Giving perks/abilities directly soldiers and adding more council reque

[Zerazar]

Firstly: Is there a way to add perks/abilities directly to soldiers, so that all soldiers will have the ability? I'd like to give everyone rifle suppression and adding ShotSupress on the weapons does not interact properly with reaction shots. It also bugs out when used from high cover.

 

Secondly: Is there a way to increase the frequency of council requests without hurting council mission frequency?

[Elodran]

Sure, in XComStrategyGame.XGStrategySoldier.LevelUp, you could modify the function to also call GivePerk on the m_kSoldier member for that perk. Say when they reached Squaddie and picked up their class, you could also give them suppression.

 

Not sure about the second.

[Zerazar]

Sure, in XComStrategyGame.XGStrategySoldier.LevelUp, you could modify the function to also call GivePerk on the m_kSoldier member for that perk. Say when they reached Squaddie and picked up their class, you could also give them suppression.

 

Not sure about the second.

The unfortunate thing is that I want it for spicing up the early game, to have a little more to choose from. Also, that looks like a .upk edit would be needed, I'm not quite proficient in that.

[Krazyguy75]

Give it to the weapons or armor. If you want all soldiers to have it, give it to all weapons or armor.

 

EDIT: Oh, just noticed your post, nevermind then. I'd never really noticed problems with similar things, but I didn't really experiment with weapons as much as the armor.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Krazyguy75

[Zerazar]

Give it to the weapons or armor. If you want all soldiers to have it, give it to all weapons or armor.

 

EDIT: Oh, just noticed your post, nevermind then. I'd never really noticed problems with similar things, but I didn't really experiment with weapons as much as the armor.

I haven't tried adding it to armor - what's the name of the property to use then? I found ShotSuppress on other weapons, but don't have anywhere to compare with armor.

[Krazyguy75]

To be fair, I was just adding soldier perks. However, I don't think there is a difference between weapon, armor, and alien abilities, so (I think) adding ShotSuppress should probably be the same. Can't see why it'd get new results though. But feel free to try it.

 

PS: I'm quite possibly wrong, it's been ages since I worked with armor/weapon abilities (this was pre EW), so don't expect me to be 100% right; I'm still a n00b around here.

[dubiousintent]

You need to read the wiki article 'XCOM:EU Perks'. Internally 'abilities' are different from 'perks'. The difference is explained there, along with what is involved in granting either. But it hasn't really been updated to reflect anything EW changed (if it did at all).

 

-Dubious-

Edited January 5, 2014 by dubiousintent

[Amineri]

The distinction between perks and abilities hasn't changed in EW, although it appears that Firaxis has built a few more explicit mechanisms to allow for easier mapping from perks to abilities (when appropriate).

 

It's not possible to give perks directly to characters via the Characters= arrays in the DGC.ini. Only abilities can be granted in this fashion, so it's not possible to grant ePerk_BulletSwarm in this manner, for example.

 

The best solution I can think of is a rework of the item mod (which has always been a bit of mess, TBH) that I've been working on for Long War. It allows definition of a perk (an actual perk, not an ability) to be tied to an item. When the item is equipped, the soldier gains the perk, and when the item is unequipped the perk is removed.

 

JL and I have been re-building the item mod for EW, and so far I have it pretty much working, and works for armors, weapons, pistols and small items. For EW I've tweaked it a bit to make it possible to configure perk-to-weapon assignments via the DGC.ini BalanceItems array. The mod currently also includes some things like adding meld to Engineering build requirements which may create additional unwanted effects compared to what the poster was asking for, though ...

[Krazyguy75]

If you're talking to me, I know the difference. Abilities and perks can be used more interchangeably (still not perfectly interchangeably), however, when you're talking about EW's ini. Cause most of the perks now have abilities for them, and most of the non-perk abilities have been removed. Also, some things like Psireflect, which were neither a perk nor an ability have been added.

 

EDIT: Missed Amineri's post. @Amineri, so do the new abilities in the game not successfully give their perks? Because I know that previous perks such as squadsight have been turned into abilities as well.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Krazyguy75

[Amineri]

 

EDIT: Missed Amineri's post. @Amineri, so do the new abilities in the game not successfully give their perks? Because I know that previous perks such as squadsight have been turned into abilities as well.

 

I haven't dug fully into the new perk/ability system in EW, but EW has 171 perks and 95 Abilities, so there's definitely not a 1-to-1 match. For some reason ePerk_Squadsight (3) has a corresponding eAbility_Squadsight (50), even though Squadsight isn't an active ability, but this isn't generally true. By active I mean something with a button in the tactical HUD.

 

For example:

ePerk_BulletSwarm (26) has no corresponding ability

ePerk_SnapShot (16) has no corresponding ability

 

My guess is that Squadsight was singled out because of their changes to crit chance for squadsight. I suspect that at squadsight range the usual eAbility_ShotStandard (7) is replaced by eAbility_Squadsight (50), and that the removal of critical chance is accomplished in this way (which explains why eAbility_HeadShot still has crit chance).

 

Firaxis does a similar switcharoo when a Heavy gets Mayhem ... the ability eAbility_ShotSuppress is secretly swapped for eAbility_ShotMayhem ... it has identical icon, and help text, and gets loaded into the same HUD slot, so it appears to be the same ability, but it isn't.