Long War upk changes

[johnnylump]

@ Artaban51

 

Just curious, did you successfully test that setting? I've been unsure if simply increasing the number of total aliens would do the trick, all the alien forces scripts also set up a number of pods (groups of 1-3 aliens), where (number of pods * 3) <= (number of aliens).

 

I haven't tried your method; when I've increased alien counts, I've also increased numbers of pods as well.

[bokauk]

From what I remember, the number of aliens in a pod is limited to three. It was a while ago since I looked into it, but I'm pretty sure there was the main "leader" alien for a pod, with two supporting aliens. Unfortunately, the supporting aliens are coded as supportAlien1 and supportAlien2 (can't remember the exact variable names) rather than an array (i.e. supportAliens[1]).

 

I can't remember exactly how the game handles number of aliens vs number of pods, but if I remember correctly, increasing the number of aliens doesn't increase the number of pods to go along with it, or if it does, it's up to a limit. It sounds like you've been tinkering with this anyway, so you've probably got a better idea of how it works than me and my bad memory have! :smile:

[johnnylump]

@ Bok -- I've never tested raising an alien count without also raising the pod count, so I don't know -- Artaban's post suggests he raised the total alien count without raising the pod count, and I'm curious if it worked; if so, it suggests the game adds pods retroactively.

[Zybertryx]

Sorry about the thread necromancy but this is a great thread full of great info anyway.

 

JL said, "Artaban's post suggests he raised the total alien count without raising the pod count, and I'm curious if it worked; if so, it suggests the game adds pods retroactively."

 

This has been my experience. It seems to me that if the pod count exceeds the spawn count on a given map then the game does add pods retroactively as soon as the last alien of the max spawn count is killed. I believe these instances are often mistaken as "teleports". I've had spawns appear right amongst my bloodied survivors as soon as the last Alien they were fighting was killed. For this reason I'm less inclined to use more than 4 pods on any map and have even gone back to using 2 pods on many maps (difficulty thresholds), having implemented a stripped down version of the greater-than-three-per-pod modlet to keep such small spawn counts numerically challenging, alienwise (pods of two, three, four and five are possible).

[johnnylump]

For those keeping score at home, I've posted a rather large text file with all the upk, actionscript* and localization changes for Long War 2.0. It's in the Long War miscellaneous file section. It's a mess of a file -- basically my notes for rebuilding the mod in the event of a patch. It's nothing I have time to support, but modders are welcome to use it for R&D purposes; just please give credit if you distribute a mod with any of these changes.

 

* except a couple of huge ones related to eight-soldier squads that can be found elsewhere on these forums

[fys]

Thanks a lot for sharing!

[IceRaptor]

A bit of necromancy, but I wanted to also voice a great thanks for sharing. I love many of the elements of the Long War - but not the brutal pace - and you being so free with your source allows me to customize the mod to my own tastes. Thanks so much for taking the time to publish the hex edit details!

[Acid81]

For the "Force build times for all items" hex change, does the TECH_TIME_BALANCE factore in the ini have to be modified for this to work or does one override the other ?

[johnnylump]

No, that mod and that setting have nothing to do with each other. TECH_TIME_BALANCE is a multiplier that affects all research times.