SneakEye Mod questions

I really love many elements in your (172) mod as you have really innovative ideas. Would you be willing to share how you made some of those parts possible? I understand completely if you want to keep them to make your mod be special. If anything is super complicated and requires more than just the editor I probably don't want to know.


How did you incorporate the transfer orders to the various headquarters?

This is probably my favorite element as I hate making equipment and having to blow it up or kill off squad members I don't need anymore.

Several parts are described step by step in these guides:

• Ambulance which can medics ability, Tank destroyer Hetzer and Recover wreck ability
  
• 25 Pounder Emplacement
  

The abilty which you mentioned in borrowed from the Ardennes Assault campaign. These files are located in abilities/pm. The specific file is: abilities\pm\american\aef_transfer_orders.

It has one bug:
range: 9999 and range_ignore: False. This causes a lot of lag.
The solution for that:
range: 0 and range_ignore: True.

After a great deal of effort I finally got the vehicle caps removed for the OKW (it seems they are tied to the dispatch abilities directly).

I tried to add Fallschirmjagers to the OKW hospital but could not get it to work (and I don't really understand why). The unit I added ended up being a sort of Ghost as it was not able to capture territory. Any idea why that might happen?


I also tried modifying the range on some weapons and I couldn't make that work either (things like the Sturmtiger and Le.IG support gun). I found the weapon listing for these units and tried modifying the range (making sure to modify the far distance as well as the max).

Is there an ability limitation as well? Perhaps the barrage ability of these weapons?

I did however get the transfer order to work!


It seems to work with normal troops but when I tried using it on a Raketenwerfer it took the weapon team off the weapon and then they became unusable.

After a great deal of effort I finally got the vehicle caps removed for the OKW (it seems they are tied to the dispatch abilities directly).

Well done!

I tried to add Fallschirmjagers to the OKW hospital but could not get it to work (and I don't really understand why). The unit I added ended up being a sort of Ghost as it was not able to capture territory. Any idea why that might happen?

This happened to me as well the first time. The paradrop action adds an upgrade when the squad is landed. The squad has its capture ability disabled while that upgrade is not present. This is located in sbps/action_apply, and there it is the 2nd requirement_action. You can simply delete the limitation there or add the "attributes\upgrade\aef\ability_lock_out\ability_lock_out_paratroopers_landed" upgrade to the squad for the same result.

I also tried modifying the range on some weapons and I couldn't make that work either (things like the Sturmtiger and Le.IG support gun). I found the weapon listing for these units and tried modifying the range (making sure to modify the far distance as well as the max).
Is there an ability limitation as well? Perhaps the barrage ability of these weapons?

Yes indeed, it depends on the weapon and the ability range both. The ability has a setting "range" which should be edited.

I did however get the transfer order to work!

It seems to work with normal troops but when I tried using it on a Raketenwerfer it took the weapon team off the weapon and then they became unusable.

It seems that the ability was changed since I cloned it, sorry for the confusion.
This should work:

The paradrop action adds an upgrade when the squad is landed. The squad has its capture ability disabled while that upgrade is not present.

That's a really good thing to know how to fix (it will likely fix some problems I would otherwise have with the Americans). I think I have changed the direction of my mod slightly and I want there to be a significant difference with commander choices (even though the armies will have several universal powers). I decided not to use Fallschirmjagers as a default unit so that they can be more special when they are available.

Yes indeed, it depends on the weapon and the ability range both. The ability has a setting "range" which should be edited.

Looking in the editor taking the le_ig as an example I had already found the weapon profile stats and edited them.

Now I am looking at the abilities tab (under mortar barrage ability folder) and I see there are many listings for the le_ig. I should be able to sort out which is which looking at the ebps reference.

And I see it led to a UI reticle listing that I did not know existed. I suspect I will need to edit that as well.

In order to increase the range on the le_ig I will probably need to modify a clone and modify a new mortar profile for the 120mm mortar.

It seems that the ability was changed since I cloned it, sorry for the confusion.

That made it work; thank you so much!

I think I'm slowly learning how to do this...

I can't seem to get the ranged changed for the le_ig and I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that it has a UI range (represented by a yellow circle).

I managed to change the sturmtiger range after I changed its ability and weapon profile range.


On an unrelated note I figured out how to add active abilities (ebps) and upgrade abilities (sbps). I added a panzerfaust attack to obersoldaten but I'm not sure I want to keep it. For one there is no animation so it looks silly. The ability also was only working when you click the ability on the right side of the screen; the hotkey didn't work and I'm sure it is because I didn't click something somewhere.

I'm getting really close to finishing (or close enough) with two factions so I might go ahead and publish it soon.

It took me ages to figure out why every faction had the option for ambush camouflage on their HMG (but fixing that led to helping me understand how to add upgrades). The only outstanding errors I need to fix are the Elefant call in still being displayed and the OKW command panzer being available for the Ostheer.

I saw a notice in the files about okw base unpacking and I will give that a go when I get back to modding. Being able to move the trucks around is another cool feature I plan to steal from your mod.

I can't seem to get the ranged changed for the le_ig and I'm pretty sure it has to do with the fact that it has a UI range (represented by a yellow circle).

The Leig has 4 different hardpoints (weapons) in ebps/combat_ext. 1 for autoattack and 3 for abilities. You need to edit them all, and also the 5 abilities in ebps/ability_ext.

I added a panzerfaust attack to obersoldaten but I'm not sure I want to keep it. For one there is no animation so it looks silly. The ability also was only working when you click the ability on the right side of the screen; the hotkey didn't work and I'm sure it is because I didn't click something somewhere.

The hotkey probably doesn't work because andother ability or upgrade uses the same one.
The animation must be added to the model:

"..\\..\\..\\german\\weapons\\panzerfaust_100\\panzerfaust_100",

Edit .abp tutorial

The only outstanding errors I need to fix are the Elefant call in still being displayed and the OKW command panzer being available for the Ostheer.

The elefant call-in is located in army/abilities.

I saw a notice in the files about okw base unpacking and I will give that a go when I get back to modding. Being able to move the trucks around is another cool feature I plan to steal from your mod.

This feature requires a few steps which a not present in the existing files. I will try to keep it short:

Create a wreck with health_ext/rebuild_squad: the sws truck.
Create an ability which spawns that wreck (spawn_entity), kills the structure and finally adds 1000 hp to the wreck. The wreck will spawn a new truck in the exact same direct as you structure. (The spawn_squad action has a random rotation).
The animation which I use has 9 delayed actions, one every 1 sec, which sets te build variable from 0.9 to eventually 0.1. The whole ability takes 10 sec.

I got the animation working and I can't tell you how excited that made me!

I fixed all of these problems except I still can't seem to figure out why the Ostheer is getting access to the OKW command Panzer.

"Create an ability which spawns that wreck (spawn_entity), kills the structure and finally adds 1000 hp to the wreck"

I got stuck when you said to create an ability. I guess that part will have to wait.

except I still can't seem to figure out why the Ostheer is getting access to the OKW command Panzer.

Is the ability 'abilities\west_german\modal_ability\commander_ability\passive_ability\tank_commander_unlock' present in army/german/army_bag/abilities?

That was indeed the fix. It is apparently in the Ostheer army bag by default. I didn't think to check that!