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Enemy Groups Mod[message #269837] Mon, 10 January 2011 19:31 Go to next message
Buns is currently offline Buns

 
Messages:655
Registered:September 2010
The fact that EnemyGunChioces is mostly defined by the location of the battle (i.e. proximity of the sector to P3) means that the enemy will always be using more or less the same weapons in a given sector. This gave me the idea of a new "progress-mod" that makes excessive use of pre-defined enemies: if the enemy anyways always gets weapon X in sector D13 from EnemyGunChioces, regardless of game progress, I can as well give him weapon X via the map-editor.

The idea of this mod is to give him weapon Y instead, that way creating a new group/new groups of enemy forces that use different stuff than the default enemies getting theirs from EnemyGunChioces and EnemyItemChoices.


The first, and most obvious, group is an Arulcan police that uses different stuff than the army. I have created three kinds of police forces, appearing on different locations:

Police Patrol. This is the normal street police. It only appears inside cities and patrols living quarters, for example Drassen Central. The Police Patrol is armed with a wild selection of pistols, MPs, shotguns and, to a lesser extend, semi-automatic rifles.

The common police uniform is Officer's Cap, Dress Uniform, and black (Night Ops) pants. To have this fitting their appearence I made them the new Admins, giving them blue shirts and black pants as uniform. They might have privatly purchased ballistic vests, no helmets. Because of the usual corruption police officers in rich region, like Balime or Meduna, have more money than those in poor regions, like Drassen. So they have more and better vests in the south.

This means, yes, those do appear in the south to and are not limited to in and around Omerta. In return they never appear outside cities. So, you don't run into a patrol of enemies between Omerta and Drassen that is armed with those weapons and wearing this kind of equipment. The fact that the "Pistol & Shotgun"-enemies only appear in densly built up sectors that you usually attack at night (CQB!), and that some have better armor than the regular army, makes them a quite "usefull" enemy, despite being Admins.


Police Guard. This is another group technically of Admins. They guard important non-military facilities, such as airports, ports, the hospital, Tixa, the factories in Grumm etc; but not the mines, mines are guarded by the army.

As garrisoned police they have a much more uniform equipment. Their main weapon are SMGs, but they also have sniper rifles, LMGs, semi-automatic shotguns and grenade launchers (but only TG grenades). All have Kevlar vests, gas maks, the snipers, and one or the other guy, also NVG IIs.


SWAT. These are technically Elites. There is a SWAT unit in every ACA building. They have SWAT armor, NVG III, silenced weapons, including silenced sniper rifles, and use stun grenades plus some other goodies. So when attacking a sector with ACA builidng at night you should know what you are doing.


None of the stuff these three groups use is part of EnemyGunChioces and EnemyItemChoices, making them distinctive from the major group: the Arulcan Army. The army makes the major part of all enemies. These are the common troops you encounter outside cities, in SAMs, Alma and the like places.

They read out their stuff from the files (freeing me from the need to pre-define all 32 enemies on all some 250 maps). May be later I'll add some pre-defined enemies too for the maps with fixed garrison group, that way adding distinctive "units", for example light infantry, heavy infantry, tanks, guards etcpp. (yes the guards will be Troop too).

For now I have made a setup for the army with older Combloc stuff, such as AK-47/AKM and the like. After giving the enemy usually western weapons until now, I came to the conclusion that the game might get more interesting when the enemy army is exclusivly using Combloc weapons instead. The reason is that the better weapons (last but not least by attachments) are western weapons. When the enemy is not using them you have to buy them, and the ammo, and the attachments, from Bobby Rays. For the preformance of the enemy it doesn't matter whether he has a naked AKM or a M4 with 3kg of attachments: he anyways wishes to burst you away at sight range on full auto. And an old AK does this job as well as any fancy western product.

The army has a distinctive LBE and little to no armor.


Another group I had been thinking of would be Hostile Mercs. This would be Elites too. They might, but not exclusivly, appear in the south as private security. They might also appear occasionally (Mike-like) as "military advisors" with untis of the regular army. They would be eligable to anything possible in terms of weapons, armor and LBE.


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Example Drassen:

Drassen Airport is held by units of the Police Guard. Means all enemies there are Admins with the above named kit. Which of them exactly appear when you enter this sector is by chance: a sector has 32 pre-defined enemies (none with priority). In case the garrison is 10 enemies, the game picks 10 of those 32 by random; means there can be all four pre-placed snipers present or no sniper at all.

Drassen Central is held by the Police Patrol. The game will pick the needed number out of 32 pre-defined Admins having the police patrol kit. (in my first test the airport was a walk in the park, while I lost Grunty and Ira to the shotgun- and MP-guys in central).

Drassen Mine is a mixed sector: 16 enemies are pre-defined as Police Patrol spread all over the map, 8 are pre-defined as SWAT inside the ACA (but with order to "seek enemy") and 8 are common army around the mines (these get their stuff from the files). Technically the garrison group is defined as 50% Admin, 25% Elites and Troop, means you'll always have some of all three groups.

All units around Drassen are Army, means they use weapons and items from the XMLs.

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Progress: I have just completed Omerta and Drassen, now testing.



[color:#FF0000]Help needed:[/color] Can anyone please enlighten me where the composition of the patrol groups and those of the assualt groups is defined. For example, despite having set the enemies in the sectors between Omerta and Drassen to Troop they still are Admins.

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First Sergeant
Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276603] Fri, 25 March 2011 16:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Loucipher

 
Messages:157
Registered:October 2009
An interesting idea Smile I've myself cracked my head over the problem of "customizing" enemy garrisons and patrols (to increase the challenge), but haven't come up with anything like that.

As far as I have discerned:
- all possible compositions of enemy groups are defined in ArmyComposition.xml - you can define the percentages of each soldier type, the soldier count (starting and desired, i.e. what the Queen will try to maintain) as well as the group's priority (i.e. importance to keep the group alive).
- city, SAM and other places' garrisons are defined in GarrisionGroups.xml - this file actually references the composition file, as it lists just the sector and the composition number of the garrison group.
These both files allow for easy control of what troops will constitute the garrisons. You can define a composition of, say: 20 soldiers, 25% elites, 25% troops, 50% admins, and call that composition's number in the garrisons file for certain sector. Add some creative map design like what you describe above... and hey presto, you're set.

With patrols and mobile groups, however, it's not that easy. The file responsible for patrols, PatrolGroups.xml, lists only the group strength (base, the actual may differ between system limits set in the INI Editor), its priority and up to 4 waypoints normally determining the movement area of the group (I don't know if the group can deviate from the path if, say, it detects the mercs presence in a neighbouring sector). If I were to say how we can control how many elites are there in the group, I'd bet for priority - the higher it is, the more elites and the stronger the group will ultimately be. How the Queen creates assault groups, how she moves them, and how their composition is decided, however, is beyond my knowledge.

For clarity, all the XML files I mentioned are in Data-1.13(or whatever data folder your mod is)\TableData\Army.

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Staff Sergeant
Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276608] Fri, 25 March 2011 17:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Buns is currently offline Buns

 
Messages:655
Registered:September 2010
The problem here, and why I didn't continue it, is that enemy class definitions from the XML file overwrite the definitions from the map editor, while weapon placement from the map-editor overwrites the respective informations from the XML file. So in the result you get a mix of both, such as elites conquering a sector will later be using the weapons you had placed for the original admin garrison.

Another problem is up- and downgrading for garrisons: Elites defined as garrison in a sector often do not appear on game start, or in the early game in general, while in the late game some places have garrisons of Troop and Elite only, despite being defined as "Admin-only".

Summeray: The idea I had does not work

Another problem seems to be that weapons pre-placed by map editor are not been given any attachements by EnemyItemChoices - not even the default attachment such as stocks.

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First Sergeant
Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276609] Fri, 25 March 2011 17:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Logisteric

 
Messages:3199
Registered:December 2008
Location: B
just make them factioms - they will be named as civilians and you cannot see them on the strategical map when you do that, but that's all

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Captain
Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276611] Fri, 25 March 2011 17:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Buns is currently offline Buns

 
Messages:655
Registered:September 2010
Logisteric
just make them factioms - they will be named as civilians and you cannot see them on the strategical map when you do that, but that's all
hmm.. interesting idea. Haven't worked with factions so far, but I guess that could cause some conflicting with the overall strategical AI. hmm...... definitly worth a bit of brainstorming.

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First Sergeant
Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276612] Fri, 25 March 2011 17:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
lockie is currently offline lockie

 
Messages:3721
Registered:February 2006
Location: Scotland
As Will Gates mod 'Militia Factions Mod' did . If only he could have updated it to 1.13 standards..... good mod though !

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Captain

Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276613] Fri, 25 March 2011 17:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Wil473

 
Messages:2815
Registered:September 2004
Location: Canada
Using civilian factions may require some additional steps, if you want to have them hostile from the start (or at least when triggered):

Hicks faction - only works at night

Pre-hostile NPC triggered - the assassins, and a few others (Joe at the end) go hostile, the assassins even seek after your mercs to start a fight. Not sure if any other factions are preset to be hostile though. It would be nice if a few of the unused ones were, as it would allow you to enter a map and the "police" faction is already hostile. This is used by UC, faction is assigned to NPC when placed in map.

NPC ID assigned to enemy merc in map trigger - this one was great, except it causes a "ghost army" bug and eventual crash. (Enemy retakes a sector, but when you visit, it is empty, eventually leads to assertion error and crash.) I think this assertion error is related to a similar "ghost army" bug triggered by Mike (as far as I know, Mike works off this mechanism in-game, where a random elite enemy merc is assigned his NPC ID when conditions are right. SEE: http://www.ja-galaxy-forum.com/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=272498#Post272498 Nobody has taken me up on my offer to force the scenario that leads to the bug. If my difficulties are one and the same as the Mike bug, then this would be probably the best way to achieve immediate hostilities out of a civ faction, once the bug is fixed of course.

Kingpin Faction - tile alarm is one way to trigger them.


EDIT: found the bug report.

EDIT2: actually, once the next patch for UC-1.13 is out tomorrow, I'm going to see if I can replicate all those bugs I've been complaining about with stock (or near as stock) v1.13 data.

[Updated on: Fri, 25 March 2011 17:36] by Moderator

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Lieutenant

Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276616] Fri, 25 March 2011 17:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Gorro der Grüne is currently offline Gorro der Grüne

 
Messages:1448
Registered:March 2009
Location: Broadwurschd-City
Factionizing was also done in retail WF6.

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Sergeant Major
Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #276617] Fri, 25 March 2011 18:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
smeagol is currently offline smeagol

 
Messages:2705
Registered:June 2008
Location: Bremen, Germany
Have been requesting more control over faction behaviour for quite some time. So far it seemed to be not in very high demand. So, if it indeed would be possible, I'd be happy to see this.


Former versions of AIMNAS included those civilians as additional enemeies, but due to the limited control when they turn hostile and also the issues with respawning forced me to take them out again (had those police guys, additional guards in civilian industrial areas, enemy merc contractors, etc...)...

[Updated on: Fri, 25 March 2011 18:06] by Moderator

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Lieutenant

Re: Enemy Groups Mod[message #286483] Thu, 14 July 2011 02:18 Go to previous message
UniversalWolf is currently offline UniversalWolf

 
Messages:140
Registered:June 2009
Location: United States
Love this idea.

How about rival rebel factions? For example, what if you (or, if not you, someone else) decided to tell Miguel's "pitiful band" to screw off and take over the country yourself? Or maybe the soldiers in Alma (with the General as leader), seeing Deidranna's rule coming to an end, decide to take Arulco for themselves.

How about Bounty Hunters? You can't be the only group searching for wanted fugitives with Carmen. If you hire Slay, they might consider you an enemy.

Other crimial cartels besides Kingpin's? I could envision a smuggling ring operating from Grumm. Deidranna would probably allow them to exist if they paid enough tribute.

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Sergeant
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