Home » MODDING HQ 1.13 » v1.13 Idea Incubation Lab » Militia require resources
| Militia require resources[message #345623]
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Sun, 22 May 2016 15:20 
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| Flugente |
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Messages:3499
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany |
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When training a population to be militia, we need several things. We need trainers, which we have with out mercs. We need people to train, which we obtain by liberating towns and then training the loyal part of the population (we already have volunteers as a resource if we so desire).
What we also need is equipment (guns, ammo, armour) for our militia. In vanilla, this was always generated at random every time militia was spawned. Which was somewhat odd, as $750 allowed you to get 10 militia with gear that could have a price-tag of several thousand $. To counteract that (and to open a way to somewhat specifically gear your militia, to open a new need for item management and to make a use for the gazillion of items with 'Drop All') I added equippable militia. Which does exactly that.
I do, however, have a slight problem with that feature. Not in the way it behaves - as far is I'm currently concerned, there are no unresolved bugs, and it does exactly what I wanted (there somewhat of a speed issue, which I might resolve soon-ish, but that's a performance-only issue). I'm currently playing a game with an increased team size an significantly sped up strategic AI (BaseDelayInMinutesBetweenEvaluations is 10, variance is 5). Simply put, I have a team of 8 mercs doing nothing but moving gear from battlefields back to cities and militia, but it's simply a drop in the water. Even worse, as I attack together with militia, they and their gear move away from the towns. This means that the gear (especially the one from the latest battles, which is always the best) is always away from the militia creation sectors. Which means that I have to move them to the last battle fields. If they get into battle before then, it's a one-sided slaughter.
I does not seem that bad in these pictures, but I already merged, moved and sold a lot of gear. It's day 7 and I've already killed 3206 army guys, and the huge offensives haven't even started. Do the math, that's a huge amount of items.
While there is the ability to block militia from using specific items, this is beyond tedious in your HQ, where one has several thousand items. Of course, after unloading the map they'll drop the stuff back to the sector inventory again, but I simply don't want militia to bring chaos to my ordered inventory in HQ (I still need militia there for defense and prisoner-guarding, and need to access that sector in tactical to perform surgeries/go shopkeeping).
Additionally, I really don't like leaving tons of stuff unattended in the wilderness. Simply doesn't seem right at all from an immersion standpoint. At the same time, I do want to play with Drop-All, because it seems logical to me. And I don't want for militia gear to simply fly from the heavens.
Now, what I of course could do is simply use [Alt] + [LMB] to sell the stuff I don't need, and at the same time increase militia training cost. However, I do somewhat enjoy making a buck by selling gear to merchants (that's what Flo is there for, after all). At the same time, with Drop-All I'd have so much money from gear that mine income would be an afterthought. If I then lower the money generated while keeping expensive training cost, that's not better...
In the end, I want the following things the current feature does not provide:
- for the gear dropped to be used in huge quantities for militia, so that I still have scarce supplies and might even have shortcuts that forbid me from expanding militia. I feel that the volunteer-part works well in that regard (in this campaign, due to high militia losses and not enough volunteers, I had to raid Tixa, knowing I didn't have the manpower to hold it, simply to get the extra volunteers you get from liberating it for the first time).
- after being created, militia should have their equipment
- in order to use militia, create less need for the player to move gear around
- do not use money as a direct substitute for gear, as this will skew the game economy
- if possible, be simple to use and understand
- be simple to code (optional)
As this is an 'idea' thread, I have one of course. On which I'd like some feedback, please.
The idea is similar to what someone suggested way back before this 'equip militia' feature was created. Roughly said, idea would be to have a resource, like volunteers, that is required and used up by training militia. So, say, we have pools for guns and armour. So then when we train militia, this requires 1 volunteer, 1 gun and 1 armour (we could also have more resources, but you get the idea). So after a militia is created, we've obviously already supplied these resources. It would be easiest if they then get their random gear from their gear xml tables.
The point is, we have to get these resoures first. We do that in the strategic inventory - similar to [Alt] + [LMB], we can transform items into these resources. Click on a gun, and it will be removed and you get +X gun resource. Of course not always 1, idea is to get (pseudocode)
FLOAT a = external setting...
FLOAT b = external setting...
FLOAT resourcegained = b * min(0, (itemstatus / 100) * (1 + a * (10 * itemcoolness - currentprogress) / 100 ) );
thus the more advanced and the better in shape an item is (and the earlier we convert it), the more points we get. We could also slowly reduce our pool points once the progress rises to keep us from benefiting from all those .38 revolvers we converted in early game.
Similar to volunteers, if we don't have the resources, we cannot train militia, thus we always need to convert additional items. Army defectors and PMC mercenaries don't use up volunteers but would also use these resources, so internally, the resource count could go negative, but that won't cause any errors.
So far, I'd say we could the following resources:
- guns, created from guns
- armour, created from vests, pants, helmets and plates
- ammo, created from ammo (not entirely sure how to weight these, as coolness might be different for different mags of the same caliber and ammotype)
- explosives, created from bombs, grenades, and everything else that can go boom
- diverse, created from other stuff to account for face gear, melee weapons etc.
That might be too many resources, but I think you get the idea.
So... comments?
[Updated on: Sun, 22 May 2016 15:20]
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.Report message to a moderator
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