New here, hi. :) Have a problem (I think)

from Sins Forums
So I decided to try my hand at modding Sins as I've done with other games I played.. I just picked it up on Thursday and I love it, great game all in all. I started with something (that I thought was) simple, but now I'm not so sure...

I decided to start with the Vasari since that's the only faction I've played enough to understand all their research trees and ships, etc. I used ForgeTools' files... reduced max hull points, increased max shield points and fighters. This worked fine. So then I decided to go a little further and maybe modify one of the abilities on the carrier.

That didn't work so well, mainly because I was doing it backwards. I wanted to add a 'Aura' that would allow the Carrier to extend it's shield around the fighters and absorb damage for them. Obviously it'd be a long-range ability limited only to the fighters and have a high antimatter cost and cooldown.

So, to figure out how to get it to work, I decided to try and add shields to the fighters directly. Very small ones, only like 250 max points. The game and mod loaded fine... except I lost before the map loaded and I'm not sure why it happened. No errors, just I lost before the map loaded. The small random 1v1 map, not custom.

Just wondering if anyone has had this happen before. >.<
modding
6,580 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I bet you were using the 1.02 reference data (the 1.03 data is up now, by the way) and had the mod set to load on startup.

Did I hit the jackpot? :) The old gameplay.constants file causes this, since the 1.03 one is changed.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I just downloaded the ForgeTool yesterday so I would think they're updated?

Edit- Downloaded 1.03 Reference Data... Going to try it out. :P
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I would think so too, but I know that the instant loss on mod load is caused by an outdated gameplay.constants. Since you were modifying an ability, I don't imagine you messed with the file yourself.

An easy way to check - open the gameplay.constants file in your mod folder, and see if there's a line right on top that sets the max fleet cap at 2300 ;) If there is, it's an old file. If there isn't, please let me know what files you changed for your mod.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Okay, the 1.03 Reference Data fixed the insta-lose problem. Now one other thing if anyone knows... I tried reducing/increasing stats on the Carrier - this works. Then I tried adding a small shield to the Fighters again, not sure if it worked because there's no shield bar for Fighters. :|

(FighterPhaseCombat.entity)
maxHullPoints 85.000000
maxShieldPoints 200.000000
hullPointRestoreRate 0.400000
shieldPointRestoreRate 0.250000

That should work.. right? :/

Another thing I just noticed, in-game my Fighter's armor is 0, but in the entity file it says they have an armor value of 3. I think I broke something lol. I'm guessing it's the shield restore thing, I didn't bother to look how it was written.... brb.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Did the fighter entity have the maxShieldPoints 0.0 line, or did you add it yourself and set the value of 200?

I haven't played around with fighters too much but since the whole squad is selected rather than the individual fighters, I really don't know if it's possible to display their shields on the infocard.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
There was no shields originally, it was displayed as

maxHullPoints 85.000000
hullPointRestoreRate 0.400000

Then I added in the maxShieldPoints and shieldPointRestoreRate lines. You can select individual fighters to view their Health/Armor... I would think it would display a shield value if it had one... who knows. :P

Edit: Removing the Shield max/restore lines fixed the 0 armor issue, it's now displaying the normal Armor: 3.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
First... you missed to add the mitigation!
Second... you need a shield mesh for every ship, without them the game will be crash when the fighter hit by weapon fire, because the game can't run any shield animation/effect.

About armor... in the build list you only see the added armor levels that you gain by research.
Default armor is not showning up there.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Usually if the line isn't in the file already that means the entity type is not designed to use 'em, so that's probably why yours goofed up :)
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Usually if the line isn't in the file already that means the entity type is not designed to use 'em, so that's probably why yours goofed up


Yeah, I guess so. :P They should add a research upgrade for it. ^^

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
I'll bet the missing max mitigation tag is your problem. Try putting one in, that should be able to fix it. As far as the other ability goes, check out the shield projection ability/buff from the advent guardian, that will probably help you do what you're trying to do.