Commander ability modding Problems

The goal I have in mind is to not limit some of the more fun equipment/vehicles for armies in CoH2. Then I was going to back and change any abilities that essentially become innate.

In other words I plan on having every army have certain abilities as part of the base kit. For the Ostheer this includes spotting scopes, ambush camouflage, 10.5 howitzers, Command Panzer IV, Elefent and Tiger as default units.

As an example for

To make an ability a group secondary:
Set in the ability 'ui_group' to: group_secondary.

This will only position the ability above the commander abilities. If it wasn't visible before, then it will not be visible with this change. Can you create a new thread with a little more details about what you tried so far?

I am a complete noob when it comes to the COH2 editor tools. I know what a number of the values do and I can do simple things like edit penetration/accuracy/unit model numbers. I worked on a mod some years ago but since that time some things have changed or I have forgotten part of what I had learned (or both). I lost all progress on that mod and recently decided it might be fun to work on a new one.

In order to easily enable the tanks I cloned them in SBPS (tiger_squad_mp) and modified the requirements. I modified the line that was required_player_upgrade: <instance_reference name="upgrade_name" value="upgrade\german\commander\passive\tiger_tank" />

to instead be required squad : max_squad_cap 3
[this was an easy fix for me to remove the single heavy tank limit]

Then I went over to EBPS and modified the German HQ (making sure to clone the _mp version).

As I plan on removing all the call in abilities I will have those units be crafted by the HQ.

I played with this a bit and made the command tank require 7 command points.
I modified the tiger to make it require the phase 3 upgrade (the panther which has more frontal armor requires the tier 3 building)

[to anyone wondering how I got that to work I modified sbps to have : required_player_upgrade under the heading squad_modifier_ext
Tiger - BattlePhase_4_mp
Command Panzer IV - required resource 7 command points]

In short I don't have the slightest clue how group secondary abilities work. I've heard people talk about them several times. They sound like a very useful tool to be able to use but currently they are a complete mystery to me.

It may be the case that there is a much more simple solution (also unknown to me).


I don't have the slightest idea how to go about making this change with the editor.

"Set in the ability 'ui_group' to: group_secondary."

Maybe this is the right thing to do?

When I go to the abilities tab I find the entry for ambush camouflage upgrade.
So I clone it.
Then I modify the UI group to secondary.

ok. Is that it?

So it looks like you have given me a working solution to part of my problem without needing to use a secondary ability group.

I had been looking in the army, commander and commander abilities tab without looking at the abilities tab.

After looking at the abilities tab I found the ambush camouflage upgrade ability.

So from here I should be able to modify this or delete(?) the entry for required squad upgrade : ambush_camou_package
(or set the requires presence to false if I remove all instances of the ability (and replace that commander ability with another).

Super sorry in advance if I asked a really complicated question. I just wanted to do some things that I can't seem to figure out on my own.

When I go to the abilities tab I find the entry for ambush camouflage upgrade.
So I clone it.
Then I modify the UI group to secondary.

ok. Is that it?

Changing that one part is not enough to give grenadiers/panzer grenadiers camouflage.

So then I go to the army tab and clone the army.

Planet Smasher said to : 'open "abilities" and add it to the list.'

So then I go over to abilities and add in my modified version of the ability.

But then I still can't upgrade grenadiers with camouflage without selecting a commander that has it.

I must be missing a step.

This commander ability has 3 parts. One visible passive icon in the center of your screen, one invisible upgrade which is required by your squads and the ability on your squad itself.

These are the 3 files:
1. The visible passive icon:
abilities/german/modal_ability/commander_ability/passive_ability/ambush_camouflage_unlock
2. The invisible required upgrade:
upgrade/german/commander/passive/ambush_camouflage
3. The ability on the squad:
abilities/german/always_on_ability/commander_ability/ambush_camouflage_upgrade

The upgrade (number 2) is automatically added when the corresponding commander is selected. You cannot change that. This upgrade is used to show the two abilties.

To make your ability work, you need to clone the ability (number 3) and remove the 'required_player_upgrade' in 'requirements'. This requirement pointed to the upgrade (number 2)

If you want to remove the visible passive icon when you choose the commander, then delete the passive ability (number 1) from 'abilities' in 'army/german'.

Most of the commander abilities are implemented like this, which can cause a lot of confusion. Hopefully this will help you to understand them a bit more.

Thank you so much... I don't have any more time to tinker with it right now but I think you've given me all the info I need to make it work.

You are an incredible help!

To get it finally working (anyone reading this later) I made a modification in the upgrade portion of the editor.

File path: germnan/commander/ability/ambush_camou_package

Deleted requirement #2 which required the commander upgrade for the camouflage package.

Before that I had removed the requirements of the abilities tab on the editor and ended up with G43 rifle upgrade on the grenadier (which is not what I wanted).

Is there anything different I need to do for timed abilities?

I've been having a hell of a time trying to modify the soviet ability: For Mother Russia.

Is there anything different I need to do for timed abilities?

I've been having a hell of a time trying to modify the soviet ability: For Mother Russia.

That ability is: abilities/soviet/timed_ability/commander_ability/for_mother_russia_ability
Which part do you want to modify?

I'm giving the soviets the ability to build the 42 at gun from the HQ.

So I modified that ability to not show up (with the -1 for ui poistion).

If I change mother russia aiblity to just command points I can get it to show up (making the commander have 5 abilities again). But as soon as I have it require one of the other player upgrades on the list of the defense community commander I end up with 4 abilities.

Can you post the requirement_ext from the ability?

I'm not exactly sure what I had wrong but it is working now. I swear today the game is misbehaving and then when I ask you it starts working as intended.

1 is the same and 2 is rewritten. Note: all reason set to usage and display

2. required any in list

i. required player upgrade
upgrade name: attributes\upgrade\soviet\commander\ability\for_mother_russia

ii. required all in list:
1. required player upgrade
upgrade name: attributes\upgrade\soviet\commander\passive\tank_traps
2. requirements\required_player_upgrade
upgrade name: attributes\upgrade\soviet\commander\passive\hm120_mortar_unlock

Hopefully it stays functional

The requirement looks perfect.

I'm having problems with an ability I wrote called flak_dispatch.

It's identical to the west german sturmtiger dispatch except I made it a secondary ability (with the only requirement being 8 cp).

When I attempt to click my ability it says population cap reached.

There are 3 differences in my flak_dispatch ability from the sturmtiger dispatch.

1. the [+] ui info copies the information from ostwind dispatch.
2. I changed the ui position to 30.
3. I changed the squad spawn information from sturmtiger to ostwind.

I made sure to add my ability to the west german army list.

I feel like there is an upgrade or ability somewhere that is blocking the regular ostwind dispatch that is also blocking my ability.

The 'population cap reached' message is shown when the unit to spawn has a requirement which is not met. You can change the requirement in sbps/requirement_ext or set the 'ignore_requirements' setting in the 'reinforcements_action' to true.

Thanks again; You always have the answer! So it turns out I had modified the ability to have different requirements in sbps and the ability tab (I changed in one spot but not the other for testing purposes).

I didn't need to resort to setting the ignore requirements option.


This has been bugging me for so many days but I really didn't want to keep bothering you with my mod problems.

I do have one success story! I added the ability for east german and soviet engineers to toggle their minesweepers on and off by modifing the ability present for the okw engineer.

I've had a number of problems getting powers to behave as I would like. I cloned the rocket barrage ability of firestorm and I was trying to give it to the special operations commander as well.

modified requirements:

1. required any in list (usage and display for all)
requirements
[+] 1. required player upgrade - rocket_barrage
[+] 2. required player upgrade - flare_artillery
2. required player upgrade - blizzard false (usage)
3. required resource - 9 command points (usage)

In the course of trying to make this power work I managed to make the ability not appear until you had the proper command points at which point it would appear. I assume this is tied partially to the usage and display aspects?

I should mention that now my Ostwind ability doesn't appear until you have 4 command points. Oh well... at least it works! The only requirement is 4 command points with usage and display checked (note this is a secondary ability). I have to wonder if it were just set to usage then it might appear at 0 command points.

I've had problems adding certain powers to certain commanders. As an example (exact details might be wrong) I have failed to have a power work with the special operations commander when I select one of his special powers as a required player upgrade but when I changed that specific ability to flare_artillery it suddenly worked.

Im thinking about trying to clone my cloned ability (special_rocket) and just set the requirement to flare_artillery and see if that works.

I can't seem to gift: rocket barrage, for the fatherland or okw_sector_assault abilities with an any in list structure.

I added special_rocket ability to the army list after cloning it from the original rocket_barrage modifying the requirements to 0 command points and required player upgrade flare_artillery.

And now it works.

The crazy thing is that I hit save, hit build and then launched the game (failure). Then I hit save again after closing the game and noticed the army list just then got updated. I built again and it worked when I launched the game.

I wonder if I can fix the other abilities that are being incredibly stubborn with an any in list with this fix.

FYI,
display and usage: Not visible + not usable when requirement is not met.
display: Not visible when requirement is not met. AI can use it, and I think even hotkeys work.
usage: locked when requirement is not met. It stays visible.

And yes the tools cannot overwrite the .sga file while the game is open.

Thank you for explicitly defining all of those. I kinda figured out what was what but it is always nice to have an exact list.

I got all three abilities to work writing them as single required powers (copied clones with new requirements).

My for the Fatherland clone did not work when I used the requirement field_defenses. But it worked fine when I used zeroing artillery. The difference between working and not working was requiring a different player upgrade from the same commander.

I don't know why that happens but it makes things very frustrating to modify sometimes. To make things even more confusing I am not 100% sure but I think I have gotten some powers to work with field_defenses when other powers would not work with a different chosen power.

Some powers work with an any in list structure and others just wont work with the same structure.

It seems like it is overall much easier to just clone the ability rename it, change the requirements and add it to the army list.