Alright, got the game a few days ago and enjoy it quite a lot. However, i'm knowledgable in medieval weapon and armor and find the way they are depicted in game, as well as the tech tree, to be a bit messed up (realism wise). What i plan on doing is readjust some stats, put the weapon and armor in the right order, potentially have a few more weapons for your troops (and heroes) to use and adjust each factions unit (and maybe NPCs) designs accordingly. I plan on making this compatible with other mods. To do that i may have to rework pretty much every weapon and armor in the game (including expansion, i own them all)... Lots of work, but i'm that kind of modder .
What i need to know is:
-Is there a way to set range on randed weapons?
-How does the game decide to add militias in city defense (i want to add more types of militias, spawn more as well)
-Can i tie weapon and armor to what improvements are found in a city (ie make them available only if they are there)?
-Can i add more classes of weapons?
-Can i give greater range to melee weapons?
Well, that's enough for now, but i will surely have even more questions once i'm started.
N/A
As a warning: others have noted in the past that the AI does not know how to use ranged weapons which cannot shoot all the way across the battlefield. If you really want to implement limited range, you might want to make the default weapon damage be kind of garbage and then implement a limited-range special ability that does superior damage.
What do you mean? The classes of weapons mostly decides the placement in the equipment you can wear, 2-h, shields etc. If you just want to make new unitstats with unique damage modifiers etc. you can without messing around with them at all. I messed up once and made an axe into a shield. Was great for dualwielding, but *slightly* OP
Will check that out.
I guess i wasn't clear on that one. I want to change what upgrade from what (when designing units).
Well, that solve it for what heroes can buy. On other hand, i want also to change what units we can build in each cities according to what improvements are there.
But i have some idea where to start, thanks .
Hum... That's a bummer if i can't make it work.
Strangely enough, i figured i could do that when looking through all the weapons already in game. Plenty of weapons (especially heroes ones) use neat tricks to get the desired effects.
or foot fired bows?
I made an initial stab at a weapon/armor mod back in FE and I will pass on some stuff I learned from doing it here.
1) As stated above the AI has a real problem with ranged weapons with limited ranges so you have to be creative. You have to make the initial weapon be a melee weapon using a custom damage type like “bow”. If making a custom damage type does not make sense that can be covered as well in a later post. After you make the initial melee weapon you give it a ranged special attack that uses the base damage so that any boosts to the base damage will apply to the special ability. Make sure to set the special ranged ability to be able to be used each round. The AI will use ranged special abilities with no problems, see the throwing knives and the throwing axes and spear mod. This solves the problem of the AI not using ranged weapons with a range limitation. They will simply advance to to the max range and stay at max range while they can.
2) This depends in what you are trying to do here. If you are trying to make only a weapon/armor type buildable at a certain city for trainable units you have to make a custom resource that is produced by that building that is a non global resource. Make it not storable and give it a large amount so that you can build units at this location. If you want make it so the shop sells these items for sov/champion use you need to add within the coreimprovements.xml file the shop unlock tag including the name/s of the item/s you wish to unlock. See the city hubs or alchemy buildings for an example of how this works.
3) You can add more classes of weapons depending on what you mean by classes. This will need some more clarification before I can go over that.
4) You can set range to melee weapons to two and they can reach two squares.
I hope this helps. I found out most of this through trial and error and asking for help here on this forum and I am just paying it forward after Heavenfall and Parrotmath helped me understand this much. There were many others that offered help but those two are the ones that stick out the most.
Cool then, let's see what you learned .
An example (with code) would be nice, once i have this i can easily duplicate for all the weapons that may need it.
Hum, sound complicated to do. May not be worth the effort.
That should open a lot of possibilities.
I mean the class of weapons like when we design new units; clubs, spears, blades... What weapon is related to the others and what is an upgrade of the rest. FH has lots of weapons, but most aren't accessible to units; if i split them into several more classes i could add them without having some being obsolete by the time you get them.
Another example would be nice there.
Thanks, it's appreciated.
I have a new question: Is there a way to remove unwanted "gamemodifiers" from an xml entry? I mean it seem i can only add new ones (if not duplicate them) from the xml files i add into the mod dir. I want to avoid overwriting the original files if possible...
Take a look at this
https://forums.elementalgame.com/434780/page/1
This will give you a general idea of what is overwritable and what you need to change from core directory.
Mind you one way I remove unwanted gamemodifiers (if a file refuses to be overwritten), I will create an unattainable prereq like
<Prereq> <Type>Tech</Type> <Attribute>YOUCANTGETTHIS</Attribute></Prereq>
Or some other Type, with a similar attribute that you could obtain. In this way you can make a duplicate copy of the file and do all the desired effects to the game-modifiers.
For some files, you just plain cannot overwrite them. With 1.4, we will get access to play with tech from the modding directory without my workaround (I hope).
Thanks for the link. My main quirk though is that i only want to alter weapon and armor, but according to the linked thread if i include an item in my mod it's overwritten; this cause said item to be removed from the randomized loot. Making my mod may become much more complicated because of that.
Hmm? You remove the old with the prereq, then you add a duplicate with your stats and keeping the same name. (just add 1 or something to the Internalname) I don't see the issue. We have to do this all the time to get stuff done really. It's like 10 lines also, since you just need to add the prereq into an item/building/spell etc. not copy the whole thing. (exceptions to this as well of course.. welcome to FE modding )
The items section is nice since it replaces the old weapon entirely if you use the same internal name. This includes the game modifiers and such. So, you can copy the weapon you wish to change. Make any modifications to the item and the item in game will reflect your new changes and none of the old. But maybe I'm confused by your question at that.
My problem comes from the fact i may change way more than just a few items; i'm concerned about breaking the game because the overwritten items may not be picked for random loot (according to what i read).
Well, maybe i should just mod something small before being concerned by large scale modding...
I thought that the random loot drops show up depending on how your list your rarity display and likelihood. I could be wrong, never played with loot drops except on the quest side of things or monster side of things.
This game seem quite complicated when it comes to modding, not everything works the same way. Some files can be edited, others overridden, others can only be altered from the main dir... And we need to start a new game to see if it works. Oh well, i guess i'm too ambitious when i start modding, now i see a mountain were there was just a bump.
Seem i will carry this on, even though i haven't done much yet. I plan on splitting weapons in different categories (like daggers not upgrading into swords but have their own upgrades), change special abilities of weapons (like adding a pre-loaded ability to crossbows) and add new types of armors so by end game we have more variety than everyone wearing plate armor. I want to make it viable to have units with light armor and weapons, with the heavily armored ones to be elite troops (too costly to be the bulk of the army). Then i plan on adding more items available to the shop for heroes in cities with lots of improvements, making it easier to outfit heroes in late game so they remain on par with common troops.
New questions:
-Is there a way to modify DLC items without actually giving them away with the mod? If not can i disable DLC items while using my mod (Reason: i want to change how weapons work thus don't want DLC weapons that follow different rules to pop up)?
-I want to add a new ability to crossbows; That ability (pre-loaded) would negate the initiative penalty on first round. What would be the best way to implement this? I guess horses may have my answer but i ask anyway.
-Is there anywhere i can see the art of all items found in the game? I want to add a few weapons and armor so i want to re-use some existing art/models, but that would be easier if i don't have to figure it out by checking them out one by one.
-What the unit quality is about? Is it an artifact of an older game or something we can currently use?
-Is there a way to make a magical weapon that isn't elemental in nature? Like the good old D&D +1 weapon?
But would that be only on first round? I mean it to reflect the fact we can load a crossbow in advance (unlike a bow) so crossbow units get to shoot early but then have to reload the thing.
Cool, thanks.
The idea is to make it magical so we can fight critters like the Banshees that are immune to normal weapons. An upgrade from normal weapons without a specific elemental buff.
I would expect that you could modify the XML code, but leave the image references the same. Keep the XML for DLC stuff in a separate file from XML for base game stuff, and give two download links - base game mod and extra for DLC. As long as you don't include the model or image files, I would expect that the game will look for the image icon in the default location, and give errors to anyone trying to use the DLC side of the mod without having the DLC content, because they don't have the items being referenced (unless Stardock's gone the route of including the items in the base game and providing something that amounts to an unlock code when you purchase the DLC). My understanding is that you don't necessarily have to have all of the XML for the items you're modding in the same file, as long as you're not trying to overwrite the same things multiple times.
I would suggest that, if you do go this route, that you completely overhaul the DLC item XML anyways (basically, keep the names and change everything else).
Yep. You can define your own damage types (look in CoreUnitStats.XML to see how to define these), or you can use UnitStat_Attack_Boost (which provides an additive bonus to the attack of the unit equipped with whatever increases this - see Horses or Warhorses for examples of how to add this; I don't recall for E:FE, but in E:FE:LH this bonus only applies when the unit has a nonzero base physical attacks), though I'm not sure if the attack bonus itself will work on weapons. You can also look around in CoreUnitStats.XML to see if there's a damage type defined in there that isn't really used anywhere. Alternatively, you could have an "enchanted" longsword that has [(longsword attack) + 1] for its Attack score which requires whatever resources you say it needs for it to be produced (so you can require 1 crystal and 5 metal for a +1 longsword of e.g. 15 attack as compared to your normal 14 attack longsword that costs 5 metal). You should also be able to modify unit accuracy in the same way, if you'd rather the enchantment be a more likely to hit kind of thing rather than a hurts more when it hits kind of thing.
For that matter, if it's something defined in CoreUnitStats.XML or a mod version of such, you ought to be able to have a weapon increase (or decrease) that UnitStat - so if I were to make a UnitStat_CreatureType that had some given value for each type of creature I recognized, I could have a weapon that made a unit's UnitStat_CreatureType value be something other than what the normal value was - for instance, an item that forces a specific creature type onto a unit, so if I wanted a cursed sword that made the unit susceptible to the same things that affect undead, I could mess around with the UnitStat modifications until I made the wielder have the same value for UnitStat_CreatureType that I assigned to undead (just remember that this isn't the same way that they did it for the racial types in-game - if you want to do something like this, you need to do a lot of work with the XML defining ways for UnitStat_CreatureType to affect the damage, and unless there's a simple If-Then structure I haven't seen, it may be "easier" to define UnitStat_Undead, UnitStat_Human, UnitStat_Elf, etc for use in creature type damage computations, and make it "1" for something that is the appropriate type and "0" otherwise, because then you can sort of get an If-Then style damage bonus by just multiplying by the value of the appropriate UnitStat, though I'm not certain that this can be done for a weapon except inside of an active ability).
Since I was typing while you replied, and this clarifies what you want to do - go into CoreUnitStats.XML, find one of the damage types, and copy it over to an XML file of your own. Once it's over there, rename it (say, UnitStat_Attack_Pierce2), and give it something other than UnitStat_ResistPierce as its resistance type, but leave UnitStat_DefensePierce as the defense mechanism to defeat it (I think you can get away with just deleting the line for UnitStat_ResistPierce, but if you can't, you can just copy the old UnitStat_ResistPierce and rename that to UnitStat_ResistPierce2 and make the resistance type for UnitStat_Attack_Pierce2 be UnitStat_ResistPierce2). Change what I said to delete as appropriate if you're bringing back cutting and blunt damage types.
Banshees are immune to physical damage because they have a trait that gives them 100 Pierce Resistance, and all Legendary Heroes weapons deal Pierce damage by default (Banshees might also have Blunt and Cutting resistance; I don't know because I haven't looked, but if they don't you might want to add those resistances in if you're going to bring back Cutting and Blunt damage types), so if you define a damage type that isn't affected by UnitStat_ResistPierce the Banshee physical immunity trait isn't going to help them against it.
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