XCOM EU Placing of soldiers on Map at Mission Begin?

[baszermaszer]

Question to MOD experts:

Where could be the HEX data about positioning soldiers at beginning of a mission?

Four to six soldiers are positioned at the entry area bunched together. XCOM-code makes sure they are all in the entry-zone.

If I set

SKYRANGER_CAPACITY = 9

which is more than usual, XCOM-code places 2 additional soldiers at the same X,Y,Z position on the 3D map.


If the 3D map is flat - in case of grocery store, gas station, etc.. - then plus soldiers are placed at least 20 squares away from the default group and can be played as one or two Behind Enemy Lines.

If the map is NOT flat - in the forest, broken bridge, etc.. - soldiers are always placed at default X,Y,Z "Base Height" = Ground Floor level. Of course in this case there are no physics colliders there nor is that ground level "pathed" or path-traceable so the soldiers can not move, but otherwise are alive, and can throw grenades. This ground level is always at least one floor below the beginning level of the group and almost always "below ground" = unreachable.

These stuck soldiers always have a "ceiling" above themselves, which would be the wooden floor of a building on a terror mission for example(so the soldiers are in the cellar.. :smile:), then the grenade hits the house wooden floor (cellar ceiling) - this shows collider objects (possibly the plane for the house) are working in both directions and the grenade falls back onto the stuck soldiers head and explodes damaging them.

Now, obviously my question is how to position plus soldiers so they are conveniently placed near the 4-6 bunch or all together?

Where do you think the HEX code for this could be?

Maybe debugging that level would help by clicking on the stuck soldiers and checking out their position in the code and trying to determine by loading a mission multiple times, where the game stores / puts XYZ coordinates of soldiers after placing them onto the map?

Determining correct coordinates would be:
1. Selecting a soldier in the vanilla group.
2. Reading his coordinates in the debugger
3. Hopefully finding that soldiers coordinate scripted somewhere
4. Editing the code to place
"soldier.[7].XZY_on_mission" = "soldier.[1].XZY_on_mission" + square_distance*2 or using a better method to place them together.

Even putting 2 plus soldiers into the same place would enable them to move independetly anywhere as the default group.

Edited April 8, 2013 by baszermaszer

[johnnylump]

Have you read this thread? It's the starting point for any discussion of squad size increases.

 

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/804076-rd-to-increase-squad-size/

 

Also understand that thread started back in October; our understanding and capabilities have expanded significantly since then, but there are still things that are out of modders' reach.

 

IIRC, you can activate the developer's console and manually relocate soldiers.

Edited April 8, 2013 by johnnylump

[baszermaszer]

Thank You. Have read through the thread. Can't see better solution since squad size seems to be hard-coded. Console command solution is excellent!

Edited April 9, 2013 by baszermaszer