Whenever a Control Tower is reprogrammed to Team 2 by an Engineer, the player receives 22 Research Points. If a Team 1 Engineer reverts the Tower to Team 1, and the player reclaims it, they get another 22 Research Points. This process can be repeated endlessly, and result in virtually infinite Research Points for the player.
In the original game levels, there's never an instance of a Team 1 Engineer, so there's never a case of a Control Tower being reprogrammed twice. But, a modder cannot use Team 1 Engineers to add a different strategy to a level, without being faced with the possibility that the player will receive many more Research Points than they had intended, thus potentially throwing the mod off balance, and making later levels much easier than intended. This is, in my eyes, an exploit that needs to be closed, so we can be free to use Team 1 Engineers in our mods.
I propose that the entry for Control Towers in map and mission files have another variable attached to them:
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# Type id x z tm rx rz isGlobal
# ==========================================================================
ControlTower 3 556.76 909.10 1 1.00 0.00 1 2 [0/1]
The last variable being set by default to 0 if the Control Tower has never been reprogrammed, and flipping to 1 once it is reprogrammed for the first time. Once this variable is set to 1, it remains there, and the game no longer rewards Research Points for any Tower reprogrammed that has this variable set to 1.
The original maps could be altered by hand in less than 5 minutes to add a simple '0' to the end of their entries to facilitate this (and added to the next game update patch - we know one has to be coming soon, to fix the DG/GunTurret bug) - or, to maintain compatibility with the original game level files without modifying them to include this variable, the .exe could be set to add the '0' to the Control Tower's entry in the map/mission file by default if neither '0' or '1' is present on loading the level.
There are many instances of things that work just fine in the original game levels, but are 'broken' when it comes to making mods - this is just one of them. Many others are listed here. Fixing this, or one/some of the other broken things would be a big step in showing the loyal IV fans that IV does indeed wish the Darwinia Mod community to grow. There's really been only one great mod (Insurrection) and less than a dozen good mods made so far, and the game's been out over a year now. Modding is what's supposed to keep the game alive, but we need a greater variety of options available to us, and broken things fixed, if we're going to make mods that don't look the same as levels in the game (Oh look, another mine level, another Generator level...) or the same as everyone else's mods.
And please - don't think of this as me complaining - just think of it as me wanting the game to be even better than it already is. The only real barrier we have in regards to creating great mods is the tools we need to make them.
Edit: It seems that the player gets 22 Research Points ANYTIME a Control Tower is reprogrammed, even when Team 1 Engineers reprogram it back to Team 1. This really needs to be addressed.
