Manta hook orders?

[DarkSilver 1]

Has any one found a way to order a manta to pick up and transport a walrus without having to hop in and do it manually?

[haxs 1]

I cant even work out how you do it by hand?

[DarkSilver 1]

doing it by hands not to rough, gota produce then equip a hook for your manta, once you've got that stick a walrus on land some where, then fly your hook equiped manta to just over the top of it and you should get a little hook symbol. once you've got that hit "F" it'll latch on and you can then move your walrus where ever you need it. F again will drop it, the walrus weight also changes your flight dynamics abit and i wouldent hit the afterburners cause the only place you'll end up is in the ground.

[R33GoNe 1]

doing it by hands not to rough, gota produce then equip a hook for your manta, once you've got that stick a walrus on land some where, then fly your hook equiped manta to just over the top of it and you should get a little hook symbol. once you've got that hit "F" it'll latch on and you can then move your walrus where ever you need it. F again will drop it, the walrus weight also changes your flight dynamics abit and i wouldent hit the afterburners cause the only place you'll end up is in the ground.

You can do it while its in the water too and i found out about the afterburners the hard way :-(

[DarkSilver 1]

i hadent tryed the water yet, still a little anoyed that i cant direct pick ups and drop offs

[Corporal Ice 0]

land, sea & air! walrus rules...

[TheCrusader 10]

I second the notion that support type functions (hooks for mantas and repair guns for walrus) need their own kind of map command to use efficiently.

[harbinger 1]

Got to agree with this! Manta lift / drop target and location sorely needed. Also assigning primary target for Repair Walruses is a must. I've had a combo of Plasma / Flak / Gatling and Repair Walrus wipe out nearly an entire enemy Defence Island at full strength. I box select a new target and they trundle off to wreak havoc. Of course, the Repair Walrus now has no valid target and stays still. Oops. Walrus wipe.

[parias 0]

Being a die-hard Hostile Waters fan (where you spend the first quarter of the game having to use choppers to ferry your ground units around), being unable to automate these actions definitely feels awkward for me. Hopefully this is on the roadmap to add in the future.

[Renegrade 1]

I'd definitely like to see automated hook orders too.

Another thing I'd like to see as well is the hook costing a lot less. 1300? isn't that excessive for.. a hook? Especially a hook that slows the aircraft down to ~60 speed? I don't think it would be game-breaking to drop a zero off of that price. It's not like hook-equipped mantas will suddenly take over the whole world in some crazy zerg-like rampage, eh?

(I'm assuming it just carries walruses, of course. If it makes the manta invulnerable or something, let me know..)

[Appogee 1]

I spent 5 minutes today trying to get a Manta to drop off a hooked Walrus. While I was stuffing aorund with it, the enemy carrier attacked my island :-(

[DarkSilver 1]

It does make it much easier to cap island even with the speed loss, although you can recoup some power on the manta by droping the armor off the one your useing to carry with. i'd be for makeing it a little cheaper but not by that much personnly. might make it to easy when caping things, i use them alot on islands useing jammers since i can generaly just sit the carrer right off the coast from the command center snipe the jammer at it and then fly in a walrus with out haveing to deal with the rest of the island.

[bfcrusader 10]

There HAS to be an automatic function as well for this, BI. Please include it

[JM0N 1]

Here is an issue I posted on the Feedback tracker relating to the Manta Hook.

PROBLEM: Enemy units NOT attacking walrus after it has been dropped into enemy island.

The reproducibility of this issue should now be set to ALWAYS (vs. "sometimes").

I've had this issue 3 separate times, on 3 separate islands (so where it happens

is not an issue).

Steps to reproduce: Just drop a walrus (with a hack pod & may also work without

hack pod but i have not tried) from a Manta onto an enemy occupied island. The

enemy will not engage it and you can just drive around and hack everything

unimpeded. You can even shoot stuff and they will not shoot back - ever.

This is MAJOR glitch that I feel should be addressed A.S.A.P.

[harbinger 1]

JM0N is right, it does happen. Walrus dropped by Manta Hook isn't targeted by enemy units. The dropping Manta is, of course.

Also - once a Manta has dropped a Walrus - it cannot, as far as I am aware, and to the best of my testing, pick up another unit. Not even the originally dropped off one. Docking them, swapping Hooks between Mantas, makes no difference as far as I can tell. Hook seems to be a one-way ticket.

I am curious as to wether this ties in to the Abandoned Walrus thing. Presumably the AI keeps track of vehicles, but as soon as one is "taken over" by another part of the AI - I think something gets lost, and so the units concerned drop off. What I mean is that Walruses controlled by enemy carrier, and then abandoned, no longer have a "parent" for the AI to assign them to, and so they are essentially non-existant. Same thing with the AI picking up your Walruses while carried on a Manta hook. It see's the Manta, but when the hook is released, it no longer sees the "parent" and so the Walrus is not picked up by the enemy AI.

Sorry for the messy post. I hope you know what I mean. It's been a long night!

[moondrift47 1]

I have never found picking up walrus a problem. I have even picked up one then gone back for each of the others and never had a single problem.

I too found out hard way with afterburners, points you straight at the ground at full speed :)

[Renegrade 1]

Enemy units NOT attacking walrus after it has been dropped into enemy island.

Oh hey it DOES make something (effectively) invulnerable! I was joking about that above...heh.

I'll have to try that out before it gets fixed...