Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » Flugente's Magika Workshop » New feature: individual militia
New feature: individual militia[message #345324] Fri, 06 May 2016 17:32 Go to previous message
Flugente

 
Messages:3507
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
As I've stated before, it would be neat if militia had a bit more personality, and one could be more interested in them apart from "Oh no, the equivalent of $75 is dead!" While I don't want militia to be full mercenaries, I want them to be at least a bit more. Militia profiles are a start, but I want more.

I've continued development, and am now releasing this. This feature does the following:

  • For each militia created by training/PMC hiring/interrogation, a militia profile is created and stored internally. This defines their name, soldier class, gender, visuals, name etc..
  • Every time militia is created in tactical/autoresolve, we use these profiles to recreate militia. To the player it looks as if militia are as persistent as named NPCs.
  • We keep track of their kills/assists, and promote them if they've amassed enough 'promotion points' (how many is defined in the ini). Atm promotion happens automatically (more on that later).
  • We keep track of any notable things that happened to them. So later on one can retrace what battles they played a part in in their service record.
  • If militia move, their 'profile moves with them'. So your green recruits from Drassen can be among the battle-hardened elites that help you storm Meduna (provided they live that long).
  • Different militia 'origins' (arulcan local/PMC mercenary/army defector) have a different name scheme, and different gender and skin colour distribution. This is defined in the new [b]MilitiaIndividual.xml[b]. Currently,

    • arulcan locals are hispanic, and have a relatively high female ratio, an justification for that can be read here.
    • PMC mercenary are russian-like. While the description I made for Kerberus potentially allows any nationality, I feel that having them immediately stand out from the locals would be good. Additionally, this lets me show off how men and women can also have different surnames.
      Note that I am not fluent at all in russian. For all I know, the names/surnames I provided are written badly, so feel free to correct that, russian-speakers! I also have no clue about what most of those names mean, so if you ever wanted to sneak in the equivalent of 'hundred russian names that are really just code for genitals', this is your chance to fool me into doing so.
    • army defectors are german. Because I was tired of adding names in languages I have no grasp off, and because we are indeed bad guys.

    You can also define different wages for each origin. It would be reasonable that a mercenary specifically hired by you gets a higher wage than some army scum you gang-pressed into switching sides.
  • (Optional): If militia lose health, we keep track of that. If we later recreate them, we create them with lower health (though they slowly heal over time). This will make the game harder - militia aren't magically restored to full health the minute the battle ends. In a subsequent attack, they will have lower health, meaning that a town with a fully-sized militia isn't quite the impenetratable fortress it used to be.
    Additionally, if militia is wounded in tactical and you then resume that battle in autoresolve, militia will carry over these wounds.
  • There is a website, where you can see all your militia profiles:
    http://i.imgur.com/wi2jnUz.png
    There are a few filter options - you can filter for dead/alive/fired militia, filter by class, origin, and sector.
    When you've successfully trained militia and do not yet have access to that website, Enrico will send you an Email about it. Makes sense, the dude doesn't do much, he can at least send us links to the internet.
  • By clicking on an entry, you can see the militia's file . First is personal data:
    http://i.imgur.com/WJ6Xn9l.png
    We store HP as a ratio, not as a fixed value (more on that later). Age is simply there for immersion, the only thing it has is that older mercs have a higher chance for white hair.
    You can fire a militia here, you will be asked for confirmation. Note that this isn't possible if they are currently in combat.
  • Next tab is their service record:
    http://i.imgur.com/cdRJqqG.png
    Here you can see noteworthy entries of their career in your service: When and how they were recruited, what operations they took part in, when they were promoted, and how they left your service. Depending on what they did in battle, the text differs. Clicking on an operation will send you to that operation's campaign history webpage.
  • Final tab (currently) is the inventory:
    http://i.imgur.com/USVual7.png
    If the militia is in the currently loaded sector (and thereby exists as a soldier), we can see their inventory here - though we cannot interact with it.
  • This feature is off by default. It can be activated at any time during the campaign (of couse I can't retroactively record their history). If militia is then created without a profile exisiting, a new one is created.
  • Should this feature run as intended and be accepted by players, I plan to remove the militia part of enemy profiles.
http://i.imgur.com/grPd5Kh.png
This militia was wounded in combat (and got 2 kills). The image in the website equals the look in tactical.

Settings and xmls:

  • Ja2_Options.ini:
    	[Individual Militia Settings]
    
    ;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    ; Settings for individual militia
    ; 
    ; If this feature is active, every time a militia is created by training/PMC hiring/interrogation, a small profile stores their
    ; - name
    ; - visuals
    ; - record of all battles they participated
    ; - kills and assists
    ; - health ratio
    ; - and a few other things
    ;
    ; Whenever a sector with militia is loaded, this data is used to recreate a militia. As a result, militia seem to be as persistent
    ; as your mercenaries (so it is possible to have a veteran militia which accompanied you in several battles).
    ; 
    ; The data for the different militia origins (arulcan local/PMC mercenary/army defector) are defined in TableData/MilitiaIndividual.xml)
    ;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
    ; if TRUE this feature is on
    INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA = FALSE
    
    ; For each kill, a militia gets 2 promotion points. 
    ; For each assist, a militia gets 1 promotion point. 
    ; Here we define how many promotion points a militia needs to be promoted.
    ; Values from 1 to 100.
    INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_PROMOTIONPOINTS_TO_REGULAR = 4
    INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_PROMOTIONPOINTS_TO_ELITE   = 10
    
    ; If TRUE, the game remembers the health percentage of a militia the last time it was in tactical. This percentage is used the
    ; next time the militia is used in tactical. As a result militia will have lowered health for a while after being wounded.
    ; NOTE: THIS WILL MAKE THE GAME HARDER!!!
    INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_MANAGE_HEALTH = TRUE
    
    ; Every hour, militia health percentage rises by this percentage to simulate healing. Values from 0.0 to 100.0.
    INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_HOURLYHEALTHPERCENTAGEGAIN = 2.0
    	
    ;******************************************************************************************************************************
    ;******************************************************************************************************************************
    	
  • Tabledata/MilitiaIndividual.xml:
    	<ORIGINDATA>
    		<!-- Arulcan locals: militia trained from the civilian population -->
    		<male_forename>Aaron</male_forename>
    		...
    		<male_surname>Correa</male_surname>
    		...
    		<female_forename>Fulca</female_forename>
    		...
    		<female_surname>Zayas</female_surname>		
    		<chance_bodytype_REGMALE>20</chance_bodytype_REGMALE>
    		<chance_bodytype_BIGMALE>5</chance_bodytype_BIGMALE>
    		<chance_bodytype_STOCKYMALE>5</chance_bodytype_STOCKYMALE>
    		<chance_bodytype_REGFEMALE>70</chance_bodytype_REGFEMALE>		
    		<chance_skin_PINKSKIN>10</chance_skin_PINKSKIN>
    		<chance_skin_TANSKIN>40</chance_skin_TANSKIN>
    		<chance_skin_DARKSKIN>30</chance_skin_DARKSKIN>
    		<chance_skin_BLACKSKIN>20</chance_skin_BLACKSKIN>		
    		<dailycost_green>10</dailycost_green>
    		<dailycost_regular>20</dailycost_regular>
    		<dailycost_elite>30</dailycost_elite>
    	</ORIGINDATA>
    	


    A detailed description of what each tag does can be found at the start of the xml itself.
There are a few things from the concept that I have not (yet?) implemented:

  • The stats and level of a militia/enemy/civilian are highly dependent on game progress, sector distance to the queen's palace and other factors. A militia created in Meduna with progress 100 vastly outclasses a militia created in Drassen with progress 5. If we want milita to carry over these stats, we have to essentially revamp the entire system, not only for militia, but for everyone. I do not want to do such a massive change right now.
  • Manually outfitting militia with items. Managing the inventory of 64 mercs can already get tedious (even though I've made work easier for me by having their inventories as streamlined as possible). Additionally managing hundreds of militia... bah. Too much for me.
    Additionally, the UI work required isn't exactly tiny, either.
  • Traits are closely interwoven with items. If we can't control what stats and items a militia gets, there is no point in deciding their traits.
  • Apart from the money aspect, there isn't much reason to manually handle promotions instead of promoting militia asap. So this can't be set either.
Perhaps I will revisit the above decisions at some point - suggestions are always welcome. On the plus side, this feature is now much easier to use (some posters were wary of the amount of interaction this feature would require). In fact, you don't need to do any extra work (apart from turning the feature on in the ini): militia profiles will be created and managed automatically. The player can play just as usually. If INDIVIDUAL_MILITIA_MANAGE_HEALTH is on, the campaign will be a bit harder, but I think in a 'good' way (militia not instantly healing to full life). Those players that want more immersive militia will hopefully see this as beneficial, and ocassionally look at the website to check out how the little rascals are doing.

This feature does not break savegame compatibility.

This has been added to the trunk in r8202 and GameDir r2316. Using the new exe without the new GameDir will cause president Trump to make you his ambassador to Libya.

[Updated on: Fri, 06 May 2016 17:37]




I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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