[MoO] How to Mod Moo2 Ice-X

[Darquan11]

Hi, weve played tons of games and love the ice mods but would love to make ground combat more relevant, can anyone tell us how to decrease everythings vulnerability to bombardment?

Thanks for any help with this!

 

[Rocco.40]

Hi-
With parameter bombardment_use_armor_for_buildings you can tweak non-military planet structures (buildings, colonists etc) to be affected by player's armor and get 1/2 of according planetary defense building HP's each (with min 100).
For increasing hp of military structures, it can be done in somewhat elaborate way. The DEFENSIVE ANTI-BLITZ MOD is prime example here that can be studied on how its done (modding of armor table values and ship and combat satellite hit points). It can be downloaded from mods section in moo2mod.com .

 

[Josan12]

Hey Rocco thanks for your reply. Which .CFG file do I add the bombardment_use_armor_for_buildings parameter to? Is it ICEMOD.cfg? (I like your ICE-M mod) I'm new to modding Moo2.
Also, can you give me a little guidance on where to look in the defensive anti-blitz mod files for the info on how to increase the HP of troops, colonists and buildings?

Thankyou sir!

 

[Rocco.40]

Yes, you can add the parameters to icemod.cfg.
Just remember when there is a future update of ice or the patch, then your changes will be overwritten.
If you just want to change 1-2 parameters you could write them in user.cfg instead. It will then apply to all mods.
Also, if you change multiple parameters, you are essentially making your own mod, so you can consider to name it as such.

As to DAB, what it does is change the armor table. Armor affects ships, star bases and ground defenses.
DAB increases the armor multipliers and at the same time lowers the armor and structure hit points of ships and star bases in the hull table.
The net effect being that ground defenses hit points have increased.
If you first start up a classic game (and close it again) you can open the file extract.cfg and find in it the armor table and hull table.
You can then compare the standard values with the values written in defens.cfg of the DAB mod.

hope this helps you a bit further...

 

[Josan12]

Thankyou Rocco. I'm going to mess with those settings today.

I am wondering however - why is it not possible to simply change the base HP of the marines, pop and buildings without messing with the armor table?
TBH, I'd rather not mess with the armor values as they seem pretty good, but it seems you're saying I can't simply change the base HP value?

 

[Rocco.40]

clarification: the armor table influences defensive buildings, not 'marines, pop and buildings'.
for those three there is the parameter 'bombardment_use_armor_for_buildings' as described above.

indeed atm you can't simply change base HP value of defensive buildings.
we'll introduce a parameter to give them a boost in to be released version 1.50.10.

 

[Josan12]

Ok good to know thankyou. Please, please do add a switch to increase marines, tanks, pop units and regular buildings HP - I for one would be so grateful! My intention is simply to make it much harder to just roll over an empire by bombarding every planet to dust in one turn. IMO, it should take 4 or 5 turns to obliterate a planet - and even then troops should mostly remain. That, in turn, would make bio-weapons more relevant to the game.

1) When ships bombard a planet is there a to-hit chance? What i mean to say is; can ships 'miss' when you click 'bombard' on the bombardment screen? If so, could I mod that chance and greatly reduce the 'to-hit' chance?
2) What does applying armor to defensive buildings do exactly? Does it increase these buildings HP in the same way as armor? (I.e. +50% hp from titanium to tritanium?)
3) I'd also love to make ship experience more relevant to the game - by significantly increasing the XP granted for destroying enemy ships. Is there an existing config for this?
4) Also - I'd love to see random events made more relevant. So often the random events effects are utterly marginal. (like earthquake - destroys one building. Big deal) I'd love to see space monsters scale as the game progresses, and occur more often. It would be good to see bad events hit the largest empire harder, and benefit weak empires more. Is this possible?
5) Antareans - is there a way to make them less.... random? As with the random events, IMO it would be so much better if they consistently attacked the empires doing the best. As is, they seem very random, and your mod only seems to make them attack with bigger fleets.

Thanks for an excelent mod, Rocco!

 

[Rocco.40]

-> such switch is already there, 'bombardment_use_armor_for_buildings' as I wrote above, it modifies hit points based on available armor tech.
1) yes and its already taken into account for the number of estimated bomb hits you get. its not easiliy moddable atm
2) i dont understand the question. defensive buildings start with 100 hit points and scale with your armor level, so tritanium gives a doubling not +50%.
3) you can lower the xp needed to level up in config, which also helps ships who sit around doing nothing so partial solution i guess.
4) you can increase the frequency of events but not how they are distributed amongst players with current config.
5) dunno, i think antaran target selecting is fine, they seem to favour stronger empires and to favour human players more when played on higher difficult setting.

 

[Nelphine]

I dislike how much antarans go after the human. Even with lucky, I've had them go after my home system with the first 3 attacks (gutting my best system), and only on hard.

 

[Josan12]

Hey Rocco,

I'm looking in ICEMOD.cfg and I can't see any switch to change the amount of XP needed to reach each level of experience (ship experience) can you point me to the correct category and switch?
Also, which switch should I change to make random events more frequent?

EDIT - also, I'd like to change the fedual research penalty from -35% to -25%. In the config i see -7 and -5. What do these values mean? And how do you make the game display the new value in the race pick screen?

EDIT2 - I think I found the values for ship crew experience.

EDIT3 - I'm also interested in increasing the values of the leaders skills. Next to the types of skill i see two numbers - what do they mean?

Thanks Rocco!

 

[Darquan11]

Hey Rocco,

Thanks! When you say 1) yes and its already taken into account for the number of estimated bomb hits you get. its not easiliy moddable atm ....if possible can you indicate where this might be found and i will do some trial and error to see if i can change it?

 

[Rocco.40]

I'm looking in ICEMOD.cfg and I can't see any switch to change the amount of XP needed to reach each level of experience (ship experience) can you point me to the correct category and switch?
Also, which switch should I change to make random events more frequent?

EDIT - also, I'd like to change the fedual research penalty from -35% to -25%. In the config i see -7 and -5. What do these values mean? And how do you make the game display the new value in the race pick screen?

EDIT2 - I think I found the values for ship crew experience.

EDIT3 - I'm also interested in increasing the values of the leaders skills. Next to the types of skill i see two numbers - what do they mean?

Not all parameters that we have made are present in the icemod.cfg. For a full overview you can look in extract.cfg and if you want to see short descriptions of them, then use the file 'example.cfg'. Some parameters and general syntax are described in more detail in the manual.pdf.
- 'ship experience' can be modded with crew_data
- for random events use event_roll (one for all events, one for lucky), also you can tune events in more ways, see extract.cfg
- yes -7 represents -35% and -5 for -25%, so if you want -25% for feudal then change -7 to -5. This stuff is described in the manual btw (p70).
- if you want to change in-game texts then you can either download the MoO2 Workshop from my site or do direct hex editing to the correct help.lbx.
- leaders can be modded in several ways. With leader_data and skill_cost (this is about the two numbers you saw). In addition you can mod the herodata.lbx (best with MoO2 Workshop) to change the skills that each leader has.
Have fun!

 

[Rocco.40]

When you say 1) yes and its already taken into account for the number of estimated bomb hits you get. its not easiliy moddable atm ....if possible can you indicate where this might be found and i will do some trial and error to see if i can change it?

Do you mean here that you want me to give you some generic area in the code so that you can change bytes by trial and error, hoping it will work at some point?

 

[Darquan]

From 1) it sounded like you knew where the ground attack % to hit for weapons was? I want to tinker with it, if you do! )

 

[Rocco.40]

From 1) it sounded like you knew where the ground attack % to hit for weapons was? I want to tinker with it, if you do! )

ok, made not entirely clear then, we haven't made any parameters there to tinker with the code.

EDIT: page 35 of the manual has a paragraph on orbital bombardment.

 

[Josan12]

Thanks for an excellent mod, Rocco - we've got some nicely tweaked ICE-X games going!

1) If you do find the offsets parameters for the bombardment to-hit % chance then please add a switch in the .cfg. My last wish is to reduce the bombardment
to-hit by approx 50%.
2) You know when you take a planet there's a % chance for your ground troops to take a tech from it? Would it be possible to make it them same for when
you destroy an enemy ship, and win the space battle?

(actually my last-last wish would be for MoO2 tactical combat to be real-time, but that's a pipe-dream!)

 

[Darquan11]

Little help with getting noscan and noreport wotking. I found them in extract but everytime i change these, they revert back when game started. How to change these to make permanent? Thanks!

 

[Rocco.40]

Little help with getting noscan and noreport wotking. I found them in extract but everytime i change these, they revert back when game started. How to change these to make permanent? Thanks!

Making changes to the file 'extract.cfg' has no effect on the game, it is literally only an extract of current game settings.
If you want changes to apply permanently to any mod, then you can add them to the file 'user.cfg'.

from Launcher: Edit/ USER.CFG
add the lines
/noreport = 1;
/noscan = 1;
then save the file and presto!

Alternatively you can add "/noreport /noscan" to "/skipintro" in the switches box of the launcher.

 

[Rocco.40]

Thanks for an excellent mod, Rocco - we've got some nicely tweaked ICE-X games going!

Ok guys, good to hear!

2) You know when you take a planet there's a % chance for your ground troops to take a tech from it? Would it be possible to make it them same for when
you destroy an enemy ship, and win the space battle?

What you describe is getting tech from ship debris, isn't that done in Stellaris or some other new space 4x?
The "would it be possible..." question can usually be answered with a yes in software-land. >so yes.
Is it likely that we will add functionality this to moo2? >no.