#secondshape questions
 

Hi fellas.

Question here... I've been working on a mod since Dom2... its mostly a mix of things that I like. I'm extremely, extremely picky about getting things just so however, so, I guess, its had a rather long development history. Anyway....

One of the units I made is a howitzer or field cannon. The unit works in game just fine acutally, looks good, works good. I don't think its overpowered for its cost or anything. Playing the game with my buddy it seems to be powerful but expensive and even with battles where I made a bunch of them I've lost now and again so I think its good stat/cost wise.. here is my question though -- the unit pic is a howitzer, with 3 crew members. I think it looks pretty sharp actually. But I was thinking it would be really kewl if as the gun took damage, the crew members died. For example, it shows a guy with a torch for firing it, a guy with a powder sack, and a guy with a swab staff (to clean the barrel between firings ;). Anyway, I'd like the guys to kick off as it takes damage.

I think the way to do this is with #secondshape. So the unit has 30 hitpoints right now, 10 for each crewmembers in theory right? So would I give it 10 hitpoints with a second shape thats the same but with a different unit pic showing 1 less guy, then that has 10 hp and a second shape with just one crew memeber. I think thats it. Pretty easily done really. So... what happens after the battle?

According to the mod manual... I can use #secondshape to have it change into another when it hp are low, then #firstshape to change back when its better. Ok, how about chaining those? So it starts out good, gets arrowed a lot -- changed to a pic with 2 guys. More arrows ensue. That gets changed into a #secondshape showing one guy. Alright, so lets say that it gets healed -- it goes back to #firstshape showing two guys, then it gets healed again, it goes back to #firstshape showing all three? That seems to be what would happen I think. Something I'm a little unclear on... if its in its "thirdshape" showing 1 guy and a battle ends with the unit surviving but beat up -- does it heal up to the original with 3 guys or with 2?

(Actually, right now it fires 1 every 3 turns. I'd also like to change that so when 1 crew members dies it fires every 4 turns, then 1 every 5... but AFAIK, and As Far As I Tested, you can't have it fire less then 1 in 3 -- too bad!)

Thanks in advance ;)

Re: #secondshape questions
 

Well, it's fairly easy to make a unit that turns into lesser versions of itself. That you can do just with setting #secondshapes. If you give one of the loss stages a #firstshape it will change to that shape after the battle. I don't think you can heal it in battle and have it assume the #firstshape but I could be wrong. In that case it would probably be better to give both temporary forms an initial form of the fully intact howitzer, I am not sure it would work correctly otherwise. Another thing you could do is give the howitzers #secondshapes and #shapechange. It wouldn't really help them in a battle, but you could bring them back to full on the strategic map.

Re: #secondshape questions
 

All three alive: #secondshape "two alive"
Two alive: #secondshape "one alive", #firstshape "all alive"
One alive: #firstshape "all alive"

Won't heal in battle afaik, but should heal after a fight.

Re: #secondshape questions
 

Yup, there it goes... works fine, looks good ;) I figured as much but I wanted a few hints. Thanks guys ;) I'll probably release the mod to the community pretty soon. Everything is more or less working now ;) Just need to fix a last few bugs related to the flavor text in the nation selection screen....

Thanks again! ;)

Re: #secondshape questions
 

Love the idea of field guns - have always wanted to do them - except in a fantasy environment - catapults, trebuchets, mangonels etc.

Re: #secondshape questions
 

Explosive or otherwise aoe damaging siege weapons work well and can be set to fire every three turns and so on. Ones that hurl a barrage of small projectiles will fire every turn though, since #nratt is used to control both shots per 'launch' and frequency of launches.

I personally don't think siege weapons (on the battlefield) work out too well in dom3.