Modding the techtree/construction options

[DOCa Cola]

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 7:05 pm

Last edited by DOCa Cola on March 1st, 2012, 10:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hi,i resenty reloaded armada 2 and got fleet ops, the games great but im just wanting to change one thing and im not sure how to go about doing it.
in armada 1 and 2 you could capture the enemy's construction ships and gain acsess to there stations/ships/research. im wanting to do that with fleet ops but i dunno if i woud just need to alter the
tec tree or if it would be somthing else that needed to be changed.
id figure that this wouldent work for wht borg as thay have a extra reasorse for there ships.
but for federation, romulan,kingon and dominoin it seems possable.
just looking for someone to point me in the right direction, or recommend a mod that already does this.

eny info, help with this would be appreciated.
thanks

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 7:11 pm

welcome to the forums.

as far as I know, and what has been said this is not currently possible with FO.

It has been asked about in the past.

Maybe someone else can confirm this.

posted on February 2nd, 2012, 7:21 pm

The way that has been fixed is in every ship and station odf there is a line which states, buildablebyownerraceonly = 1, or something to that affect.  To do what you want, you would have to go through every station and primary ship file(not ranks 2-6, just the first) and then it should work.   That is a lot of work though.

p.s. welcome to Fleetops! 

posted on February 3rd, 2012, 10:11 pm

i was playing around in the odf file today, altering the "buildablebyownerraceonly = 1" seems to have no affect as far as i can tell, however changing the race tab does.the problem is you cant have 2 races for each item. eg race= "romuanempire" "borg" dosent work, if the borg assimalate a construction vessel and enter the construtcion tab the game crashes. you cna change the race tab with no probem, but the orggina race willl never be able to bould enything, you can after you capture a constructor but this gives you a race that can nolonger function.
im gonna keep looking and see if it can be changed

posted on February 4th, 2012, 6:47 am

You will have to make sure that the construction ships, shipyards, and ships all have that line removed before it will work.

Changing your race so that you are now the owner race will work, but of course you see the issues with that.

posted on February 29th, 2012, 1:55 am

unfortunaly i figured out to get around this now (crtl+e makes everything so easy!)
bit i did figure it out when i was adding ships to the game.
you'd have to copy the oraginal ODF file. like fed_mediterraneanYS.odf  and change the name to whatever Gavril_A for example, you would then ned to alter the sprites the same way, just allot of copy and pasting. and at it as a map object ingame,so you can do it. just allot of work. think ctrl+e's quicker!

posted on February 29th, 2012, 7:57 pm

Do you think it would be possible for you or someone else who knows how to do this to list detailed  instructions on how to allow captured ships to build other races stations, tech, ect? This is pretty much the only thing I miss from vanilla Armada II. I'm new here and haven't much idea on how to mod, but I'd be willing to try in order to get my favourite Armada II feature back. 

posted on February 29th, 2012, 8:44 pm

Welcome to fleet ops!

To do this, unless someone else says otherwise, I believe you would have to go through every odf and remove two things if present. 

Remove any line saying
buildablebyownerraceonly = 1
and
replacement0Condition = "klingonempire"(or any race)


It may sound simple, but there are over 9 thousand odf's in the current FO version.   

It might be simpler to write a script to do it for you.   Not that I could do that, but it might still be simpler to learn.

posted on February 29th, 2012, 9:02 pm

You can of course use Notepad++ to find and replace all such entries after extracting the ODFs

posted on February 29th, 2012, 9:25 pm

You can of course use Notepad++ to find and replace all such entries after extracting the ODFs

and it will search all files in a directory?

posted on March 1st, 2012, 6:49 am

Okay, so I extracted the ODF files, then searched them all using the notepad++ "find in files" thing for "buildablebyownerraceonly = 1". They weren't hard to erase, there were 2241 instances where that line came up. After that, I do the same search for "replacement0Condition", however no instances (out of the 171 notepad++ found) seem to be pointing to races. Instead, I see things like "replacement0condition = "kli_ktingaMr5" and "replacement0condition = "bor_adap_matrix_fedA", which I assume have something to do with ships or stations. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place?

[Anonymous]

posted on March 1st, 2012, 1:17 pm

Last edited by Anonymous on March 1st, 2012, 1:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know how often it is used, however I know that it is used at least in the fed_warpin.odf(s) replacement0condition = "unitedfederation"

You might need to search for the entire line, with the race name and everything.  you can fine all the exact race names in races.odf 

Also, it is not just replacement0 but it could be replacement1 or any other number. I am not sure how high the count can go but I know it is not too high.

Good luck!  If it all works out, you might want to post this up as a mod module as it seems to be a popular request.  If I were you, I would also check to see how it is working so far.  At this point, you should be able to build the ships and stations, you will just be unable to use certain weapons such as warpin. 

posted on March 2nd, 2012, 12:46 am

Right, so I fired up the game after only deleting "buildablebyownerraceonly" from all odf files, and, just as you said, captured stations can now build their respective ships, and captured research stations can now research most tech.

  The main problem so far is that captured construction ships, even construction ships built with captured starbases, can still only build mixed tech yards. I assume fixing this requires deleting the right "replacementXcondition" references you mentioned. This is where things get a bit confusing for me. Notepad++ is searching through all extracted odf files in a folder i have on my desktop. However the only time replacement0condition ever equals a race, it's in the warp-in related odfs, and only referring to the federation. I've tried searching for "replacement0condition = "romulanempire", or "replacement0condition = "Borg", but it turns up with no hits. I've tried other variations of replacementXcondition, such as replacement1condition, 2, 3, etc up to 4 so far, but those turn up with nothing referring to races as well.

Thanks for all the help, I'm glad I'm finally getting somewhere with this. 

posted on March 2nd, 2012, 12:52 am

Actually, I think you need to remove the builditemXavailability = 2 from the Construction ship buildlist.

posted on March 2nd, 2012, 1:52 am

Actually, I think you need to remove the builditemXavailability = 2 from the Construction ship buildlist.

Yeah, I am not familiar with the line, but you may be right.  It might also have to do with the replacementcondition.