A2 Ultimate Mod Crashing as Klingons

posted on December 18th, 2023, 3:15 am

Hello everyone, it's been a long time. I recently got my hands on GOG copies of Armada and Armada 2, so I'm getting back into some modding. When I load an instant action game playing as the Klingons, I'm running into an odd crash. The first time it happened, the report referenced the SOD for a third shipyard I added to build a dreadnought. I replaced the sod file, and it continued to crash but no longer referenced the yard. Any help would be appreciated. Also, is there a debugger for these reports? It would help greatly if it would say "xyz.odf" has a missing quotation or something.

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posted on December 27th, 2023, 12:55 pm

Make sure the dreadnought itself doesn't cause a crash. What you described gives me the vibes that the game crashes when it checks into the dreadnought's ODF and finds something there it causes the CTD. Either the ship ODF itself, or the weapons etc.
If you add something new, the checklist is always
1) Check if it can be spawned in the map editor
2) Check if it can move around and fire without crash
3) Check if it's buildable.
4) Check if it crashes if you actually try to build it.

posted on December 27th, 2023, 3:53 pm

I decided to do a fresh A2 ultimate install, so now it's a separate mod. I'm importing ships, stations, and special weapons one or two at a time and testing them in between. Thanks.

I discovered that you can build research stations off other research stations and research pods on the second set of stations. I've considered doing a mod where all stations are connected except for turrets and mining. Turn the first starbase into a research station and build off it.

posted on December 28th, 2023, 3:32 am

I decided to do a fresh A2 ultimate install, so now it's a separate mod. I'm importing ships, stations, and special weapons one or two at a time and testing them in between. Thanks.

I discovered that you can build research stations off other research stations and research pods on the second set of stations. I've considered doing a mod where all stations are connected except for turrets and mining. Turn the first starbase into a research station and build off it.

The AI cannot build such stations if you don’t make them a Research Pod and use the class label and include “Pod” coding instead. My modding partner and I discovered this. There is a FleetOps coding workaround but that means the AI has to build the station with all the attached stations on it all at once, meaning it builds the main build menu station, the research station and spawns with all others attached. It’s: “buildItemXProvided”. You’d want option 2. It’s at the end of this page in the Guide: http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/fo-odf-commands/gameobject/craft/producer/researchstation

You may also find helpful: http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/fo-odf-commands/gameobject/craft/researchpod

http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/fo-odf-commands/gameobject/craft/producer/shipyard/buildyard

posted on December 28th, 2023, 12:26 pm

I'm nowhere near changing AI for this. It's just a concept at this point. I'd probably leave it as a novelty mod or leave the construction ship build items intact and change the stations for my use. Kind of a race-based Unimatrix idea.

posted on December 28th, 2023, 12:32 pm

Most likely having stations be connected will cause horrible pathing issues and there are plenty of maps where the AI would get stuck in its build tree because it would be trying to build somewhere where there is no space, same as if the footprint around a station is too large.

Remember, Fleet Ops has not touched the original AI, so it's still an AI programmed in 1999-2001, it's just as stupid as the AI in other games from that time. The fact that it works halfway decent in some of the mods is because of very careful tuning and avoiding as many things that can cause pathing issues as possible.