Xenonauts configuration files

[Alewalek]

Where I can change amount of artifact that aliens left after the finished GC battle, can I change it?

[kabill]

Depends on what you want to change.

Aliens leave behind what they had on them. If you want to give more weapons etc., then, you need to give aliens more stuff.

For things like alenium and alloys, these are contained in the UFO mapping files.

[Alewalek]

I want to give less alien plasma batteries. In one of the mods I use amount of them left by aliens is to big and I make to much money out of ground missions want to reduce them but dont know how.

[kabill]

I think basically every alien carries one as well as their weapon. I'm unsure whether the battery in the aliens' weapons also counts; if it does you could remove the spare.

An easier solution would be to reduce the sell-value of the batteries instead, though.

[Moxar]

Hi,

could you explain the behaviour of AM_* files ? I'd like to make terrors and base attacks to happend more frequently, and earlier in the game.

[kabill]

If you want to make terror missions and base attacks more frequent, increase the 'chance' value. To make them earlier, reduce the value next to the earliest UFO type (probably a corvette for both) to whatever ticker value you want (there's 100 ticker points/month) and do the same with the 'ticker' value at the top.

[Moxar]

Thanks Kabill.

is the chance value a % ?

According it is, this is what I understand. Correct me if i'm wrong.

The default file for AM_BaseAttack sets:

Ticker: 200

Escort Chance: 500

Chance: 100

Once per Wave: true

m:airplane.alien.corvette 0 100

m:airplane.alien.landingship 350 100

m:airplane.alien.carrier 600 100

e:airplane.alien.fighter 0 100

e:airplane.alien.heavyfighter 350 100

e:airplane.alien.interceptor 600 100

So there should be one BaseAttack mission every wave (chance 100%) and only one (Once per Wave) from ticker 200 to the end of the game.

From ticker 0 to 349, the Corvette is used along with an escort of fighters

From ticker 350 to 599 it's landing ship with heavyfighters

From ticker 600 to End, it's carrier with interceptor

If I'm right about the chance %, why is the escort chance set to 500 instead of 100 ?

Beside, would setting Once per Wave to false trigger more than one terror per wave ?

[Solver]

The Escort Chance variable does nothing.

The Chance is not a percentage but rather works as a weight in the cumulative calculation. See this thread for a discussion:

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/11201-Escort-chance-settings

[kabill]

To answer the last question: no, not by itself. There's a separate variable in gameconfig.xml which puts a cooldown on terror missions which you'd need to reduce to 0 as well as turning the once per wave flag to false.

For what it's worth, if you've not already looked at it you might be interested in my Dynamic UFOs mod. It does some similar things to that which you're looking to do (and some more on top).

[Moxar]

It's a very interesting mod you've concieved Kabill. That is somehow what I expected to do, but with some additional features.

I wish terror and base attack mission to happend earlier (around 15th of september). I also wish to reduce the range of dropships, and reduce the penalty of failed terror mission. I'll provide extra reward for saving civilians in terrors and crash missions. By reducing the range of dropships and having terror missions earlier, I intend to make the schedule of secondary and third base critical.

About improving rewards on crash mission. I assume the lines are:

<crashsiteFundingBonus value="false" comment="Controls whether doing crash sites grants a relations bonus with the region" /><crashsiteFundingModifier value="1.0" comment="If relations bonus for crash sites is enabled, the bonus is the shootdown bonus multiplied by this value" />

If I set crashsiteFundingBonus to TRUE, I'll improve my funding modifier by 1.0 per alien down. Is there a way to improve it by saving cevilians/local forces too ?

I already managed to reduce the range of ships, so all I have to do now is to edit the AM_terror and AM_baseAttack files along with the UfoContents files.

Is there a way I could make my mod compatible with yours ? I don't wish one to override the others.

[skaianDestiny]

 <terrorCivilianSurvivedBonus value="0" comment="Extra relations bonus for every civilian that survived a terror mission" /> <terrorLocalForcesSurvivedBonus value="0" comment="Extra relations bonus for every local forces fighter that survived a terror mission" />

It should be above the crash site bonuses.

[Moxar]

I assumed this only affects terror mission, not crash mission. But I might be wrong.

[kabill]

Is there a way I could make my mod compatible with yours ? I don't wish one to override the others.

Well, if you're using XCE (which I assume you will be, as some of the funding modifers you're looking at are XCE) then all of Dynamic UFOs will be modularised with the next XCE build. It would be easy, then, to build your own mod as a modular one as well and you'd be able to do this such that it would be compatible with an otherwise vanilla game and Dynamic UFOs as well if you wanted.

(When it comes to it, I'm happy to give some advice as to how to do this, although it's mostly using spreadsheets so it's pretty simple anyway.)

In any case, I'll be interested to see how it turns out. I've been tempted to do something similar, but haven't had the time to think about how it would work well.

(Also, yes, I'm pretty sure the civilian bonuses are for terror sites only.)

[Solver]

About improving rewards on crash mission. I assume the lines are:

<crashsiteFundingBonus value="false" comment="Controls whether doing crash sites grants a relations bonus with the region" /><crashsiteFundingModifier value="1.0" comment="If relations bonus for crash sites is enabled, the bonus is the shootdown bonus multiplied by this value" />

If I set crashsiteFundingBonus to TRUE, I'll improve my funding modifier by 1.0 per alien down. Is there a way to improve it by saving cevilians/local forces too ?

Not per alien down. If you set it to 1.0, then you'll get the same relations boost from completing the mission as from shooting down the UFO. If you set it to 0.5, you'll get half of the shootdown bonus for completing the combat, and so on.

[RasterOps]

I made minor changes in gameconfig.xml to the BaseSoldierCarryingCapacity and SoldierCarryingCapacityStrengthMul values but these are not reflected in my current game. I even hired a new soldier to verify if the new values worked on new vs. existing soldiers. They didn't. I started a new game but the original values remained in effect.

By default a soldier can carry unencumbered (8 + Str * 0.3) Kgs. Therefore, a soldier having 50 Str can carry (8 + 15) 23 Kgs. No matter the changes I make, the results of the formula don't change.

[kabill]

Are you using the community edition mod?

[RasterOps]

I am using the Community Edition as my base mod. The changes I have made are in a separate "mod" folder and the mod has been selected in the "Modding Tools" section of the start app. I can confirm other changes I have made in different areas are working. Just not this one.

[kabill]

Have you made any other changes in gameconfig/have you removed all the elements that you're not modding? It's possible something upfile from the carrying variables is causing an error and stopping the carrying changes being implemented. If you want, you can upload the file and I'll have a look.

[RasterOps]

These are the differences between my GameConfig and the CE:

• Typo on line 96
  
• Space(s) to tab character on line 104
  
• Grammar(?) on line 117
  
• 
  

[ 1 ] C:\Data\Xenonauts\Mods\FairPlay\gameconfig.xml 8/23/2014, 7:18:55 am                                              [ 2 ] C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Xenonauts\assets\mods\xce\gameconfig.xml 8/16/2014, 3:40:09 am      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------==============96	* 	  <resilienceProgress pointsToProgress="5" globalMaxProgress="97" comment="A progress point is earned every time the soldier gets a skillup in any other attribute" /> 	* 	  <resilienceProgress pointsToProgress="5" globalMaxProgress="97" comment="A progress points is earned every time the soldier gets a skillup in any other attribute" />==============104	* 	  <Lieutenant rankPoints="16" />  	* 	  <Lieutenant rankPoints="16" />==============114	* 	  <BaseSoldierCarryingCapacity value="10" comment="This value is used to calculate soldier carrying capacity." />  	* 	  <BaseSoldierCarryingCapacity value="8" comment="This value is used to calculate soldier carrying capacity." />115	* 	  <SoldierCarryingCapacityStrengthMul value="0.4" comment="The percentage of soldier strength used in the carrying capacity formula." />  	* 	  <SoldierCarryingCapacityStrengthMul value="0.3" comment="The percentage of soldier strength used in the carrying capacity formula." />==============117	* 	  <limitCarryCapacityMul value="2.0" comment="Soldier's carry capacity is multiplied by this number to get the point at which a soldier will be left at 0 TUs" />  	* 	  <limitCarryCapacityMul value="2.0" comment="Soldier's carry capacity is multiplicated by this number to get the point at which a soldier will be left at 0 TUs" />==============519	* 	  <KeyMapping function="GCQuicksave"      key="F5" />  	* 	  <KeyMapping function="GCQuicksave"      key="" />520	* 	  <KeyMapping function="GCQuickload"      key="F8" />  	* 	  <KeyMapping function="GCQuickload"      key="" />=======------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BTW QuickLoad doesn't work.

[kabill]

Have you left in all the other variables you've not modded? I suspect the problem is that there's several elements with child elements prior to the carrying capacity variables which require the use of MODMERGE="update". Not doing this will cause the merge to fail at that point, i.e. before it gets to the bit you want to merge.

I can't say for certain without seeing the file, but that's what I think is going on.

(I've just tried modding the carry weight myself and it's definitely working. I suspect then that I'm right about the problem. The easiest fix, since you don't seem to be modding anything else in gameconfig, is to delete the entire contents of the file except for the carrying capacity variables you're modding.)

[RasterOps]

Strange. I deleted everything but those lines related to the carry weight and it worked; just as you suspected. I'll keep looking but in the meantime here is a link to my GameConfig file.

Edited August 23, 2014 by RasterOps

[kabill]

The link just links to the dropbox login page.

To be clear, this is entirely intended behavior on the part of the merging system. For most of the variables in gameconfig, it's quite simple as all you need to do is leave in the element and change the values. However, it's slightly more complicated when you have elements with child elements. Compare these:

  <femaleSoldierChance value="35" comment="The percent chance that a generated soldier is a female" /> <soldierStats comment="Soldier's stats are generated with values in the specified range."> <actionPoints min="35" max="65" /><resilence    min="35" max="65" /><strength     min="35" max="65" /><accuracy     min="35" max="65" /><reflexes     min="35" max="65" /><bravery      min="35" max="65" /> </soldierStats>

The top element is a stand-alone. You can leave that in and change the values and it's fine. However, with the min/max attribute scores, all of the attribute elements are contained *within* another element (soldierStats). In that instance, to make it merge properly, you need to add MODMERGE="update" into the element, like this:

  <soldierStats [color=#FF0000]MODMERGE="update"[/color] comment="Soldier's stats are generated with values in the specified range."> <actionPoints min="35" max="65" /><resilence    min="35" max="65" /><strength     min="35" max="65" /><accuracy     min="35" max="65" /><reflexes     min="35" max="65" /><bravery      min="35" max="65" /> </soldierStats>

If you don't do this, the merge will fail when it gets to this point. Because there's several of these types of set-up prior to the bit you were trying to mod, it was blocking your changes. But, since you're not changing those bits anyway, you can simply delete them from your modded file like you've now done.

Hope that makes sense!

[RasterOps]

Well I'm still not certain as to the MODMERGE function. Merging with what, the original GameConfig in Assets?

Anyway, I did discover the problem and it is embarrassing. I have been listing the changes/benefits of my mod in the ModInfo.xml file. I did not add any XML heading information and didn't comment any of the lines. I have done this now and the problem has been resolved. I believe the error I was seeing could have been manifest anywhere.

I also think I have fixed the DropBox link in my previous post.

Thank you for your help!

Edited August 23, 2014 by RasterOps

[kabill]

Well I'm still not certain as to the MODMERGE function. Merging with what, the original GameConfig in Assets?

Yes, that's how the XCE mod system works. It goes through the mod files and makes changes or additions based on the instructions its given. A lot of the stuff in gameconfig has implicit merge commands that don't need to be stated, but instances like the one I outlined above require explicit instruction or they won't work.

[RasterOps]

I just wanted to clarify my earlier statement about the ModInfo.xml file. It was not the cause for my problem with the carry weight elements. I still don't know what is causing the failure. Only that removing everything but my changes works.