How to mod nations themselves?
 

Well, I've been trying to find ways to change nation names, flags, emergence dates, etc. but with no luck.

I also read the mobhack help HTML manual but it did not have what I wanted.

Basically, I am trying to make a fictional world with fictional, albait resembling bits and bits to the reality, nations.

Any help is appreciated http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif


- Companion

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

You don't. We do - all that stuff is buried deep in the game code.

All that you as an end user have available is the Mobhack editor, to change the existing nationalities unit, weapon or formation data. Plus, you can do some hacking of the flags and other graphics with SHPed, should you know what graphic is what.

But "Russia" and "USSR" and when the new Russian flag replaces the Soviet one is hard-coded. Same for the air superiority tables, counter battery, leader ratings and so on.

Cheers
Andy

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Names can be changed only in Mobhack. This has no effect on the game at all but at least in Mobhack the OOB name will be whatever you want it to be. Flags and such can also be tweaked using SHPed. The files you are looking for are: Battle.shp, Icon0095, Icon0097 and Icon0098. Careful with the smaller flags though, they can be a little tricky. At least in my experience.

Now, onto business. Air superiority tables? What are they? Obviously they have something to do with the performance of aircraft in-game but as of yet I have not come across this or heard of this.

The reason I ask is as follows: I am encountering a few issues with my mod and I need some advice from eiter yourself or Mr. Goodbrand. I am working with OOB 35, amongst others and am getting a little worried about a few things. What I would like to know is what are the morale, leader and air superiority ratings for Denmark and for that matter what are they for the Mujahadeen and West Germany.

An odd mix of nations I know but Denmark was replaced by my Imperial German OOB and I need to know if the figures for Denmark and West Germany actually represent that or not. What I mean to say is I don't want my Imperial Army to come off pusified, if you know what I mean.

I shall search the forums to see if I can come up with some data on this but if not a heads up would be useful. I will have more questions later.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

The air superiority tables are code used to determine the number of flights offered given nation A fights nation B, depending on year, and so on and so forth.

Just like the counter-battery effectiveness tables, and the leader ratings tables, these are hard-coded items buried deep in the code itself. They are not data-driven, like the AI pick lists. There is therefore no way for an end user to play with these for imaginary projects. Same goes for the flag changes - if it is time for one of the 14 or so new flags for the Afghans, it changes to use that flag. These flags are of course not in the 0..N sequence in the various SHP files. Same goes for the battle locations between army A and B - the Danish OOB even if you play about with it, will use Denmark-specific locations, the Swiss Swiss, depending on who is paired up against. (And I cannot think of any sane way to do battle locations between any opponents other than in specific code, so no way ever to have those in a data table - spaghetti code is the only option).

So, if you want to have "imperial Germans" or Ruritanians or whatever - you can hack about, but they will in reality be whatever OOB you based them upon. So don't be surprised if you get a battle set in say, The Andes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Third party end-user projects are hackery, and so unsupported by ourselves. As with any hacking project (and sp2ww2 started as that, with code changes poked into the Sp2 exe) - you are entirely on your own. We are not interested in Alternative history, Draka universe fiction, Sci-fi or whatever. Feel free to post such things here, if you want to, and if you are prepared to support them. We won't.

Game support is limited to actual armies supported by the OOBS we supply, and any reasonable small "what-ifs" with these (and determining such stuff even a year or 2 in the future, like the UK FRES systems, its a Boxer - oh no it isn't, oh yes it is (this week) - is quite bad enough, thank you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif).

The data mod tools like Mobhack are provided for that purpose, only. Any other usage is at your own risk.

Cheers
Andy

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Really? How would one go about that? That would be helpful for me.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Does anyone know where to find "hacked" SPMBT mod communities?

It really sounds interesting.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

mhMBT.ini

Don

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Thanks a lot Don. Much appreciated.

What do you mean by "hacked"?

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

By "hacked" I meant:

This.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Oh, okay. I was just curious, because there's been some talk here about such projects here (someone had even mentioned a Star Wars mod a while back). Plasmakrab has also does his alternate history mod as well (Cold War hasn't ended).

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

They aren't hack jobs. They are OOB, SHP and LBM mods. End user stuff.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

What are the ratings for Denmark and so on then? How inferior are my forces? I need to know so I can make the necessary Morale and Experience changes in the game. As for battle generation, well I prefer to pick a map from somewhere or create one. So that isn't a problem.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Well? I kind of need to know.

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Load the game, buy some troops and look at the ratings. In the time you've been waiting you could have easily figured it out for yourself. Denmark has an average 70 rating for morale and experience

"Air superiority tables" are simply the chance one side or the other will have aircraft available if the air preference is set to XXX and NO I'm not publishing the code to show you

OK ?

Don

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

So the air superiority rating has no bearing on whether your planes will drop their whole bomb load at once or how long it will take them to arrive on the field of battle then?

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

No, it has absolutely nothing to do with that at all.

It's a number that is compared against the other OOB's air number, and is then churned through code to determine who gets assigned what allocation of air strikes if the air level is set to "XXX" (or in a long campaign, since these use "XXX" setting for air strikes, disregarding any end-user preferences).

Andy

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Ah, thankyou. What determines the other thing then?

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

What "other thing" do you mean?.

Andy

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Whether the planes dump their load all in one go or not?

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

There is no such option, and never has been.

Andy

Re: How to mod nations themselves?
 

Oh. I thought I saw someone mention it on one of the posts in this section of the forum. It probably was a misunderstanding someone else had which I picked up. Oh well never mind then. Thanks for the answers.