The April Fool’s Day event, “Nuclear Escalation,” showcases more advanced mechanics than previous WT missions, including logistics concepts and a continuously operating automated bot system.
Looking at the mission BLK file for this mission in Datamine reveals a surprisingly simple structure. Complex trigger configurations are absent.
So how is this complex system implemented? The key lies in the “additionalEcsTemplates” block found within each unit.
By adding the names of elements called EcsTemplates, provided by WT, to this block, advanced behavior can be easily assigned to units.
For example, adding template:t = "unit_death_substract_team_tickets_30" will cause the mission’s tickets to decrease by 30 simply upon the unit’s death, without using any triggers.
Additionally, specifying unit_fire_and_change_pos causes the unit to move along the road until it finds a target, stop and attack, move to another location when it runs out of ammunition, reload over 60 seconds, and then return to attack.
The supply and manufacturing systems for the depots in “Nuclear Escalation” are also driven by the ECS. This information is contained in a file called “nuclear_escalation.das,” which can be found using datamines. This file details how much resources each depot needs to accumulate to produce vehicles, the behavior of vehicle bots, and the conditions for capturing enemy depots when vehicles reach them. Information about the vehicles produced by the depots is not included in the mission file at all; it appears to be entirely managed by the ECS.
Finally, this mission file has the prefix “TDM.” This likely refers to “Tactical Domination.”