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Need help with ticker calculation and AM files.


drages

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Hey..

I need help to understand this ticker and AM files to arrange geosphere missions..

1. Here is an AM terror file

Ticker 200

Chance 20

Escort chance 500

Once per wave False

m:airplane.alien.corvette 200 75

m:airplane.alien.landingship 200 25

m:airplane.alien.corvette/250 250 50

i dont have idea what these lines make.. can u give me some little explanations.

2. There is some lines at gameconfig too..

But how do u calculate ticker.. what is it...

For example i need a terror per month and a base def per 2 months when the

<alienTickerSpeedVeteran value="0.4" />

what should i do?

thx!

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The alien ticker is calculated by the number of game minutes passed multiplied by the alienAITickerIdle variable in gameconfig.xml. The vanilla game is set up such that the alien ticker increases by around 100 points every game month. However, different game difficulties modify the rate at which the ticker increases by a proportion, e.g. alienTickerSpeedVeteran value="0.4" would mean that the alien ticker increases by only 40% of its normal value when playing on Veteran difficulty.

The values in the AM_* files are used to determine at what ticker point certain alien missions start appearing as well as what kinds of UFOs can spawn. E.g. In the Terror Mission example used above, the 'ticker' value is set to 200 meaning that the game will not spawn terror missions until after ticker point 200. At ticker point 200 or higher, either a Corvette can spawn (75% chance) or a Landing Ship can spawn (25% chance). At ticker point 250, a Corvette or a Landing Ship can spawn each with a 50% chance. And so on.

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But what is the first "chance" mean?

The chance value is a relative probability of that mission to spawn compared to other missions of the same style. (passive or aggressive) For more information about those, this thread is a good read. Especially Solver's posts!

And what is the difference between m:airplane.alien.corvette/250 and m:airplane.alien.corvette?

The relative probability of the Corvette (instead of i.e. scout or landingship) changes at 250 ticker points.

Edited by Skitso
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And what is the difference between m:airplane.alien.corvette/250 and m:airplane.alien.corvette?

To expand on what Skitso has written, it's basically a way of making the file work with the mod merging system.

Each UFO type which shares a ticker value forms the pool of possible UFOs that can spawn after that ticker point. So if you have two UFOs for a mission set to ticker 200, those are the two eligible types for that mission after ticker point 200. If the next set of UFOs were set to ticker point 250, those UFOs would replace the previous pool of UFOs once you get to ticker point 250.

The consequence of this is that you might want to set things up to have the same UFO type within multiple ticker bands. This would break mod merging as the values in the first column of an .xml spreadsheet need to be unique for it to work. Hence, the /250 or whatever is simply a way of making the text in the cell unique to avoid merging issues.

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1. note the first "Chance 20" does not mean there will be 20% chance to spawn this mission. Instead, all these values from all 9 mission types are added up, and then divide 20 by that number and so you get your spawn chance. I.e. what you specify is a relative value, and the game uses a normalized one.

my advice here is to manually assure all missions relative chances give 100%, i.e. work with normalized values. It's simply easier b/c it's WYSIWYG then. For instance, in my mod the chances are set to:

AirSuper 15, scout 10, BAtt 8, research 23, GrAtt 7, constr 10, BRun 8, terror 14, supply 5

2. another thing to consider is active/passive missions. In the above example, first 3 are active, others are passive, this is hardcoded. The thing is for every two passive AM one active is spawned, hardcoded as well. So I guess setting Scouting chance to 150 won't give you a ton of these missions, the result is mostly you will see scouts instead of AirSuperiority and BaseAttacks. So I made the first 3 values to give 33% in total, it's just again WYSIWYG

3. the difference between m:airplane.alien.corvette/250 and m:airplane.alien.corvette is made to let the modmerging code distinguish the lines from each other.

Edited by podbelski
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... I guess there is no way to do this. You set AM chances and the game uses them to spawn ufos

Well, if you want the certain generation of a single terror mission a month and a base attack every two, then simply set the chance of those missions very high (e.g. 2000) and use the variables in gameconfig to cap them at 1 mission every 30/60 days.

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This posts enlighten me well. Thx ppl. If I got anything else, I will ask.

And kabill u were talking about changing the mission structure. Should I wait for it or its a long time project?

I don't know. I think trying to implement this is next on my to-do list but I don't know how long it is going to take.

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  • 2 weeks later...
can land: research, construction, supply, base attack, terror. Others cannot. The variable "landing chance" has no effect AFAIK

thx pod.. i will start to edit AM files now using your style..

and a question about escords.. is there a way to give a %100 change escord to a mission?

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I think the merging procedure is standard here. So you have to replace all the entries from old files with empty values, then the modmerge system deletes them. If you set up your mod over just the XCE then it won't be hard

look how I did it in my mod for reference

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I think the merging procedure is standard here. So you have to replace all the entries from old files with empty values, then the modmerge system deletes them. If you set up your mod over just the XCE then it won't be hard

look how I did it in my mod for reference

I will check your files.. i just hoped a replace command for whole file..

I see what you did.. its nice idea.. just i am planing the missions until about 1600 ticker so its more tricky..

Edited by drages
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