Profile of Dar

Alright, strap in, this will be a long one.

What can we actually create with this if we go all the way? I tried to find out and made an SdKfz 234/1 for CoH2. Here's how.



Note: We are using the team weapon attach method. Read the guide in this thread for further information. Some of the images here might be too small to read on your screen. Just copy the image link and go to the source.

1. We'll be using a custom skin pack to hide parts of the Puma and 222 to combine them into the new vehicle. Hiding parts requires alpha layers. Shoot me a DM if you want to use my textures and alpha layers and I'll share them with you. Shout out to Starbuck for tips, tricks and layer mask textures to make these.

2. Once your skin pack is set up, we create custom abp's. Clone the 222's abp and name it something like "sdfkz_234.abp". This is necessary to adjust the offset values, so that the turret appears at the right place in game. Copy this into the new file:

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Now, clone the abp of the Puma and give it a custom name too, mine is called "puma_sdkfz_2341.abp". As for the 222, the Puma's offset values need to be adjusted. It should look like this:

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3. In the AE, create 3 new entities. I cloned the 222 and cleaned up all the upgrades, abilities and such that we don't want.

3A: The hull. This one uses the new puma abp.
Apply our new skin in the UI extension
give it 1 HP and make in invincible
It has no weapons
Make sure it is both a team weapon and team weapon user
Here are the important extensions and animator states:Show Spoiler

3B: The turret during driving. This is a non-functional 222 turret that we show when the vehicle is moving as the one that will be firing would "wobble" too much on the move.
Apply our new skin in the UI extension
give it 1 HP and make in invincible
It has no weapons
Make sure it is both a team weapon and team weapon user
Add an obscure unit type to it's list of types. I chose "urban_assault_pg". This is for a later step.
Here are the other important extensions and animator states:Show Spoiler

3C: The actual turret. To avoid the desync of turret and hull, we can only allow this vehicle to fire when static. This is a trade off for better visuals, but it really works well in game when properly set up. This entity is our "real" team weapon, with all the combat hardpoints and roles copied from an at gun in the team weapon ext. It has actual health and armor and upon death, I added a target that finds and kills all 222 types nearby (the hull and fake turret have the 222 unit type). Note that we have to add the real Puma abp in the "alternate_sua" so the vehicle has physics ingame. Show Spoiler

4. The hardpoints are crucial. As in the guide earlier, Harpoint 01 needs to be a dummy weapon with an unused parent hardpoint to stop the hull and fake turret from moving around with the main gun. Harpoint 02 will hold the main gun, while Hardpoint 03, with 02 as parent, will be the coaxial. Here is the dummy weapon, a clone from the existing machinegun dummy: Show Spoiler and here the main gun Show Spoiler Pay attention to behaviour elements such as attack ground permissions and non_moving_setup. Also remember to add a short wind up and setup to the main gun for functionality with good visuals.

5. Create a squad with a team weapon extension and assign the three entities in this order: Show Spoiler

6. To make our real turret replace the fake one seamlessly, we need an always_on ability and add it to the real turret entity. This ability will wait for the vehicle to move and then hide the real turret and show the stable fake turret. When static, the real turret is revealed. This uses a target function to hide the fake turret. The function is looking for a specific unit type: the obscure one we set on the fake turret earlier (urban_assault_pg). These are the two start_self_action entries:
Show SpoilerShow Spoiler

7. Clean up UI stuff (new icons, portraits, symbols, text) and enjoy your new vehicle. Note that the UI now considers the vehicle a team weapon and will show it in the infantry row in the top right of the screen. It will also have a "2" for crew members shown. This can't be fixed afaik.

There is a lot of details to pay attention to with these methods, so it's entirely possible I missed something. Just let me know if you have questions. Thanks again @Sie_Sayoka for discovering all of this and providing so much guidance.

...

My friend has mentioned that attached entities can't attack although I haven't gotten around to testing that just yet. In theory it should be possible, at least on the combat slots since natively that's what infantry do when they garrison a vehicle. I'll investigate this as well as finish up the guide at a later date.

From my limited testing, I can confirm that attached entities do not attack. Looking forward to the updated guide though, maybe you can find a way to make it work.

With the new patch I finally caved in and left behind the 32bit legacy build, so this guide came in incredibly helpful, thanks a lot Sneakeye!

I have one major issue still: Is it possible to remove newer abilities such as the updated early warning for the UKF Artillery Commander (british\modal_ability\commander_ability\
early_warning_targeted_mp)? The ability is one of those that are magically added in. It has no reference in the army cat, and does not rely on a commander upgrade that I could remove via the HQ workaround. In fact, as many other UKF abilities, it has no requirements and just knows when to show up somehow. Since I can't clone it, I also can't hide it from the UI or change it into something else.

Any ideas on that one?

EDIT: Figured out a solution, outside the AE though. Throw this code into a win condition scar:

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