unarmed, owned by a computer house and not in a team, it goes on area guard when idle once the house’s IQ reaches GuardArea.
  • When the vehicle it is targeting deploys into an IsMobileWar=yes structure or a ConstructionYard=yes structure, it drops that target.
  • A computer house choosing an ion cannon target rates the soldier by AIIonCannonThiefValue while its strength is at most IonCannonDamage. A type that is also Engineer=yes is rated as an engineer instead.

A vehicle this type has stolen counts against the type’s positive BuildLimit while the thief’s house owns it. With BuildLimit=1, a house that owns a vehicle this type stole cannot build the type again. A stolen aircraft does not count, and neither does a vehicle taken when it drives over its thief. A stolen vehicle that deploys into a structure stops counting, and it does not count again after it undeploys.

When a stolen vehicle is destroyed, a soldier of the thief’s type steps out of the wreck, unless it cannot be placed there. It belongs to whoever owns the vehicle at that moment and has between 5 hit points and half its maximum strength, whatever Crewed says. No soldier steps out of these:

  • a stolen aircraft;
  • a vehicle taken when it drives over its thief;
  • a vehicle type with a death animation, set by DeathFrames above 0;
  • a stolen vehicle that deployed into a structure and later undeployed.
See also — capture