Modular Airships

I thought Airships would cool addition to fall from heaven and I saw that other people on the forums wanted airships so I made this little modmod. All it does right now is add a few airships; the airships have 100% defensive withdraw and are defensive combat only to simulate them being unreachable in the air and they attack other units like airplanes do so, you can attack airships with other airships but not with ground units. You can get it here.

Installation:
The installer has the same default install as the fall from heaven one. If you installed Fall From Heaven to a different directory you know what to do

For Changelog

Feedback would be nice and I'm willing to add more kinds of airships (such as unique units and different tech levels). I didn't check for balance so far so it might be overpowered.

Known Problem:
Airships go over mountains funny (don't know how to fix that but I have a feeling its by making them "fly" the same way as hawks)

That was sudden. I've been discussing this idea for ages and was going to get round to this myself!

Seems like you've beaten me to it

What are your airship stats? Want any help designing UUs?

Al

how do you add units?Please be totally clear step by step,ive been down this road.

EDIT: Sorry thought you wanted to make new units to add to the game I'll leave this here so that question doesn't pop up

The transport moves 7 spaces with 6 cargo and 4 strength and the combat one moves 5 or 6 spaces (cant remember right now) has 7 strength and has 2 cargo.

@ hognolia
This is really easy. I just dove in and figured it out myself but you could check out some tutorials like:
This
or
This

They are both kinda out of date but they tell you the basics and a mod has the same file structure as the game files so this shouldn't be hard to apply to ffh.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS, remember the golden rule: make backups!!!! Never directly alter the files!!!!

By the way what did you mean by:

ive been down this road.

Click to expand...

Possible bug:
I had a quick look at the airships earlier. I "summoned" some Combat Airships and Airships via the WB.

The C.A. couldn't attack the Airships, and I had a CTD when I hit next turn. The Airship looked tiny in the civlopedia, too, btw, but about as large as the CA in game.

I didn't double check anything or look a a log, so it may not have been the Airships. I'll probably try it again this evening.

I mean,if I see a download for a unit that I can add to my game and want to add it,I cannot figure out how,so if I download it,where does it get put?What file would it go in?Ive tried to add unit downloads w/ no luck.Another thing(the part where I say Ive been down this road,meaning...)With all the different versions of Civ 4 and mods to go with it,do these Civ 4 unit downloads work in all of these?And is there a unit file?

hognolia said:

I mean,if I see a download for a unit that I can add to my game and want to add it,I cannot figure out how,

Click to expand...

If you're looking through the "Downloads" area I think that graphics-only unit mods sometimes get misfiled. So perhaps what you've downloaded before was just the unit graphics, meant for someone to put in a mod?

Anyway, you're in luck with the Farmer's download because it has an installer. If you've installed Civ4 and FFH2 in the default folders you should be able to just accept the default folder it offers. If not, point it to the "Mods" folder just above FFH2's main folder.

So if you've got
games/civ4/beyond the sword/Mods/Fall from Heaven 2 031/

then point the installer at
games/civ4/beyond the sword/Mods

If a unit is a module then put the folder in a "Modules" folder under the FFH2 "Assets" folder.

Using the above structure again:
games/civ4/beyond the sword/Mods/Fall from Heaven 2 031/Assets/Modules

If you don't have already run any modules you'll need to
1) Make the Modules folder.
2) In the Fall from Heaven folder edit "Fall from Heaven 2 031.ini" . At the very beginning of the file change "ModularLoading = 0" to ModularLoading = 1"

If a unit isn't modular then you'll need to replace or change a few files. Hopefully there's a "readme" telling you just what to do.

With all the different versions of Civ 4 and mods to go with it,do these Civ 4 unit downloads work in all of these?And is there a unit file?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure a BTS download won't work with non-BTS. I'm don't know about Warlords. With FFH2 a .31 file won't work with .30.

Units aren't really contained in single files. One file contains most of the information, another the art-info, the art files are separate, and a unit may involve several other files, too. A mod might contain only 1 file, though, if all it needs to change is something in one of those files. I think a modular mod will always have at least 2. Well, unless all it does is change some in-game text...

Hey man

Here are some suggestions that myself and Xienwolf were discussing on the topic of airship units.

You might want to take a look at some of the UU units suggested to replace the "standard" airship

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=272406&page=2

The address above will take you there

What are your plans for this mod?

Al

Tarquelne said:

Possible bug:
The C.A. couldn't attack the Airships, and I had a CTD when I hit next turn. The Airship looked tiny in the civlopedia, too, btw, but about as large as the CA in game.

Click to expand...

The airships/combat airships don't attack like normal, they attack like airplanes in vanilla civ (the target button). I have no idea what would cause a ctd but they are small in 'pedia because I made the airships "fly" in the game. (question: should I raise how high they are?) Did you mean the CA was small in the game, because it isn't for me.

@Alzara
That thread was one of the reasons I made this mod

Tarquelne said:

The Airship looked tiny in the civlopedia, too, btw, but about as large as the CA in game.

Click to expand...

Farmer Bobathan said:

they are small in 'pedia because I made the airships "fly" in the game. (question: should I raise how high they are?) Did you mean the CA was small in the game, because it isn't for me.

Click to expand...

Think it's this bit he's getting at. Both are Scaled to 0.1 in-game, but in the 'pedia one is InterfaceScale 1, whilst the other is InterfaceScale 0.1 - one tenth the size of the other 'pedia entry.

I'll have to fix that. All I did was copy the pirate (airship_war) and the queen of the line (airship_standard) artdefines so I didn't think anything of it. Kinda related: how do they make planes and hawks fly in game, what I did was raise them up in nifskope and put an unused node at (0,0,0) but I have a feeling there is an easier way.

Farmer Bobathan said:

The airships/combat airships don't attack like normal, they attack like airplanes in vanilla civ (the target button).

Click to expand...

Oh, right.

I haven't investigated the crash yet.

Think it's this bit he's getting at. Both are Scaled to 0.1 in-game, but in the 'pedia one is InterfaceScale 1

Click to expand...

Yep. And, "Oh, so that's what InterfaceScale does."

Yeah:
unit model size * fScale = size in game
unit model size * fScale * fInterfaceScale = size in Pedia & Size in lower left corner of in-game screen.


And you can also set the ActasAir flag to get them to have clouds as a background instead of grass.

If using the "flight Trick" of placing an unused Node on (0,0,0) and raising the rest of the unit causes it to go outside of the Pedia screen, that is when the fInterfaceScale really comes in handy. You either shrink it to get the unit back on screen, or you make the unused node be a reduced size copy of the model, then make fScale really large.

I updated the mod and it is now in the downloads database the link is in the first post along with a changelog.

I just came across the airship in the Dragonia mod - if you ask Darque/Woodelf/Winddelay nicely, they probably wouldn't mind it being used for this modmod too...

Cool I'll ask if I can use it as and early airship.

Farmer did you see my posts?

Al

Yep, why do you ask?

Cause I wanna help out. I've been discussing airships for eons

I was also wondering what your plans are for this mod?

Al

Well, I plan to keep this mod updated until the end of ice and I also plan to take other peoples ideas for UU airships and different tiers of airships.