How to mod Aircraft?

[Lorebot]

So I've been trying to give the Foxtrot back some of its teeth by readding some hardpoints to the craft.

Trouble is that every way I've tried to do it results in a CTD in the ship loadout screen when I click on the new hardpoints.

I'd like to enable the 2 forward hardpoints as normal slots. So I went into the .xml and changed the Normal column to 2 and then further down the row added ;AV.SIDEWINDER;AV.SIDEWINDER to the Loadout column. I figured these 2 changes would do the trick. Once in the game my Foxtrot displays the 2 forward hardpoints, but they're blank and clicking on them causes a CTD.

So I figured maybe it had something to do with mixing slots, no other craft does it. So I went in and gave it 0 Normal and 4 Heavy slots. Then changed the loadout for only AV.AVALANCHE. Start the game and the same thing happens, 2 forward hardpoints are blank and clicking on them causes a CTD.

The Slots and WeaponPositions columns seem to still be set up for 4 hardpoints, and they show up in the loadout screen so I'm not sure what the issue is. The Foxtrot still works fine as long as you don't click on the 2 blank hardpoints. You can launch it and fight with it, it rearms, refuels, and repairs properly. The extra 2 hardpoint slots appear in the air combat window, they're just blank.

So clearly I'm missing something. Anyone got any ideas on how to make this change work properly?

[EchoFourDelta]

Just have it carry two missiles per slot instead of one; two slots gives it two missiles as it stands, and you're trying to give it another pair of slots for another pair of missiles. Just double up on the missile load. Simple enough, eh?

[Lorebot]

I could do that if I wanted to carry 4 of the same thing. The advantage of having 4 hardpoints is that I can mix-up the loadout more. 3 Torps and 1 Missile or 3 Missiles and a Torp aren't possible with just doubling up on weapon ammo. Granted the main reason for this is to let the Foxtrot carry 4 Torps to handle the larger alien ships easier, so doubling up on ammo would satisfy that. But atm I'm sort of more interested in why this is causing a CTD than actually getting the desired results.

I want to know if I'm doing something wrong or if they changed something about the aircrafts so you can't alter them this way.

[EchoFourDelta]

Eh, good points. Wish I could help ya there, but I've not yet attempted any heavier-duty stuff with the aircraft; with the way I suggested, you could at least split it up two ways, eh? Two of one, and two of another sort.

[GizmoGomez]

It's because the UI doesn't support more than two hardpoints at the moment. The older aircraft equip screen did, but the new one has had two hardpoints removed from the screen. Thus, when the game looks for the UI support for four hardpoints and doesn't find it, it freaks out and crashes.

[Lorebot]

Why would you remove a functioning UI element like that?

Seriously, what could prompt them to do that? It doesn't make any sense to me at all...

[WalrusJones]

I do hope we do gain the ability to mod the UI, so one could add more weapon tabs, change the ship loadout patterns (Say, replace a torpedo with 4 missiles.)

[GizmoGomez]

They removed the UI for 4 hardpoints and replaced it with a slightly modified UI for 2 hardpoints. This is because they only want 2 hardpoints on the Foxtrot for balance reasons.

[Lorebot]

Removing a functioning UI element for balance reasons is overkill. If it's a balance issue then just restrict access...but in a game with so much access for the community to build mods and make changes it's damned inconsiderate to remove it entirely.

[rynait]

Hello Lorebot,

I doubt the 4 hardpoints is removed in the UI, because it is the maximum. Those in 19.5 aircraft.xml file that was changed. If you could look for old thread, someone figured out several tricks with hard points. I do not know if those tricks are still viable or not.

Regardless of tricks, there are three entries in xml involved with certain hardpoints.

one is for what kind of hardpoint,

one for where the hardpoint is located

one for "default" installed hardpoint.

R

edited: condor has 3 hardpoint. evident that is not UI change.

Edited July 28, 2013 by rynait
proof

[GizmoGomez]

Ha, proof you say.

I was just saying that in the aircraft screen, you no longer see four hardpoints for the Foxtrot, right? You see two.

It used to show four, now it shows two.

Ergo, the UI was changed.

QED

[Lorebot]

Gizmo, for the record if you change aircrafts.xml to give the Foxtrot 4 Heavy hardpoints the slots do indeed appear on the loadout screen where they're supposed to be. The screen coordinates for the slots are still there in the table, they've just been disabled by lowering the hardpoints to 2 instead of 4.

The problem is that they reappear blank and if you click on them the game crashes.

I'm not sure why it crashes, but something somewhere was changed that's making it behave this way and I'd love to know what and find out if I can undo it or not

[rynait]

Hello,

OK ok... gizmo are referring to the 19.5 play, not hardcode.

still I think 4 hardpoint is still there, in the aircraft.xml files.

[GizmoGomez]

At any rate, the point is that the two lost hardpoints can't be brought back at the moment (that we know of, at least), so you'll have to increase the ammo for the other two hardpoints. Make them triple ejector racks, or something.

[rynait]

Hello,

figured out why modded foxtrots (changing to 4 hardpoints) was not working (in 19.5).

well changing the aircraft.xml did work (change the two stat, the amount of hardpoint allowed, and what is default load ie av.avalanche)

the clue:

the "already" built foxtrots will have difficulties (crash/no selection) with added 2 hardpoints. you must build new foxtrots and it will handle 4 hardpoints with no problems.

R

[Lorebot]

Well, I guess I'll have to give that a try for my next play through...there's no way I can afford to rebuild all 3 of my Foxtrots in my current game

[Gauddlike]

In general any changes to existing items in the xml should be considered to be incompatible with current games.

There are some changes that will play nicely but anything beyond a basic value change (like increasing weapon damage) is very likely to kill your current game.

[rynait]

Hello,

tested and running ok.

R

[Ishantil]

Hello,

tested and running ok.

R

Can you post the code, rynait?

[rynait]

Hello,

not sure how to post it here...

and i do not have an "dropbox account". is there a free account to upload?

R

I got it set up, here is the link... https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzkqaijr8zjm5wi/aircrafts.xml

Edited August 2, 2013 by rynait

[anesah]

Hello, folks.

I'm curious about creating or editing a few of the values in the aircraft.xml file, and I was hoping someone here could help.

There are three lines of consequence: Weapon Positions, Loadout, and Slot Positions.

Weapon Positions seems a little convoluted; it looks like a 90 degree leftward rotation of the x-y plot of the airplane's hardpoints (including cannon/s) on its image in-game, starting from a nose-down position (for all purposes of this post, we will assume the image is in this nose-down configuration because without this rotation, we have values in Y,X form, and no one likes that). This puts the origin at the bottom left corner, the nose of the plane in the general center at approximately 33 X units, and the maximum X,Y somewhere greater than 48,44. More likely, Xmax is 66ish units and if Xmax's edge forms the short edge of an approximately 30-60-90 triangle we would have Ymax at around 114 (I did this in a hurry without opening the game or files for visual clues and only looked at the Foxtrot entry for mathematical pointers, if there are errors feel free to point them out). Remember, the nose is pointing down.

Loadout is much more self-explanatory. It seems to be the default weapon loadout, assuming you acquire the aircraft without any weapon upgrades. This section is also a little confusing, however, because it's not in the same order as the hardpoints I just described. In every case I remember, missiles/torpedoes always list before cannons regardless of the order in Weapon Positions.

Finally, Slot Positions. This one has me totally stumped. At first it looked like a list of degrees, perhaps firing arcs, but there's the occasional entry greater than 360 (see the 440 on the Foxtrot). There are, in every case, two entries for every hardpoint delineated by semicolons, suggesting to me that these are not coordinates, but information in and of themselves. What information I can't figure out. I'm hoping someone else has cracked this one.

Sorry to resurrect a relatively old post as a new user. Thanks for any information you may have.

Edit: Huh, seems like I was way off. Thanks Rynait (below)

Edited August 9, 2013 by anesah

[rynait]

Hello anesah,

suggest to look up this thread

Modder has put lot of detail on aircrafts and missles.

might be a clue or two in there.

R