Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » v1.13 General Development Talk » Generic militia recruits
| Generic militia recruits[message #307677]
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Wed, 18 July 2012 20:00 
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 Cboen |
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Messages:13
Registered:July 2012 |
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I'm coming to Ja2 from X-com, and I'm wondering if it would be possible to add generic, disposable militants with random or mediocre stats for the player to hire. While I love JA2's combat and mercs, I feel kind of restricted by the lack of disposable units that I can use for high risk tactics, who I could safely sacrifice without worrying about running out of mercs to hire.
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| Re: Generic militia recruits[message #307701]
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Wed, 18 July 2012 23:30 
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| usrbid |
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Messages:1502
Registered:December 2008 |
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Yo Cboen, Welcome to the Pit! 
Soldiers the player can fully control have specific MERC IDs within the game and are defined by either the MercProfiles.xml or the PROF.DAT file.
When you look at the Data-1.13\TableData directory you see a couple of files which define player controlled soldiers:
MercAvailability.xml
MercOpinions.xml
MercProfiles.xml
MercQuote.xml
MercStartingGear.xml
From this you can tell that the interactions of a mercenary are somewhat complex, for example how this person feels about other people in the game, what their favorite statements are and so on.
While I believe it is possible to add new MERC IDs, that soldier would have no speech, no text, no opinion about other soldiers and so on.
Now for the modders out there, the problem can be solved by randomly picking voice speech, voice text, gear, and even opinions from a set of predefined choices. For example random female soldiers pick from one of the three female IMP voices, get random gear from the militia load out, and have no positive nor negative opinion about other mercenaries in the game.
To penalize the "elevation" of a militia to a MERC, they get no (or only minor) skills and traits. This simulates that you get "heroes" from AIM, "extraordinary" guys from M.E.R.C., and "mediocre" guys from hiring militia.
Since voices and text would be repetitive and overlapping with player IMP choices, a separate set of voices can be added to be used just for militia mercenaries. Fortunately there are some relatively complete voice sets available from other mods already. For example some of the "timid" sounding RPC from Vengeance Reloaded may work well (e.g. Postie).
Another alternative is to make two options, one for "IMP available in game" and the other for "can hire militia". Then modders can choose either or both (or none). This will also allow a quick approach of turning off IMP and using the data to randomly pick portrait, voice etc. for hired militias.
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| Re: Generic militia recruits[message #309283]
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Sun, 19 August 2012 11:04
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| madwolf |
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Messages:11
Registered:May 2006 |
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I wished to have some mediocre low cost generic soldiers so I did it:
use mercprofile editor
-pick a merc that you want to clone to have your generic "marine" (from AIM). I used the guy with the camoed face (not Shadow, the other one).
-copy it.
-paste over an unused slot just one time to create a single clone.
-change his name to something more generic (Soldier, Rifleman, Marine, Thug, Mary poppins...)
-Change his stat to something you feel a medium man would fit.
-Edit his death tolerance (death rate) to 101 so he dont care how many guys you lose, he will 100% join and same for reputation tolerance.
-change his salary and uniform color.
-remove all traits, abilities and disabilities.
-remove all merc like and dislike.
-disable the speech.
-save all.
-use xml editor to edit his inventory that could fit your generic soldier.
-save all.
-go back to mercprofile editor.
-copy the generic soldier.
-paste it in every free slot.
-save all
voil
[Updated on: Sun, 19 August 2012 11:06] by Moderator Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Generic militia recruits[message #319927]
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Fri, 17 May 2013 14:54
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| Durak |
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Messages:57
Registered:April 2010 |
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Hi, I'll hijack this topic because it seems fitting:
Have there been suggestions to alter the merc death mechanics yet?
Here's mine:
How about an option for non-permanent merc deaths?
Something like: If your merc "dies", he will not be removed from the game - if you can manage to bring him to the Cambria hospital before a timer runs out (1 day? 12 hours?)
One could define several prerequisites for this to work, such as loyalty in Cambria is 100, medical supplies haven't been stolen...
To penalize the player for losing a merc that way, already existing penalties are left untouched - recruiting AIM members might get harder, mercs suffer from moral loss et cetera.
On top of that, the revived merc has to stay in hospital for a long time (10 days? 20?), and he might suffer from a permanent stat loss, so it actually hurts the player instead of providing him with invulnerable soldiers, and he has to think about recruiting another merc in order to close the (temporary) gap anyway.
Second chance for a merc to survive death: You don't have sector control in Cambria, but you have Skyrider and a few thousands bucks - so he can fly the "dead" to a hospital in another neighboring country.
In this scenario the merc gets removed from the player's squad, and the player has to rehire him/her after he/she has recovered and is available again.
Same here: Recruitment might be harder, just as if a merc had really died.
RPCs return to their home and can be found where they've been picked up at first.
That way, the player never runs out of mercs to recruit while he has to cope with all the disadvantages of "real" deaths - higher costs, moral loss, logistics.
I thought about this because when I start a game it usually goes like this:
-"Iron man option? Nah! I'll do my best not to lose anyone, but in case the game crashes I want to be able to save/load."
So I start playing, cheap mercs get wounded, and then the first merc dies.
-"Alright, things are more interesting that way, I'll keep playing."
Mercs train, they get better and better - and then another one dies.
-"Curses! But... well, ok, two deaths is not that bad. I'll keep going on with that."
Mercs get really good, I make a stupid mistake, and someone dies horribly.
-"F**k that, I'll load!"
cheers
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