Backstory
With the birth of the AAN Mobile Infantry Unit, the training facility has been redesigned into a much more functional building. It is also considerably larger than its predecesor, but contains many sub-buildings within its shell. The building functions not only as the barracks and mess halls, but also has a fully-functional internal simulator and firing ranges, a fully-equipped hospital wing, an underground infantry armoury, an observation and mounted gun tower with gravity-lifts and a air-locked loading platform for infantry to pilot large and small vehicles.
The re-designed facility is a base all of its own. Training Facilities can be constructed away from the main base and function as fully-equipped outposts if neccesary, although their use for vehicle support is very limited. The barracks also gives infantry the ability to fire their weapons out of the building at attacking craft, so coming up on an enemy training facility, you will likely find machine-gun fire raining down on you from various positions about the building.
Certain versions of the facility come with a mounted grenade-cannon in the observation tower, which can also be used to great effect by snipers. Training facilities can withstand a prolonged attack, but against a heavy vehicular assault they are virtually defenceless.
Technicalities/Gameplay Features
So first of all, as the name suggests it functions as the training grounds. You can get inside the fully-detailed building and watch through the windows to see the simulators and weapon ranges in animated action. The windows at the bottom of the dome also look out over this area, so looking down into the building you can see the simulators from above too. The top level of the dome with the window will most likely be inaccessible, unless I can be bothered to detail the entire control center in there, and get it to the right scale. Knowing me I probably will.
You can also go right into the hospital wing, the building on the far left that looks suspiciously like the tech center towers. Getting inside the hospital area will also heal you nice and quickly. Maybe not so benefial for strat and MP, but for campaign and infantry modes its very handy. Again, the interior is fully detailed and animated (or will be).
The observation tower already has most of its interior shelled out but not detailed yet. You can get to the top level by using a shield lift, similar to the design BBB did for his buildings in FS2 (genius idea btw). In MP and selected missions the glass will be broken, and you'll be able to shoot out of it, very handy for snipers.
Its not detailed into the mesh yet, but behind the antenna and beneath the platform will be the door entrance to the underground armoury. The armoury contains a few respawning infantry weapons, and also unlocks the more advanced weapons from the full-scale armoury. Going in here also gives you access to the terminal, which you can use to set-up the loadouts on infantry created at the training facility (or 'trained'). You can return here as a soldier to collect new weapons and equipment, or re-supply your existing loadout too. In MP, you can come here to change your infantry 'class', allowing you to carry alternative weapons. (operated by the mission dll's)
You can also see that it has an animated aircraft loading bay. This is mainly for campaign purposes, and allows infantry to board larger vehicles like dropships and prison barges etc (spoiler). It can however also decrease in altitude to the first level, so that infantry can protectively board the Engager APC when it returns to collect more soldiers.
The antenna system can be upgraded separately to improve the facilties detection range too, which is useful when making it function as an outpost. The antenna can also control the Probes, extending their maximum range at the same time. Overall its a real work-horse of a building, it does a lot. Without it the Engager is relatively useless as well, as it cannot re-supply with infantry. All infantry is also created here for MP and the likes (apart from shuttle-drops).
Although its not very detailed yet, this is the main 'shell' I suppose and the overall layout. Still going to take a lot of work. I want a similar level of detail on the buildings to UT3's buildings. The idea is that the buildings 'shell' will have its own LODS, and the interior detail will be tapped and also have its own LOD's, effectively dissappearing when you are too far away to see it.
