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[VJ] Combine Field Officer (npc)

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A Resistance briefing on known Combine units and their tactics:

"As most of you very well know the Combine deploy a number specialized combat and support units to aid then in their occupation of Earth. Today we will focus on one in particular {flips slide}, the Combine Field Officer. This is usually a metro officer that has kissed enough Combine rear-end to given a significantly high standing in their ranks. They are still human, but they are fanatics. They don't need brainwashing as the they have bought into the Combine hook-line-and-sinker. In fact, they have been quite the pain in the neck as they try to snoop out many of our spies within their ranks.

The Combine seem to love using these guys as mobile Overwatch alarms, as at the first sign of danger, they will almost always call in a rapid response squad to their location. Due to the threat they pose, command has marked these officers high value targets. If any of our hits on the Combine are going to be successful, these guys must be the first to go. Unless of course you feel like taking on a squad of Elites by yourself.

The Combine might have overwhelming force, but we still have the element of surprise. Understand your targets and most of you might just come back alive."
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If you enjoy the addon, don't forget to leave a thumbs up!

May I introduce the Combine Field Officer. This is a Metropolice Officer with the ability to call in reinforcements to their location. This is done by the officer firing a flare when they are able to which will alert the Combine to send a drop ship to that location. The response time can vary but it will usually be withing 10 seconds.

The drop ship will deliver a squad of 3 to 6 soldiers. These squads include soldiers, elites, and shotgunners. The number and types of enemies are random.

The drop ship can be destroyed with 2 rpg rounds, stopping further deployment of Combine and potentially crushing any Combine that are caught under the wreckage.

The drop ship will try to spawn into the map and follow a trajectory that avoid obstacles, but it is possible for it to choose a path that fades through walls on denser maps.

The Field Officer is unable to call for reinforcements while indoors. The drop ship itself should only land at valid ai path nodes to prevent it from spawning npcs in inaccessible locations, edge case may still exist though. The officer might not be able to call in reinforcements on maps that do not have ai path nodes.

Features of this NPC include:

• Weapons: Smg1 with grenade launcher
  
• Tool: Flare launcher
  
• The ability to call in random reinforcements of 3-6 soldiers, elites, and shot-gunners
  
• Dynamic reinforcement drop ship sequence
  
• Destructible drop ship

Feel free to offer feedback and suggestions. Such things help me with future development of addons. This one was a long time in the making and there is still more I want to do with it, like adding the ability to call in airstrikes. Then again, I might want to save that for other units. The rebels will also get their version of the field officer somewhere down the line here. I wanted to added my other npcs to this on as other that could be spawned by the dropship, but that was becoming difficult due to not knowing what npcs people might have installed at any point in time. I may add that later though.

In the meantime, enjoy!

Credits:
Mika - Elite metro cop model
Zippy - Original weapon and npc code