New Blood

acids needs to be toned down a bit.

As a note about this, I removed inflammable acids. It worked too well as a counter to infantry, meaning that there was even less reason to take neurotoxins. But the damage that acids do will have to be toned down (I think what would be best is reduce how long fields stay around. I feel like an acid will become less-lethal faster than a poison simply because the acid will dilute easier. Also, I think that weapons with multiple attacks like the scud shower and super canister cannon create multiple acid fields which causes their damage to stack immensely). I haven't tested with the inflammable acids removed, and haven't made changes to damage yet.

my idea to balance poisons is to add a power like a poison distribution centers. they would act like power plants but only affect units and structures who use poisons.

Personally I really like this idea and think it makes a lot of sense. However since I don't at the moment know how to get a new model into generals and don't want to duplicate the American or Chineese buildings (could use the first tech building though, but then the first tech building needs a new model...hmmm). As support for this, poisons (and assault & demo, but theirs are less of an issue because they aren't as effective) has defenses with the strength and health of US/China defenses, but doesn't require power to use them. Macro robotics' defenses cost 1000 each (compared to 500-700) and have around HALF the health, and require power, and that's before upgrading any to the missiles which are only truly effective as anti-artillery, but even then only after an escalation level (and are vulnerable to ecm). So for the moment I just gave poison's defenses a heafty cost increase, especially for the pressure washer since that gets upgraded with your acids or toxins to make it immensely effective.

flame general is probably the most average general in the mod. hes got very bland units. one of the things i like about contra is the fuel dispenser and just the idea of fuel in general.

You have no idea how much he WON'T stop talking about this. I do rather agree that flame seems like the most average general. And it isn't that he doesn't have interesting things (firestorm super weapon, smerches, the super tank, thermite, thermoberic mines).

air force seems overpowered.

I still don't agree with this until I get specific issues. Especially since his main attack force can be killed by destroying airfields (and there are plenty of indirect ways to do that, from super weapons to generals powers) I can't see how he can be considered overpowered (admittedly I made the Iroquois too cheap, so upped its price again. But I haven't had good tests with it so still not sure if it's priced right).

super weapons inst very good when fighting in tournament mode on with the ability to only build 1 SW

I don't agree with this. Especially if you get the hydrogen bomb upgrade and pair attacks with generals powers she can do quite a bit of damage in a short amount of time. I do think that her satellite scan should detect stealth though. Being a force that relies on nuking the enemy with super weapons requires you to know where the enemy is. It's immensely frustrating against stealth general to not see his buildings.

stealth general is not the deadliest general but can cause games to drown on for hours if played right.

To be fair that's because no one attacks until they have an army of around 50 tanks, which is in no way needed. If you guys would try some more early/consistent attacks these games would be more interesting. Also the reason that one game took forever is because I was harassing all three of you instead of just killing off one person at a time (which I probably should have done). Technicals work early in the game (though suicides may need a damage increase), rocket buggies are good mid game units (and can support bomb trucks) and the final tank is amazingly fun.

his rocket artillery defenses actually have the same range as the regular artillery defense so your much better off buying the tech 0 defense then the rockets.

I agree with this, and so will put increasing the rocket artillery range on my "to do" list. Also for now his tech building got a good health increase for each level it's upgraded so it's far harder to kill.


As some notes of other changes I made, I gave laser general's cars and supply center about a 25% price cut. He had a LOT of problems early game with money, and the cars were expensive compared to technicals (double the cost for 75% of the health. Better gun, sure, but they died far too easily for their cost). Also removed the airfield as a requirement for the supply drop zone to bring it in line with the rest of the secondary supply sources which only require war factories.

As I noted above I increased the cost of Poison's defenses for now, until they have power requirements, and removed inflammable acids. I also THINK I changed the toxin rebel's cost to 100 (it used to be the same as a regular rebel, which wasn't much of a choice). The thing was that all the costs for Chem_GLAInfantryRebel (of whatever kind) were set to 80 if they were armed with the toxin sprayer. The only one that was inconsistent with this was the Chem_GLAInfantryRebel_Dummy cost, so I changed that. Haven't checked if that was right though...

Anyway, also changed the HiveAATank armor from TankArmor to GattlingTankArmor so it makes sense. And I doubled the damage of the ClusterMissileWeapon (used by Infantry general's migs). This was because 2 migs would fail to take out an artillery tank because truck armor doesn't have reduced resistance to explosions. Rather than make all trucks worse, I opted to give the missiles a damage increase. They shouldn't be too powerful, and now should kill groups of artillery with 2 migs (a trade off for 1 mig not being able to kill a single artillery).

Still need to do more testing and playing around with things, and want to see if I can get that vehicle killing thing working. I think I'll just try taking the stealth anti-vehicle sniper weapon and having poison fields use it, and see what happens. Try and find where I broke it earlier.



And I know, I said I'd work with AI and haven't yet. I don't mean to sound whiny but I hate the world builder script editor/team builder, and it becomes frustrating to test AI since I expect the game to mismatch (and I'm not one for playing alone). These balance changes and such I enjoy testing. I'll see if I can work up the effort to work on AI again tomorrow. I know I'll have time, it's just getting the motivation.

Edited by ApOcOlYpS, 14 February 2012 - 05:12 PM.

is "red health" a value I can use? How would the weapon know what units have "red health"?

Weapon attacks a vehicle using especial damage type and brings very small damage (to say, 0.01). A vehicle has FireWeaponWhenDamaged module. Read about this module in tutorials. It can react when vehicle is not damaged, when damaged to yellow state and when damaged to red state. This module calls a weapon which kills driver. So, a vehicle kills driver inside itself by reacting on especial damage type.

In addition, it almost defeats the point. As it is, nerve agent toxins are near useless against vehicles. The marauder is only a capable tank, and insufficient against heavier opponents (overlord variants specifically, but even some of the more powerful light tanks). Beyond that, you don't get the damage assistance of acids, which help especially with the toxin spraying tank. Thus poison general will have issues getting vehicles into red health in the first place.

I don't think that new concept ruins something. Logicaly, neural poisons will bring significant damage. Just look. Other units bring 75% damage and vehicle will be disabled instantly after its health gets below 25%. So, the role of poisons is finishing move which is similar to bringing damage equal to 25% of unit health. In addition, you get the bonus and can capture disabled vehicle.

Note: You can make nerve gas to effect vehicles with "yellow health". The effect will be more devastating.

By the way, you can also "hijack" enemy infantry. Use hijacker module in a projectile. Imagine a sniper which fires "bullets of madness" which convert enemy soldiers to your side.

Edited by Creator, 16 February 2012 - 07:51 AM.

Logicaly, neural poisons will bring significant damage. Just look. Other units bring 75% damage and vehicle will be disabled instantly after its health gets below 25%.

I think that would work for light tanks (T0 and T1), but not for heavier tanks because, without acids, poison general misses out on some of the heavier hitting units. I think one way to get around this is remove the acid requirement from the Sturm S, which is his main anti-tank vehicle. However it's probably better to simply improve the marauder, because in the games we play the sturm is built to near exclusion of all else. Basically getting an overlord to 25% health, especially when they have command tank support, is difficult, and doing so to multiple tanks is extremely difficult.

I also need to check the build time of the scorpion. As it is it feels like it builds slowly (again, stops being built once later tanks are available). I think part of the issue is that poisons doesn't have an advanced war factory to build heavier units, which most other generals do have (Stealth and super weapons are the only other generals with only 1 main production building, but neither need a large attack force). So lasers, for example, can build light tanks to accompany heavy tanks simultaneously, while poisons has to build them sequentially. Another option instead of just getting a second war factory for heavy vehicles would be to improve his infantry in some exceptional way. For example, micro-robotics and explosives don't have a heavy war factory, but they make heavy use of their barracks units (suicide bikers, guardian/sentry drones). I'm not sure if poisons can build a technical, but adding it would give the barracks increased usefulness (fast transport to get poison rebels across the map).

Are there any other ideas for improve poison's offense? And no, I will not make zepplins more resilient again. Specifically I'm looking to increase production ability, or improve what he already has (I need to go compare the marauder to other T1 tanks. Maybe have upgrading poisons/acids give a natural damage boost to all units since lasers has no new T2 units).

Does anyone know how to edit laser general's spy satalite general's power? I've been running around the INI file forever and keep hitting dead ends trying to edit the number of strikes that are called.

If you just want to change the number of strikes you need to increase the reload time of the weapon in the weapon.ini. I can't remember the name of it, but that should give you a starting point for searching.

Really? So then I'll assume the strikes are done at their reload rate as long as the scan is operating, and so the higher levels (more strikes) simply have a longer lasting scan, right? Is there a place to check how long the scan lasts?

Also, where are the costs for stealth general's purchasable powers located? I couldn't find those either.

I don't remember what file I put them in... I think it may have been GLA_SpecialPowers or something like that.

Your best best is to find the button in the commandset.ini and back track it through the CommandButton.ini, that will give you the unit name you are purchasing. If you extract the whole .big file into a folder you can search all the ini's at once for key words with a windows search and you can find the unit no matter what file it's in.

Your best best is to find the button in the commandset.ini and back track it through the CommandButton.ini

I did and I did, and that's where I hit the dead end. And that's useful. I've just been doing editing in FinalBIG. I know not the best practice, but it's easy and I can still hunt for things. I'll look around again this afternoon when I have time.

The best way to search things is to find:
- button name in CommandSet.ini
- find button definition in CommandButton.ini, and determine the special power
- find tags using special power by searching in all files in "Object" folder
- determine the OCL launched by this power
- find the OCL in ObjectCreationList.ini and determine objects used
- find objects and look what do they do.

Similar search chain can be used for everything. First you find a button, then find instances used by this button and so on step by step.

If you can't find a button with the first attempt then start WorldBuilder, put desired building or unit on the map and look how it is named in the code. Then search it and look which command set it uses. Now you can look for desired name in CommandSet.ini and know which buttons it uses.

PS: All INI files must be unpacked and put into "INI" folder.
PPS: Far Manager will make searching easier. It is very convenient tool. http://www.farmanage.../index.php?l=en

Edited by Creator, 29 February 2012 - 06:51 AM.

Is it possible that changes to the INI files can screw with the AI? Specifically the changing of attributes such as health, cost and armor type. For some reason, Aggressive enemies have...stopped being so aggressive. Insane can be a problem, but that's really only because of the generals powers. They again don't build that much, and I haven't touched any of the existing AI scripts, nor have I changed any object names. Thoughts?

Small changes such as health and damage change will do nothing to AI. But AI can be screwed if you add, remove and rename units, objects, upgrades or buttons in the code.

Apocolpyssaid I could post my problem here, so I hope it's okay.
When I was playing around with my modding, I gave skynets code to the Sdi. Now, while it now used skynets abilities, it no longer fired it's laser. Does anyone know what to do to fix this?

Apocolpyssaid I could post my problem here, so I hope it's okay.
When I was playing around with my modding, I gave skynets code to the Sdi. Now, while it now used skynets abilities, it no longer fired it's laser. Does anyone know what to do to fix this?

Based on the information you provided, the first thing that comes to mind is that you may have removed the weapon or turret, either of which would prevent the weapon from being used. I would start be checking that the turret is still functional and the laser is still in the weapon list.

If you can post the object code for the SDI cannon I'll be able to give you a definitive answer.

The way I'd go about trouble shooting that is look at the command buttons in the SDI cannon originally (CommandSet.ini -> CommandButton.ini) to see what they activate/deactivate, and make sure that they work correctly. I can't look through the code right now though.

Thanks guys. I'll post the code web I get on the comp and see if I can get it working based on what you've said. Another thing I'm having trouble with is teleportation. I want to give grv displacement to another unit, but the button never actually appears- even with the right command set and button.

Edit: can't post code yet as Internet not working in comp, but the weapon is still there. I think it's getting confused, and summoning generals powers instead of firing. Is there any way to do both. All I've done is copy the behaviour from sky net into SDI. Thanks.

Edited by Tomeister, 12 March 2012 - 06:17 PM.

I also would like to know how to bring models across from other mods. I can't exactly copy and paste the pictures. Do I extract the picture file ad then add them using final big? Is there just one?

Edited by Tomeister, 12 March 2012 - 07:37 PM.

Thanks guys. I'll post the code web I get on the comp and see if I can get it working based on what you've said. Another thing I'm having trouble with is teleportation. I want to give grv displacement to another unit, but the button never actually appears- even with the right command set and button.

Edit: can't post code yet as Internet not working in comp, but the weapon is still there. I think it's getting confused, and summoning generals powers instead of firing. Is there any way to do both. All I've done is copy the behaviour from sky net into SDI. Thanks.

I duplicated what you said you did and I may be able to answer you question based on that. What you will have to do will depend on what you are intending for the structure.

- If you want to add the Powers weapon as a third weapon option (like the other two weapons are) just add another button that sets the weapon slot to TERTIARY, use Command_SDITactOverWatch and Command_SDIBallisticOverWatch as a template for the third button.

- If you want the structure to fire the laser and the powers weapon at the same, you will have to remove the shared cooldown and weapon lock from the structure. Removing the weapon lock will allow all three weapons to be used, so only take this approach if this is what you want to do.

Remove shared cooldown:

Line (under weapon):
ShareWeaponReloadTime = Yes <== comment out / delete this line

Remove weapon lock:

Remove the two buttons (Command_SDITactOverWatch and Command_SDIBallisticOverWatch) from the commandset

Delete this block:
Behavior = LockWeaponCreate ModuleTag_21
SlotToLock = PRIMARY ; Prevents indeterminate state plus two unpickable weapons equaling no attack.
End

Change this line (under weapon):
AutoChooseSources = PRIMARY FROM_PLAYER FROM_SCRIPT FROM_AI DEFAULT_SWITCH_WEAPON
To:
AutoChooseSources = PRIMARY FROM_PLAYER FROM_SCRIPT FROM_AI

Thanks thats brilliant! The trouble is, would it try shooting down a nuke with a Moab? Could I make it so it does tactical over watch at the same time, but not ballistic? And if it's not too much fuss, could you please show me what to do to add the third weapon (like what I should put next to tertiary weapon, and if I need to delete code). Thanks so much! Is there a button on this forum which gives people credit for good answers?


Another things though, I want to add a new power to super weapon general, but her command set already goes in a consecutive order 1-15 ect. But thee is space below mobile defence two for a new power. How can I resolve this?



And finally, if I want to play zero hour with and without a mod, can I copy the zero hour folder and create a new shortcut. If so, to where?
Thanks again.

Edited by Tomeister, 13 March 2012 - 08:14 AM.

You can create a new zero hour folder. Just copy your current Zero Hour folder, and past it in the same location (EA Games, and make sure it's patched but with no mode installed). I have that set up on my computer (original, contra and remix).

As for the weapons, I think when you determine the weapon set, you can decide what weapons fire at what targets. This is necessary for some units that fire at aircraft. For example Tank Hunters should have something like this, because their AA missile functions differently from their anti-tank missile. The SDI cannon should already have something like this, as the Ballistic Overwatch mode will not target vehicles (I believe this is done because it switches weapon, and that weapon doesn't target units).

So I would just change the weapon set to the skynet weapon and I'm done? What about the generals powers problem?

And what file do I need to edit to change tournament mode limits. ( ie- 4 auroras instead of 1)

Edited by Tomeister, 13 March 2012 - 10:04 PM.