Some help modding the ground side of things.

[ShineDog]

gosh.

 

this is one of the more convuluted RTS games ive tried to mod...

 

 

 

okay, basically, what im trying to do, is mod the ground battles to take place over a somewhat (not MASSIVELY, the maps simply wont support realistic ranges as is) larger range, simply because with the miopic warriors we have now, things look... well.... kinda bum. and not very epic.

 

my inspiration here is ground control, and anyone who has played that game will know, having soldiers taking potshots at each other from a good distance looks frigging cool.

 

 

 

and so it came to modding the files.

 

 

 

and theres about a million files referring to each unit.

 

 

and they all overlap.

 

 

and its confusing.

 

 

and im sitting here wanting to cry.

 

 

as you can imagine, when im looking to modify the ranges that ground units engange at, im going to have to modify a variety of elements to get things looking spiffy and avoid screwing up the balance entirely.

 

things like, range, accuracy, the weapons travel speed, the dispersion effect of shots that roll a miss (it appears to be dice checks), and the weapons damage, various things like that.

 

(with regards to the infantry combat, id like to see troops miss more but be more lethal when they hit, keeping the kill rate roughly the same as it is right now, and thus the relative balance similar, but increasing the visual realism of combat)

 

taking damage as an example, ill be buggered if i can figure this out.

 

taking a unit of stormtroopers as an example, there are, at least, 3 files that refer to them

 

groundinfantry, groundcompaniesimperial, and from these you are led to projectiles for the weapon properties,

 

each one of these, has an entry referring to the units damage, various information referring to the range of the projectiles, and, well, its kinda tricky to see how everything multiplies together, or knowing what overwrites what or.... well. whatever.

 

 

 

basically, i NEED HELP.

Edited February 26, 2006 by Cain

[ShineDog]

well. got most of it figured out - the majority of duplicates appear to only activate if the details listed in another version arent present (particularly in the case of projectiles vs groundinfantry - groundinfantry contains a single reference to damage, for the rebel soldier, which differentiates his gun from the stormtrooper version which calls the same entry in the projectiles file)

 

 

 

my only remaining problem is i cant, for the life of me, find the entry to change the units firing range.

 

 

ive got line of sight up, max engagement ranges are up, projectile max flight distance is up....

 

 

any ideas?

[DragonShadow]

Okay, I haven't tested it yet (and can't for another hour or so), but I think I found weapon range in PROJECTILES.xml. Try changing the Projectile_Max_Flight_Distance to double or triple (so you can really see the difference) for one type of projectile, build only units with that projectile weapon type, and see if it works. If it does, just change that distance to whatever you want.

 

Hmmm...just had a funny idea. What if we managed to increase the firing range so that units could choot at each other from opposite edges of the map? That would be interesting to watch...I'll call it the insanity mod...and I'm going to work on it right away...

[ShineDog]

doesnt work - tried it

 

i found the range setting for SOME vehicles, under hardpoints.

 

 

but thats only for the turreted units.

 

entry is something along the lines of "max_fire_range" but im not at my home machine right now so im not sure.

 

 

 

also - there are still multiples of the damage characteristics that im unsure of.

 

 

namely, in the infantry, most units have a "damage" setting, in almost all cases this is set to 1. for the speeder bike its 6 (why is the speeder considered infantry?) for the ATAT its 100.

 

untill i saw the speeder and ATAT i assumed it was a simple multiplier. now i dont think so.

 

 

im wondering how the damage, and projectile damage stats work together, other than tweaking with trial and error...

 

 

 

 

getting there, but i still feel like a nub.

[Stellar_Magic]

I don't remember what the actual tag is but its something like Max Attack Targeting or something.  Also any changes will be ignored if the Targeting attribute isn't in the Behavior tag.

[ShineDog]

the targeting entry is there, and unless im all muddled again, its all set up correctly.

 

 

 

and yet, no results.

 

 

and yes, the mod is working, because view distances are waaaay up. just not shooting

[ShineDog]

and im an idiot. it works on scout troopers, it doesnt work on stormies and rebel soldiers.

 

 

no idea why.

[swgbex]

im trying to do the same thing as u .. exept maybe recreate the ammount of lasers that ep 2 geonosis battle had.. and that range..

got everything but the range done :/

i need help on this too

[ShineDog]

shameless bump.

 

thought it might have been sensor range, wasnt.

 

im still confused as to why some units apply the changes and others dont.