Some odf questions

[Archonon]

Hi guys, I have a couple of quick questions about odfs that maybe someone can help with. I've been looking through Westworld's big book of modding and I'm trying to double check what I think I understand.

1) What do hero labels do in the game? I have added the isHero = 1 tag to my hero units but what does the label = "USS Enterprise-E" tag exactly do in game? Do I need to add this to my heroes? My heroes are not starting units and need to be "built" so I'm trying to know if I need to make changes.

2) I have ship that sort of works like the 8472 evolver. The ship basically works like a construction ship and it can only build one of 2 choices and it is meant to be used only once, in the beginning. Since the ship is basically useless after it builds the unit, I added the evolver and recycles in place labels, and the others from 8472 ships, so that instead of "building" the new unit, it becomes the new unit. That way I (And the AI) don't have a useless ship just stationary in the bottom of the screen the whole game. Any issues with this that you guys can think off?

3) I want to do an "upgrade" to a ship through a special weapon. Basically what I have is the same odf and sod twice. The less advanced version uses the special weapon and "becomes" the more advanced version, the newer one replacing the old one. I know this can be done, I have to look into the special weapons files.

Anyway, that's it, any suggestions or comments of something I may be doing wrong are appreciated. Bsck to the big book now. Lol.

 

[CABAL]

The BBoM is great, but it's a bit outdated; some of the commands don't do what the BBoM says they do. I personally use the modding section of the Guide. It's not very helpful for A1, and sometimes the stuff that worked in FO when added to the Guide was broken or tweaked later, but it's pretty helpful and if you find something that's wrong Dominus will make corrections if you send him a PM here or at the FO site.

1) isHero = 1 does a few things. It increases the length of the explosion animation when the unit is destroyed and it makes the AI avoid using certain weapons on the ship. The label command overrides readout for the map editor, so in the menu it would say "USS Enterprise-E" instead of "Sovereign Class". It also specifies the name used for scripts, apparently. That last bit's not really important unless you become the second or third person to learn to use MMM and start making missions.

2) Just remember that the AI follows a strict build order. If this starting station has to be built and is later destroyed and the AI has no way of replacing it, you will basically halt all AI operations. There are ways around this, though. For instance, you may be limited by the tech tree, but the AI is not. This means that you can have an AI only version of the station that is identical to the one available to the player (I recommend an ODF that only has an #include parameter) but is not present on the tech tree. Then, add to the faction's shipyard a similarly unique evolver-type constructor that evolves to that station and leave it off the tech tree, too. You can then have the AI replace their station and continue to function, even if that does mean they kind of cheat. If you're working in FO, there are also better tricks you can do involving invisible indesctructible pods, but that would take another post to explain.

3) That's done with the replaceWeapon. You would need either the 1.2.5 patch for A2 (which we don't seem to have here) or FO. I think that the A2 version has fewer features than the FO3 version, so the Guide page may not be entirely helpful. FO4 added some new functionality, too, like making the auto-replace-type obey the tech tree. I also managed to get the auto-type to obey timers so that I could have more automated fighter carriers, but I'm not entirely sure which combination of commands did it yet. I can help you out with this one, too.

 

[Archonon]

Thanks for the responses Cabal, I will have to study this a bit more. I realize that the BBoM is pretty outdated, especially compared to what you guys have done with FO. I'm modding stock A2, I don't know the ins and outs of FO yet, so I would need to learn that whole system first before even getting to work on the races. I have seen the FO modding manual for guidance but I have to separate the instructions from what can be done in stock A2. FO was still fairly new when I stopped modding from what I remember, so I never got very familiar with it. lol.

I suppose I don't need to add the labels to my heroes then, as I will not be modding maps. While I would love to build my own missions, yeah, I don't think that's gonna happen either. My entire lore and campaign is strictly in my noggin' when I play Instant Action. lol.

The ship that evolves into that first station is buildable. It is the first thing to be built in the AIP for the race and will always remain buildable freely would it be needed. I added it to the starting base list of buildable items, so I guess that it's possible that the AI would build it again if it were destroyed? I'll look into your suggestions more closely to see how to make that work, and will use the cheat if it's needed. lol

On the weapon replacement, I may be completely mistaken, but I thought there was a special weapon that made one ship stop using its current odf for a new one (I don't know if I'm explaining it right). They are basically the same thing, but instead of using what was on odf 1, the ship now uses what's on odf 2 after using the weapon. It might be something based on the Galaxy separator or maybe also the 8472 evolver, I can't remember exactly but I seem to recall that it was doable at the time. I think we did something like that in B5A2, I have to go over the files again and see what we had in that mod. Or I'm completely wrong and am just remembering things.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll be studying the FO guide, the BBoM, and my own files to see if I can come up with something. Appreciate the help, Cabal!

 

[CABAL]

On the weapon replacement, I may be completely mistaken, but I thought there was a special weapon that made one ship stop using its current odf for a new one (I don't know if I'm explaining it right). They are basically the same thing, but instead of using what was on odf 1, the ship now uses what's on odf 2 after using the weapon. It might be something based on the Galaxy separator or maybe also the 8472 evolver, I can't remember exactly but I seem to recall that it was doable at the time. I think we did something like that in B5A2, I have to go over the files again and see what we had in that mod. Or I'm completely wrong and am just remembering things.

Hmm... You might be able to make use of the evolver, but I'm not sure the AI would be able to use it. The fusion cube weapon thingy and the Galaxy separator might work, but they also might be hardcoded so there would be a very limited number of uses. Just swapping one ODF for another can't be done, though. The closest thing would be using a replaceweapon to swap out one ship for another that looks the same. At least, as far as I know.

 

[Archonon]

Yeah, I think you are right. Going over my files, I found the special I half remembered. For my B5 Sheridan Hero unit I created a weapon based on the Borg Fusion weapon. I called it "Blitzkrieg Mode" and it sorta functioned like this:

My normal hero uses the ehero.odf and has the blitz special. When I use the blitz, the ship "transforms" through the Borg Fusion thing into another version of the same ship. So instead of ehero.odf, the special uses eblitz.odf (Which is basically identical to ehero, except it has more weapons). If I hit the special again, the ship would "Stand Down" and go back to its normal cruise mode, using ehero.odf.

I think that maybe I can use this method to "upgrade" a ship from having older weapons to newer ones. Since the weapon also indicates what sods to use, I might be able to upgrade ships into a sort of "refit", such as a regular Constitution changing into a Connie Refit.

As you say, the AI will likely not use it, and if it did, it probably wouldn't be right. So perhaps I can get it to work just on the player side?

Anyway, thanks for the assist, it was very helpful!

 

[OpetJa]

I found this thread and i have question regarding ODFs too...

So when you are creating map and add map objects e.g. dilithium moon or nebulas when you press on them window pops up and as you know and you can set team for those objects... by default, team for map objects is set to 0 so you can not attack that objects or ships with team 0....

is there any way to set those map objects with team 1 or any other number except 0?? I ask because I'm trying to create special weapon for A1 which can launch fighters from ship or station... That special weapon works, however spawned fighter have set team "0" so you can not take control of it... Any thoughts on tthis "issue"??