Strategies.txt Knowledge Base

[President_Elect_Shang]

The following post is a copy and paste quoted conversation between Suicide Junkie and me over the Strategies.txt file. The conversation started when I noticed that a ship using a new vehicle type (a shuttle) would not engage in combat. And any other unit (even those without the new vehicle type) would run from a unit which did have one.

[President_Elect_Shang]

President_Elect_Shang said:
During my testing I built a light cruiser with a shuttle bay in it. I didn’t bother with the shuttle just an empty bay. I then went to the simulator and sent it against 2 lighter units (destroyers). The two smaller units ran away. I tried it with ten lighter units and they ran away. Then I tried it with a light cruiser against a light cruiser. They ran away from each other. I have searched through the strategies and can’t figure out what to change to stop this silly running away! If I remove the shuttle bay all units engage as expected. The weapons the units mount are able to target shuttles but as I said at the start I have never loaded a unit with shuttles. What needs to be adjusted to get them to beat the heck out of each other again?

Suicide Junkie said:
You need to create a new strategy.

The defaults have garbage orders for the "shuttle carrier" type of ship. Which essentially means "don't get hurt" strategy.

When you add a new unit type (called, "XYZ" for example), the strategies get two new entries;
1) XYZ
2) XYZ Carrier Ship

You'll have to edit the default strategies.txt to include something for those two in order to get sane results
You can also delete your existing strategies and then create new ones in an existing game; the new strategies will have entries for the new unit types.

For reference, I had to have the following lines in GGmod's strategies:
Code:

---

Target Type 11 Name                         := Militia Carrier Ship

Target Type 11 Engage Distance              := Medium Range

Target Type 11 Damage Amount                := 100%

...

Target Type 15 Name                         := Ground Base Carrier Ship

Target Type 15 Engage Distance              := Medium Range

Target Type 15 Damage Amount                := 100%

...

etc

---

President_Elect_Shang said:
The default strategies for an empire are created when the empire itself is generated; either by the player or the mods creator. So if we want our adjustments to take (such as my Shuttle Carrier or your Militia Carrier Ship) we have to build the empire for the player or delete all empires forcing the player to take our modded Startigies.txt file.

Now I need to copy this thread into the Knowledge Base sub-forum. I can’t admin here can you move the whole thing there SJ? If not I will do it the old fashioned way, copy and paste with credit given.

[President_Elect_Shang]

President_Elect_Shang said:
The default strategies for an empire are created when the empire itself is generated; either by the player or the mods creator. So if we want our adjustments to take (such as my Shuttle Carrier or your Militia Carrier Ship) we have to build the empire for the player or delete all empires forcing the player to take our modded Startigies.txt file.

NOTE The last comment quoted above is critical to your mod running correctly when played by another person. If you do not tell the user they will need to create new strategies so that your new unit types are included; or if you do not build new default empires (including any quick starts) the ships they build will just run away from each other. SE5 will only read the new strategies once! That is only when the EMPIRE is created!

[Raapys]

From my experience it's not actually possible to prevent a weaponless ship from running away( when under AI control), regardless of what the strategy says. Anyone else had different results?

The last comment quoted above is critical to your mod running correctly when played by another person. If you do not tell the user they will need to create new strategies so that your new unit types are included; or if you do not build new default empires (including any quick starts) the ships they build will just run away from each other.

This can be avoided.

Replace( or make, if you don't have the folder/file already ) the Default_AI_Strategies.txt file in SEV\Your Mod\Empires\Default\ with the modified version and all new empires created will use it by default.

[Phoenix-D]

The ships in question weren't weaponless.

As for making non-weaponed ships not run- the only thing I've found is to keep them with the gun ships in formation or using a RAM engagement range.

Obviously the later is..not all that useful.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Thank you PD. As he said the ships had weapons. It was the new units and the default strategies that caused the problem. Anyway that is still some good info and it is great to see all of this stuff pilling up. It should make it much easier for new modders to learn than we "old timers" had it from SE4. Besides who came up the "old timers" thing and what makes someone an old timer? What would I be since I haven't released a mod yet? See were I'm going with this; the old timer thing seems so... click-ish (?spelling?)