different kinds of units

[Audie292]

Would be fun if it was possible to have different kinds of corps or armies - mountain, elite (guard/Waffen SS etc.), mechanized (armored infantry), artillery (Soviet army had large artillery formations - but those can be made by editing rockets of nations that did not have them), or different types of fighters/bombers or tanks available at the same time.

Will partisans be available, and in which class? What about anti-partisan units?

[pzgndr]

Mods can customize units, but there are a limited number of predefined unit types. What I mean is, you could call Rockets something else such as archers or catapults but the new unit will still behave like SC2 Rockets. In other words, the research area for Rockets and the Combat Target Values for Rockets (or whatever you call them and provide new graphics for) will continue to act the same way. You can not, for example, change Rockets to "Hovercraft" and expect to see action point increases with each new level of research. Only the Rockets values would change. Combat interactions between the Rockets unit type "slot" and other unit types will continue to act the same way. Does this help?

[Fireball]

Cant you bring in the option that we can create an unlimited number of units or explain why this is not possible ? I am just asking because i would like to understand why this is so complicated to add in as a feature. Thanks

[pzgndr]

Short answer is that it's probably a code design decision to establish a limited number of item classes or unit types. These things all have to inter-relate with the rest of the code. Hubert can provide a better answer than I can about how complicated it is to add new unit types.

It might be possible to add in some spare unit type slots and some way to define their generic combat target values. There may be some way to define them like an existing unit type, since there's a big difference between what corps and subs and bombers can do and how research affects them. This might be a good idea for a future enhancement.

As for numbers of units themselves, there is a 256 limit for each country and each unit type. Like Russia could have up to 256 corps or armies etc. I suppose some diehard out there will find a way to bump up against this limit and want more, but that's another issue.

[Audie292]

It helps. I just wonder, is it possible to select between several types of Rockets, like Heavy Artillery, V1 and V2 all behaving as Rockets and available at the same time or is only one kind of Rockets available?

[pzgndr]

Here's a sample of the localization file that can be edited:

; Unit ID's

#HQ= HQ

#CORPS= Corps

#ARMY= Army

#ENGINEERS= Engineers

#PARATROOPS= Paratroops

#ROCKETS= Rockets

#TANK_GROUP= Tank Group

#AIR_FLEET= Air Fleet

#BOMBERS= Bombers

#BATTLESHIP= Battleship

#CRUISER= Cruiser

#CARRIER= Carrier

#SUB= Sub

#PARTISANS= Partisans

#AMPHIBIOUS_TRANSPORT= Amphibious Transport

#TRANSPORT= Transport

There is only one unit type that behaves like Rockets, and that's Rockets. You can change that line to read #ROCKETS= "Whatever" and edit the bitmap images, but you only have that one unit type slot to work with.

But here's an option. Each country can have its own unique combat target values, plus with different research levels you can always customize force pools. So you could create a single empire with different countries, where each one had slightly different Level 0 Rocket units. Different strike ranges, AP, attack/defend values, etc.

For typical progressions from light artillery to medium to heavy to V-1s to V-2s, I just consider each tech level to represent that. In SC2 you'll be able to keep some units at L2 while others get upgraded to L4. Just rename the individual units accordingly and there you go.

[J P Wagner]

So Bill, if I wanted to have Armored Cars in the Russian Civil War, I could change #Army= Army to #ARMY= Armored Cars and adjust the values accordingly. The final touch would be to change the unit counters to show some type of Armor Car, though my skills in that area will probably have it look like a road kill squid. In the game then, there would be no Army groups just Corps, since I changed the slot. If research is in the scenario, then the unit might change from Armored Cars to Light Tanks to Armored Trains...

Is this basically how it could be done?

[pzgndr]

Yes you could do that, but... Armored Cars in your example would still be "seen" by the code as an Army target type, and as an Army unit type affected by Infantry Weapons research.

How the combat target values interact with other target types and how research affects each unit type is pretty much fixed in the code. You can edit what these things are called and change the bitmaps, but the relationships cannot be edited. Understand these relationships and you can understand the limitations, and the possibilities.

[J P Wagner]

Thanks for the clarification..as long as one can change the Attack, Defense, and Movement values, that will help....