Target selection and threat rating

Features & systems·Combat & weapons·Combat & targeting

Changed in 0.2.0

Missions in brief

Anyone already writing mission sections in a rules file can skip to the five stages.

A mission is what an object is doing at this moment: guarding, moving toward a destination, hunting, harvesting, selling itself. Every object on the map is in exactly one, and the mission page lists them all. A player order, a team script, a trigger action and the engine’s idle handling all work by putting an object into a mission. Nothing below depends on how the object got there.

Each mission has a rules section named after it, such as [Guard], [Area Guard], [Hunt] or [Harmless]. Its settings apply to every object in that mission, whatever the object’s type, so a mission section changes a behavior for all of them at once. A mission with no section keeps the engine’s values.

Four mission settings affect the decisions on this page and on engineers, capture and sabotage.

Setting	What it decides for an object in that mission
NoThreat	At yes, no other object’s scan will accept it as a candidate. The candidate’s mission decides this, not the scanning object’s
Retaliate	At no, damage never makes it turn on its attacker
Scatter	At no, the object does not scatter from a threat. On this page, that stops an object refused retaliation from stepping aside
Rate	The fraction of a minute between one servicing pass of the mission and the next

Written out, one mission section looks like this.

rules.ini

[Harmless]
NoThreat=yes
Retaliate=no
Rate=.5

An object in Harmless is passed over by every scan, does not turn on an attacker, and has its mission serviced about twice a minute. It stays harmless only until an attacker damages it. An object outside a team then returns to its idle mission unless the section also sets Zombie=yes.

The five stages

An object scans for a target only when its current mission calls for a scan. Five stages then produce one target, and each stage narrows what the next one sees. The first stage decides whether there is a scan at all, and only the last one scores anything.

Stage	What it decides
Mission	Whether to scan, the point to scan from, and which kinds of target are wanted
Object kind	Rewrites those kinds from the object’s weapons and role
Scan	Walks rings of cells outward from the scan point, or walks every object on the map
Cell	Offers at most one occupant per cell
Candidate	Rejects what may not be attacked, then scores what is left

The object takes the chosen candidate as its target. Retaliation is a separate path that never scans.

When an object scans

Mission entry points

The table lists every mission that scans. The last two rows are team missions, in which one member scans on the team’s behalf. A mission not in this table never scans. An object in one gets a target only by being given one or by retaliating.

The middle column gives each scan’s shape and reach. A ring scan walks whole rings of cells outward from a point and stops at the radius named; the next section gives the three radii. A whole map scan walks every object instead and has no radius.

Mission	Scan	Notes
Guard	Ring, guard radius	Not run on an engineer. An aircraft seldom reaches this scan. It attacks a target it already holds, returns to idle handling at cruising height, and does not scan while landed unless it is docked. A human-owned aircraft scans only while airborne. A computer-owned aircraft whose house is not under attack first looks for an enemy vehicle outside that vehicle’s base, preferring near ones and ones that cannot fire at aircraft. If it finds one, it attacks it without scanning
Guard area	Ring, area radius, from the home position	Runs only while the object has no target
Patrol	Ring, patrol radius, from the object, then re-scanned from the patrol cell	An aircraft on patrol with ammunition left runs only the first scan
Move	Ring, guard radius	Runs only while the object has no target, only for a computer house, never on an aircraft, and never for a member of a Suicide=yes team
Hunt	Whole map	Outside campaigns, an aircraft first scans for Tiberium processors alone (objects whose type sets a nonzero Storage), then scans again without that restriction
Rescue	Whole map	The result is kept only when it lies within 1.5 times the area radius of the spot where the mission began
Guard, on an armed building	Ring, guard radius	Runs only while the building has no target. Not run on an EM pulse cannon, or on a building that holds a chemical missile
Team attack	Whole map	The team mission’s Quarry sets the kind of target. A TeamType with OnlyTargetHouseEnemy=yes considers only its house’s declared enemy
Team patrol	Ring, guard radius	The team leader scans every PatrolScan minutes

In Guard, an infantry or vehicle that is not an engineer checks its current target before scanning. If the target is out of range of the weapon chosen against it, the object drops it and scans for another. It therefore does not keep chasing something it can no longer shoot.

Three conditions stop a scan before it starts. Any of them is enough, and each applies only to a human-owned object:

• NoAutoFire=yes on the object’s type;
• the object is in Guard, and it can cloak (from its type or a cloaking crate) or holds the CLOAK ability;
• DeployToFire=yes on a vehicle.

Scan radius

Three scan radii are derived from GuardRange, the object type’s guard distance in cells. The mission table above says which one a mission uses.

Radius	Value
Guard	GuardRange, when it is not zero and the object is not an engineer. Otherwise the object’s weapon range, as described below
Area	Twice GuardRange, or twice the longer weapon range when GuardRange is zero. At most 16 cells
Patrol	The same figure as the area radius, but kept between 7 and 16 cells

The scan walks that many whole rings of cells.

When the guard radius falls back to weapon range, the scan changes in two ways:

• It walks as many rings as the longer of the two weapon ranges, in whole cells, plus one. An object with no weapon at all therefore scans only the cell it stands in.
• Each candidate must also pass a range test. An object with a primary weapon accepts a candidate only within range of the weapon it would choose against it. An object with no primary weapon accepts a candidate within GuardRange.

A healer is an object whose weapons average negative damage, such as a medic. In Guard, a healer scans a fixed 2 cells, whatever the radius rules above give.

GuardRange is also a fence connection distance

A LaserFencePost=yes building uses GuardRange as the number of cells it searches in each of the four cardinal directions for the next post, and treats anything below one cell as one. A FirestormWall=yes type uses it as the number of cells a placed section searches for another section to join. Both round it down to whole cells, so changing GuardRange on those types changes how far a fence run reaches.

An unarmed building never scans. HasStupidGuardMode=yes goes further: it ends an unarmed building’s Guard processing outright. A repair bay with this setting no longer hands off a waiting unit, and a weapons factory no longer clears its exit.

An idle object settles into either Guard or Area Guard, and Area Guard is the mission that scans at the area radius. What sends an idle object to Area Guard depends on its kind:

• A computer-owned infantry outside a team takes Area Guard once its house’s IQ reaches the GuardArea level in [IQ], provided it is armed, an engineer or a vehicle thief. Other unarmed infantry take Guard, and so does every infantry below that level.
• A human-owned infantry takes Area Guard only through the GUARD_AREA ability, and only while it is outside a team.
• An armed vehicle outside a team takes Area Guard once its house reaches that IQ level, or whenever it holds the GUARD_AREA ability. The IQ test does not check who owns the vehicle, so a human house whose scenario gives it that IQ sends its idle vehicles to Area Guard as well.
• An armed aircraft takes Area Guard while it is computer-owned and outside a team, whatever its house’s IQ.

What each kind of object considers

Before the scan runs, the kind of object doing the looking rewrites the list of wanted target kinds.

When the mission asks for no particular kind, an infantry or a vehicle fills the list from its weapons, one weapon slot at a time.

Projectile setting	Target kinds added
AV=yes	Vehicles only. AA and AG on the same projectile add nothing
AA=yes	Aircraft
AG=yes	Infantry, vehicles and buildings

An aircraft does not fill the list from its weapons. It takes the ground fill in the next table instead, so the kinds its projectile would add never reach its scans.

Each kind of object then changes the list further. The row that applies is the one for the object doing the looking, not the one being looked at.

Object	Changes
Anything that moves	A list that names no infantry, vehicle or building kind gains all three
Anything that moves, under a scan restriction	An area scan becomes a range scan. The restriction starts when the object stops because its path is completely blocked while its target is out of range. In a team, every member gets it. It lifts as soon as a scan finds nothing
Infantry	See below
Vehicle	A human-owned DeployToFire=yes vehicle finds nothing. Otherwise only the weapon fill applies
Building	Adds what both weapon slots can attack, even when the mission already named a kind. A human-owned building drops buildings from the list. A building always runs a ring scan, never a whole-map scan

Infantry make the most changes. They apply in this order:

• A computer-owned unarmed Infiltrate=yes infantry goes straight for its house’s recapture target when that building is within 15 cells, without scanning. Otherwise its scan is limited to capturable buildings. C4=yes and Engineer=yes both imply Infiltrate=yes.
• A VehicleThief=yes infantry already heading for a vehicle within 15 cells that is not IsTrain=yes keeps that vehicle as its target, without scanning.
• An unarmed infantry that is neither Infiltrate=yes nor VehicleThief=yes finds nothing. An unarmed vehicle thief looks for vehicles, never buildings or aircraft.
• An infantry whose primary weapon has an organic warhead considers only infantry. A warhead counts as organic when its Verses percentage against heavy armor is exactly 0%; no setting marks it directly. This is what confines a dog to infantry. A healer’s list is replaced by the healer rule below, so this rule never decides what a healer treats.
• A human-owned armed infantry drops buildings. A computer-owned C4=yes infantry, or one holding the C4 ability, adds them.
• A Thief=yes infantry considers only capturable buildings that have a nonzero Storage.

The organic rule and the human-owned rule do not undo a team attack’s Quarry. A quarry that names a kind of building, such as power plants or factories, still reaches buildings.

Two more rules apply after these, to infantry and vehicles:

• A healing infantry or vehicle considers only damaged allies of the kinds it mends. An infantry mends infantry and a vehicle mends vehicles; Mechanic=yes switches that to vehicles and OmniHealer=yes to both.
• An engineer, whoever owns it, never considers infantry or vehicles.

Why a candidate is rejected

The engine tests each candidate against these rows in order and rejects it at the first row that matches. A rejected candidate is not scored.

Rejected when	Detail
The candidate is in limbo, or already at zero strength
It is cloaked, its cell is not sensed by this house, and it belongs to another house
It has not yet entered the playable area	Reinforcements still crossing in from off the map are not targeted
Its current mission sets NoThreat=yes
It is more than 20 leptons below ground level	A cell is 256 leptons across
It is in a different movement zone	A ring scan tests the cell and a whole-map scan tests the candidate. Neither test runs for a range scan, or when the scanning object is a building or an aircraft
It is an ally	Unless this object heals or is an engineer and the ally is damaged. A healer also rejects an allied aircraft that is airborne or standing in a building’s cell, and an ally of a kind it does not mend. A berzerk infantry skips this row and attacks whatever is near it. Infantry goes berzerk through the Go Berzerk trigger action or team mission, or from damage when its type is Cyborg=yes under BerzerkAllowed=yes
Harvester immunity is on and its type is listed in HarvesterUnit	Immunity comes from the multiplayer harvester truce or from a scenario’s HarvesterImmune setting
It is beyond the scan radius	Or, when the scan uses weapon range, out of range of the weapon chosen against it
Campaigns only, when the scanning house is the player’s: the candidate is not the player’s, the player has never discovered it, and it is not an aircraft	A computer house’s campaign scan skips this row
It is a building whose type sets InvisibleInGame=yes
Its kind is not among the wanted kinds	A landed aircraft counts as a vehicle. So does a building that can undeploy into a vehicle, unless it is a construction yard
Skirmish and multiplayer only: its house’s country sets MultiplayPassive=yes	Unless the match lets objects attack neutral houses
Its type sets LegalTarget=no
It is an IsTrain=yes type and this object is a vehicle thief
It is a Disguised=yes infantry	Unless this object’s type sets DetectDisguise=yes, or AIDetectDisguise=yes is set and the scanning house is computer-controlled
This object’s primary projectile is AG=no and the candidate is at ground level	This rejects every ground object, not only landed aircraft. It reads the primary slot even when the secondary would be fired
The scan asked for civilians
The scan is limited to capturable buildings and this is not a Capturable=yes building
A human-owned object outside a team is looking at a building that cannot shoot back	That is a building with no weapon in its first slot, or one whose weapon has no range. Engineers are exempt, and so is a building that can undeploy into a vehicle
This object is an engineer and the candidate is not a building, or is an ally above ConditionRed, or is an ally that costs nothing
The scan is limited to Tiberium processors and the candidate’s Storage is zero
Both stand in bridge cells, and only one of the two is up on the bridge
This object has a web warhead and the candidate is an infantry still webbed for more than a quarter of the warhead’s WebDuration	The secondary slot’s warhead is used when it is Webby=yes, otherwise the primary slot’s

The threat score

Each candidate that passes gets a threat score from five coefficients. All five come from the type of the object doing the choosing, never from the candidate’s type. Changing one changes what that type prefers, not how other types treat it.

Setting	Multiplies	Sign
TargetEffectivenessCoefficient	The Verses percentage of the candidate’s chosen warhead against this object’s armor	Positive prefers candidates that can hurt this object
TargetSpecialThreatCoefficient	The candidate type’s SpecialThreatValue	Positive prefers a high SpecialThreatValue
MyEffectivenessCoefficient	The Verses percentage of this object’s chosen warhead against the candidate’s armor	Positive prefers candidates this object can hurt
TargetStrengthCoefficient	The candidate’s current strength as a fraction of its maximum, from 0 to 1	Positive prefers healthy candidates, negative prefers wounded ones
TargetDistanceCoefficient	How far beyond weapon range the candidate lies, and zero inside it	Negative penalizes distance; positive rewards distant candidates

Both effectiveness terms use Verses as a fraction against the relevant armor class: none, wood, light, heavy or concrete.

threat score, in evaluation order

threat = ± TargetEffectivenessCoefficient × Verses of the candidate's warhead vs. my armor
       +   TargetSpecialThreatCoefficient × the candidate's SpecialThreatValue
       +   EnemyHouseThreatBonus                        (candidate belongs to the declared enemy)
       +   MyEffectivenessCoefficient     × Verses of my warhead vs. the candidate's armor
       +   TargetStrengthCoefficient      × the candidate's health fraction
       +   TargetDistanceCoefficient      × max(0, distance − weapon range)
       +   100000

Every score includes a fixed 100000. EnemyHouseThreatBonus is a flat addition for a candidate that belongs to the house this house has declared as its enemy. The finished score is rounded down to a whole number.

Unset coefficients are zero

All five coefficients, their [General] defaults, and EnemyHouseThreatBonus are zero unless a rules file sets them. If none is set, every candidate scores exactly 100000, and the choice depends only on the order in which the scan reaches the candidates. The retail rules.ini sets the five [General] defaults and EnemyHouseThreatBonus, so a mod that replaces that file must set them itself.

A candidate already shooting at this object scores lower

The first term changes sign when the candidate is targeting this object. Of two otherwise identical candidates, the one shooting at something else outscores the one shooting at this object by twice that term. A positive TargetEffectivenessCoefficient therefore draws fire toward dangerous candidates that are shooting at somebody else.

The distance term acts only outside weapon range

max(0, distance − range) is zero for anything the object can already shoot, so TargetDistanceCoefficient does not separate candidates within range. Distance and range are both counted in cells, except in the ground part of a whole-map scan. There, distance is counted in leptons from the scan’s center while range stays in cells. Almost every candidate there takes the penalty, about 256 times as strongly as on a ring scan.

Where the coefficients come from

When a type does not set a coefficient, the matching [General] setting supplies it: MyEffectivenessCoefficientDefault, TargetEffectivenessCoefficientDefault, TargetSpecialThreatCoefficientDefault, TargetStrengthCoefficientDefault and TargetDistanceCoefficientDefault. SpecialThreatValue has no such default.

A per-type zero does not survive a later layer

Each later rules layer that contains the type’s section, such as the map, reads the coefficients again with the same fallback. A coefficient written as 0 is replaced by the [General] default at the first later layer whose copy of the section omits the key. An explicit 0 therefore lasts only until such a layer, unless the matching [General] default is also zero.

rules.ini

[General]
TargetEffectivenessCoefficientDefault=1
TargetDistanceCoefficientDefault=-1

[MYTANK] ; example UnitType
MyEffectivenessCoefficient=2
TargetStrengthCoefficient=-0.5

MYTANK gives double weight to how much it can hurt a candidate, prefers wounded candidates, and takes the two [General] defaults for the coefficients it does not set. These are example values, not recommendations.

IsThreatRatingNode has no effect

The per-type coefficients are in force for every house from the first frame of every game. IsThreatRatingNode=yes was meant to switch them on when a house owned such a structure, so it changes nothing. The house-wide coefficients it would have replaced are listed under settings without effect.

Adjustments after scoring

These adjustments apply after the score is calculated, in this order:

1. If this house has been ordered to hunt with everything and has a declared enemy, any candidate outside that enemy scores exactly 1.
2. A scan for power plants adds Power × 1000 for a building with a positive Power, and sets any other building’s score to zero.
3. A scan for factories sets the score of a building that produces nothing to zero.
4. A scan for base defenses sets the score of any candidate with no primary weapon to zero.
5. If this object’s primary weapon sets Supress=yes, the score is halved once for each cell near the candidate that holds a building of this house or an ally. The cells checked are the square rings around the candidate’s cell, out to one cell less than the FireSupress distance in [CombatDamage]. A building that covers several of those cells halves the score several times. At FireSupress=1 there is no ring to check, so the halving never happens until FireSupress is raised.
6. A score of exactly zero rejects the candidate. Any other score below 1 is raised to 1.

Which weapon the score assumes

The effectiveness terms and every range test in the rejection table use the weapon each side would choose against the other. Unless a web weapon is involved, the choice compares the two weapon slots:

• Each slot scores its warhead’s Verses percentage against the target’s armor, multiplied by 1000.
• The score doubles when the target is within that slot’s range.
• The score is zero when the slot cannot fire at the target at that moment: the target is illegal for it, it is reloading, or something else stops it firing, such as an unpowered building.
• The higher score wins, and a tie goes to the primary slot.

A web weapon replaces those scores. When either slot has a Webby=yes warhead and can fire at the target at that moment, the web slot is chosen against infantry that can be webbed and against most map cells. Infantry can be webbed unless it is IsWebImmune=yes or immobilized. The other slot is chosen against everything else.

A target that is not an object, such as a cell, counts as armor class none.

The primary slot does not always hold Primary. An elite object uses its Elite weapon in that slot, and a building’s plugged-in upgrades can replace the weapon in either case; the elite weapon covers both. On this page, “primary weapon” means whatever weapon that slot holds.

A web primary with no secondary reads an empty weapon slot

When the primary’s warhead is Webby=yes and the secondary slot is empty, the web rule above picks the empty secondary slot for any target the web weapon can fire at but cannot web. That covers every vehicle and building, a landed aircraft, and every IsWebImmune=yes or immobilized infantry. Scoring copes with the empty slot and uses GuardRange as the range. The retaliation check does not: when such an object is damaged by something its web weapon can fire at but cannot web, the check reads the warhead of the empty slot, which is an invalid memory access. Give any object with a web primary a secondary weapon.

Picking the winner

A ring scan does not rank ground candidates

A ring scan does not keep the highest score among ground candidates. Each ground candidate that passes replaces the one before it, so the scan returns the last one it reached, not the best one. Every Guard, Area Guard, Patrol, Move and building scan is a ring scan. On a ring scan, the coefficients matter in three places:

• they rank the aircraft and airborne infantry found by the flying-object passes below;
• a ground candidate must outscore the best of those to replace it;
• a score brought to exactly zero rejects the candidate.

When aircraft are wanted, a ring scan first makes two passes over flying objects, and these passes do keep the highest score. The first pass takes aircraft and JumpJet=yes infantry; the second takes any other infantry that is off the ground. Neither looks at vehicles, so a vehicle with a jumpjet locomotor is found by neither. A ground candidate then replaces the flying one only if it scores higher than the best flying score.

A ring scan can stop early. Once it has found an object, it stops at the end of the ring a quarter of the way out, or at the end of the ring halfway out. An object found beyond the halfway ring does not stop the scan, and later candidates keep replacing it.

Until a ring scan finds an object, it also looks for a wall to attack in each cell. Only computer-owned objects attack walls this way. A cell counts as a wall target only when none of these is true:

1. the difficulty sets DestroyWalls=no;
2. the cell has no overlay, or its overlay type is not Wall=yes;
3. the wall is out of range of the weapon chosen against it;
4. this object has no primary weapon, or its primary weapon names no warhead;
5. the primary weapon’s projectile sets AG=no;
6. the primary weapon’s warhead is not Wall=yes;
7. the wall has no owner, or belongs to this house or an ally.

Only the third test uses the weapon chosen against the wall. The three after it read the primary slot, even when the secondary would fire, so a secondary weapon built to break walls never makes a wall a target. A nearer wall scores higher. The scan returns the best wall at the end of the ring where it found one, even if an object turns up later in that ring.

The whole-map scan is the only scan that ranks ground candidates. It checks aircraft and then every ground object, and keeps the highest score. When two candidates tie, the one reached first wins.

Retaliation

Damage is answered without a scan. The engine tests the rows below in order, and the first row the object matches decides whether it retaliates.

Condition	Retaliates
Human-owned and already has a target	No
The warhead is Veinhole=yes	Yes, unless the object is human-owned and has a movement destination
No attacker is known	No
The current mission sets Retaliate=no	No
The attacker is an ally	No
The object’s weapons average zero damage or less, or it has no primary weapon	No
The chosen weapon’s Verses against the attacker’s armor is 0%	No
The attacker is an aircraft and the chosen weapon’s projectile is AA=no	No
Human-owned C4=yes infantry, or any human-owned object holding the C4 ability, damaged by a building	No
Human-owned vehicle whose DeploysInto type is Artillary=yes	No
Human-owned object other than a building, with PlayerReturnFire=no in [CombatDamage], outside Guard, Area Guard and Patrol	No
Member of a Suicide=yes team	No
Computer-owned, and its current target scores higher than the attacker	No
Otherwise	Yes

The computer-owned comparison uses the unrounded threat score, so a fraction can decide it.

An object that retaliates switches to attacking the attacker, whatever its mission. It does so at once when the attacker is in range. Out of range, a computer-owned object still retaliates, but a human-owned one does so only when the attacker is within Sight plus half a cell.

A damaged building

A damaged building can also take its attacker as a target directly, without the table above. All of these must hold:

• the building is not being deconstructed;
• the attacker is not an ally;
• the building has a primary weapon whose projectile is not AA=yes;
• the building has no target, or its target is out of range.

The building then targets the attacker, unless the attacker is an aircraft, or the building is human-owned and PlayerReturnFire=no is set. In those two cases it turns to a random facing instead.

Scattering after damage

Only objects that can move scatter.

An object allowed to retaliate still scatters if it ends up with neither a target nor a destination. Any of these is enough:

• PlayerScatter=yes in [CombatDamage];
• the object holds the SCATTER ability.

Retaliating sets a target at once, so this happens only when an allowed retaliation produced no attack. There are two such cases: a Veinhole=yes warhead with no veinhole monster to turn on, and a human-owned object whose attacker is beyond both weapon range and Sight plus half a cell.

An object refused retaliation scatters when all of these hold:

• its current mission sets Scatter=yes;
• it is not tethered;
• it is not moving;
• it has neither a target nor a destination;
• it is not an aircraft;
• any of: the object is computer-owned; PlayerScatter=yes is set; it holds the SCATTER ability.

Threat ratings that are not target selection

Two settings named for threat play no part in choosing a target.

ThreatPosed measures how dangerous an object is, not how attractive it is as a target. It sets the object’s value when a team weighs its members, and feeds the per-region threat map each house keeps. It also sizes a computer house’s base defense response, which multiplies the attacker’s value by ComputerBaseDefenseResponse in [AI].

ThreatAvoidanceCoefficient is used only for pathfinding, where it scales how much of the threat map a route may cross. A team’s AvoidThreats=yes raises it to 1 for its members.

Campaign and skirmish differences

• The undiscovered-target rejection applies only in campaigns.
• The MultiplayPassive rejection applies only outside campaigns. A launch file can lift it, and a neutral house is then scanned like any other. A player’s units outside a team still ignore buildings that cannot shoot back, so they attack the armed part of a neutral base and leave the rest.
• An aircraft on Hunt first scans for Tiberium processors only outside campaigns.
• Harvester immunity comes from the multiplayer lobby’s harvester truce outside campaigns, and from a scenario’s HarvesterImmune setting in campaigns.
• Outside campaigns, MPLAYER.INI can rewrite a warhead’s Verses, which changes every effectiveness term that uses that warhead.

Settings without effect

Five house-wide coefficients are read and stored but never used, because every house uses the per-type coefficients instead: DumbMyEffectivenessCoefficient, DumbTargetEffectivenessCoefficient, DumbTargetSpecialThreatCoefficient, DumbTargetStrengthCoefficient and DumbTargetDistanceCoefficient.

Two target kinds have no effect either. Nothing ever scans for civilians, and a scan that did would reject every candidate. AG=yes also adds a boats kind, but no object counts as a boat, so it neither widens nor narrows a scan.

Related settings

Filter keys

37 of 37

Key	Description	Value	When omitted
AABulletType	Allows the projectile to be fired at targets that are in the air.	boolean	no
AGBulletType	Allows the projectile to be fired at targets that are on the ground.	boolean	yes
AVBulletType	Narrows the target categories the weapon contributes to a scan down to vehicles alone.	boolean	no
ComputerBaseDefenseResponseglobal rules	Multiplies an attacker's ThreatPosed to size the defenders a computer house calls up.	integer	3
EliteAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The WeaponType an elite object fires in place of its primary.	class	none
EnemyHouseThreatBonusglobal rules	Added to a candidate's threat score when the candidate belongs to the house's declared enemy.	floating point	0
FireSupressglobal rules	How far around a candidate target allied buildings are searched for when the firing weapon suppresses friendly fire.	distance (cells)	1
GuardAreaglobal rules	The IQ level at which a computer house leaves idle objects in Area Guard instead of Guard.	integer	4
GuardRangeAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The distance in cells an object scans for targets while guarding, overriding its weapon range.	distance (cells)	0
HasStupidGuardModeBuildingType	Makes an unarmed building do nothing while on its Guard mission, skipping its idle handling.	boolean	yes
IsThreatRatingNodeNo effectBuildingType	Marks a building upgrade meant to put its house on the per-type threat coefficients, which every house already uses.	boolean	no
IsWebImmuneInfantryType	Keeps a webbing warhead from pinning the soldier in place.	boolean	no
LegalTargetNo effect in some scopes12 applicable types	Whether the type may be picked as a target by an automatic scan or by a player pointing at it.	boolean	Varies by type
MechanicAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Turns a healing weapon away from infantry and onto vehicles.	boolean	no
MyEffectivenessCoefficientAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Weights a candidate target by how much damage this object's warhead does to that candidate's armor.	floating point	Computed
MyEffectivenessCoefficientDefaultglobal rules	The MyEffectivenessCoefficient every object type falls back on.	floating point	0
NoAutoFireAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Stops a human-owned object of this type from picking targets on its own.	boolean	no
NoThreatmission behavior	Keeps an object that is in this mission from being picked as a target by an automatic scan.	boolean	no
OmniHealerAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Lets a healing weapon mend infantry and vehicles alike.	boolean	no
PlayerReturnFireglobal rules	Lets human-owned objects fire back automatically outside the guard missions.	boolean	no
PrimaryAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The WeaponType in the object type's first weapon slot.	class	none
Retaliatemission behavior	Whether an object in this mission fires back at whatever damages it.	boolean	yes
SecondaryAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	The WeaponType in the object type's second weapon slot.	class	none
SpecialThreatValueAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	A per-type figure that TargetSpecialThreatCoefficient scales into a candidate's threat score.	floating point	0
SupressWeaponType	Discounts a candidate target that stands near buildings allied to the firing object.	boolean	no
TargetDistanceCoefficientAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Weights a candidate target by how far beyond weapon range it lies, and not at all inside it.	floating point	Computed
TargetDistanceCoefficientDefaultglobal rules	The TargetDistanceCoefficient that vehicle, infantry, aircraft and structure types fall back on.	floating point	0
TargetEffectivenessCoefficientAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Weights a candidate target by how much damage that candidate's warhead does to this object's armor.	floating point	Computed
TargetEffectivenessCoefficientDefaultglobal rules	The TargetEffectivenessCoefficient that vehicle, infantry, aircraft and structure types fall back on.	floating point	0
TargetSpecialThreatCoefficientAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Weights a candidate target by the SpecialThreatValue of that candidate's type.	floating point	Computed
TargetSpecialThreatCoefficientDefaultglobal rules	The TargetSpecialThreatCoefficient that vehicle, infantry, aircraft and structure types fall back on.	floating point	0
TargetStrengthCoefficientAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	Weights a candidate target by how much of its maximum strength it still has.	floating point	Computed
TargetStrengthCoefficientDefaultglobal rules	The TargetStrengthCoefficient that vehicle, infantry, aircraft and structure types fall back on.	floating point	0
ThreatPosedAircraftType, BuildingType, InfantryType, UnitType	How much danger the type represents, used by the region threat map and base-defense call-ups.	integer	0
VersesWarheadType	The percentage of a weapon's damage the warhead delivers against each armor class, in armor order.	string	100%,100%,100%,100%,100%
WebDurationWarheadType	The number of frames a webbed infantryman stays pinned.	integer	300
WebbyWarheadType	The warhead entangles the infantry it catches instead of damaging them.	boolean	no

Related resources

• MissionEnum
• Quarry target categoryEnum
• Veterancy and promotionFeature or system
• Action linesFeature or system
• Base defense responseFeature or system
• Engineers, capture and sabotageFeature or system
• Difficulty settings and handicapsFeature or system
• Firing geometry and beam weaponsFeature or system
• Projectile flight and impactFeature or system
• Walls, gates and wall towersFeature or system
• Warheads and damageFeature or system
• Preferred target...Trigger action
• Make ally...Trigger action
• All to Hunt...Trigger action
• Go BerzerkTrigger action

History

1. Changed0.1.02026-08-27

   Make seeing through a disguise a stated ability

2. Changed0.1.02026-08-27

   Reacquire stale Guard targets

3. Changed0.2.0In development

   Auto-target neutrals on AttackNeutralUnits

Page feedback

Report an error or missing detail. The issue includes this page and revision.

Open issueSource revision 51b52aa38392