Recruit Variation Macro -- and boarding ships.

[junoslord]

I am trying to use this code below to run a test on a idea for my faction... having a cheap reserve unit that may be a crap level 0, or maybe a level 1 or 2. The example below is short and very heavily weighed, so I could see results. But I am getting an error, telling me there are 11 exceptions and it expected 3.

Spoiler:

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{RECRUIT_UNIT_VARIATIONS 1 "Reserve Archer" none,none,Reserve Bowman,Reserve Bowman,Reserve Master Bowman,Reserve Master Bowman,Reserve Master Bowman}

It works with zombies. But I realize I am trying to use different unit types..... Is it a possibility to due something with an after recruit test where some get enough experience points to advance to the next level(s)?

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I am trying to use some of the ships to do a naval battle. How (using the plague feature) can I have a ship killed by Boarding Party switch sides? Mechanical is immune and I don't won't floating zombies. A die event filtered by unit type, then by mode of death-- but I don't know how to set this up. And instead of being at full health only be at 10hp (hp= 1 crew) to represent a small prize crew?

Spoiler:

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#define WEAPON_SPECIAL_BOARDING_PARTY
    [plague]
        id=plague   ####     <--- <--- to keep it the actual macro ????
        name= _ "Boarding Party"
        description= _ "Boarding:
When a ship is taken over by a Boarding Party, that ships side is switched and a small prize crew is assigned to man it."
        type=$x1,$y1
[modification]
health=10
[/modification]
    [/plague]
#enddef

I also have a problem with ships spawning on castle keeps if you don't assign them a water keep. Any ideas on how to avoid this from the recruit phase?

[Pentarctagon]

For the first one, you need to put the third argument in quotes. Otherwise it thinks that every space represents the start of a new argument.

[junoslord]

Thanks for the idea, but this didn't work.

Somehow I need to manipulate the unit_type file... I think.

[Crendgrim]

If I'm not mistaken, the macro you used only works for variations of a unit type, not for modifying the whole type. So, either you have to set up all your types as variations, or go a slightly more complicated way (if there isn't also a macro for that) using a recruit event and [modify_unit] to randomly modify its type.

[junoslord]

If I'm not mistaken, the macro you used only works for variations of a unit type...

I'm pretty sure you're right on that... but it does say in the wiki that it should work for anything, so I gave it a shot.

..you have to set up all your types as variations, or go a slightly more complicated way (if there isn't also a macro for that) using a recruit event and [modify_unit] to randomly modify its type.

I didn't find a macro listed, but [modify_unit] seems to be the best, easiest, solution... how would I set up the random factor?

I want 80% Reserve Archer, 16% Reserve Bowman, and 4% Reserve Master Bowman, do I use (none,none,Reserve Bowman)?

[junoslord]

While trying to figure out how to make boarding parties work (capture ships) with the plague I decided to change the ships to human...

This worked great! Not only do my ships have names now (allowing events), but they have traits as well. Which gives some variety and makes different ships more valuable for certain tasks. It also means that the ship is now vulnerable to the "plague" boarding party, and can be transformed. Except that it switches to a Walking Corpse, and now I have zombies floating around in the Atlantic.

I thought I managed to get around this, but I obviously put type=Prize Frigate in the wrong place. This is from the unit_type file, should this be in the victims file?

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[attack]
        name=short sword
        description=_"Boarding Party"
        icon=attacks/sword-human-short.png
        type=blade
        range=melee
        damage=21
        number=1
        [specials]
            {WEAPON_SPECIAL_PLAGUE}
	    type=Prize Frigate                    ### <---------- Misplaced?
        [/specials]
    [/attack]

Once this works properly how do I get it to account for the different class ships... a Sloop or Trade Junk shouldn't respawn as a Prize Frigate.



On a side note. I was looking at the race files and a lot of them are using macros... What files do I need to edit to create new races?

[Piko555]

It propably should look that:

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[attack]
        name=short sword
        description=_"Boarding Party"
        icon=attacks/sword-human-short.png
        type=blade
        range=melee
        damage=21
        number=1
        [specials]
            {WEAPON_SPECIAL_PLAGUE_TYPE Prize Frigate}
        [/specials]
    [/attack]

About the races: look at races.cfg in /core, and make a similar file, with custom races made by You.

[zookeeper]

{WEAPON_SPECIAL_PLAGUE_TYPE Prize Frigate}

...with the difference that WEAPON_SPECIAL_PLAGUE_TYPE takes one argument, not two.

[Piko555]

Yes, it does. What do You suggest for unit types with a space in their id?

[Ceres]

Put parantheses or quotes around it.

[junoslord]

I have the plague working, as long as I change the ships to human... but I have another situation crop up. When the ships kill a ground unit, the ground unit spawns as a Prize Ship. Maybe not a problem but the AI sees a unit with 0% defense and will always use a unit that would otherwise attack a threat to go after it.

Is there a way to make certain units immune, or better yet make only units with the movement_type:float affected. (Can you filter move_type?) The other alternative is to make the attack only valid against other ships...

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I have figured out how to add and reset gold, but not how to deduct 5 gold from a side during an event. This gets me a skip over during the event and the rest of the event does nothing.

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	[gold]
	side=1
	amount=-50
	[/gold

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I am trying to create amphibious assault units. To do this I need to store and unstore in the same event, but have never tried storing and am screwing up royally somewhere. I have this working now without storing but when you "repack" the unit and then "unpack" again you get completely new units (new name,traits) and I would like to be able to save unit experience and traits.

Spoiler:

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[event]
name=moveto

first_time_only=no

	[filter]
		side=1
		type=Marine Archer,Marine Bowman,Marine Master Bowman

            	[filter_location]
                	terrain=Wwrt
            	[/filter_location]
        [/filter]

	[store_unit]
		[filter_location]
			x,y=$x1,$y1	
		[/filter_location]
		[set_variable]
			type=Artillery Barge
		[/set_variable]
	[/store_unit]

	[unstore_unit]
		x,y=$x1,$y1
	[/unstore_unit]
[/event]

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I would like to give all my warships the healthy trait, but with ships averaging around 90hp repairing 2hp a turn seems too small. Is there a way to give 'heal' to a unit and only have it effect itself? Or bump healthy up?

[8680]

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	[gold]
	side=1
	amount=-50
	[/gold

I think that should work, assuming you didn’t actually forget the last bracket. Please post the surrounding event.

I am trying to create amphibious assault units.

I think you mean this:

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[event]
    name=moveto
    first_time_only=no
    [filter]
        side=1
        type=Marine Archer,Marine Bowman,Marine Master Bowman
        [filter_location]
            terrain=Wwrt
        [/filter_location]
    [/filter]
    [store_unit]
        [filter]
            id=$unit.id
        [/filter]
        variable=storedAmphibian
    [/store_unit]
    [set_variable]
        name=storedAmphibian.type
        value="Artillery Barge"
    [/set_variable]
    [unstore_unit]
        variable=storedAmphibian
    [/unstore_unit]
[/event]

However, I think it would be better to replace the store-modify-unstore block with one of these:

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## Hitpoints are the full maximum of an Artillery Barge and status is cleared.
[modify_unit]
    [filter]
        id=$unit.id
    [/filter]
    type="Artillery Barge"
[/modify_unit]

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## Hitpoints and other status is unchanged.
[transform_unit]
    id=$unit.id
    transform_to="Artillery Barge"
[/transform_unit]

I would like to give all my warships the healthy trait, but with ships averaging around 90hp repairing 2hp a turn seems too small. Is there a way to give 'heal' to a unit and only have it effect itself? Or bump healthy up?

Regenerates?

[junoslord]

gold= missing bracket...

regenerate: Thought about that, but it's like the portage-- 2 is too cold, 8 is too hot, but 4 seems just right. In the end I might go with a bit of both, depending on the ship size.

[modify_unit] I used the modify unit option and it worked. So, thank you for the help on that.

But it has one problem... When I recruit and send the Barge off to land everything is fine. The Marine goes ashore, clears the island and moves to reboard the barge. But the problem is: if the unit already leveled up when it gets off the ship again it will be a archer (lvl1) again. (I hope that makes sense.)

There is a solution though: I need to make 4 Artillery Barges, 1 for recruiting, and 1 each for each level of archer unit. Then I need to do this for all the other Marine unit lines (5 lines/14 units total, plus 2 support lines/5 units-- as well as, theoretically, the entire National Army line). Then in the scenario I need to create a base landing, an embarkation, and a second landing event for each individual unit... That's 57 events!

It'll work but it'll be huge! Any idea on the second landing how to get around this and make sure each unit_type is what's it's supposed to be?

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Also, if my units and my ships are both human... so they draw from the same pool of traits... If I set the barge num_traits=0 will this erase the traits of the units inside them? This is in the wiki where it talks about keeping unit lines of the same race or you will loose traits for units.

To the same point... If I add a fixed trait to a unit {fearless} in this case to a second level unit in a line and change num_traits=3, will this add the fearless trait and keep the two existing traits intact?

[8680]

regenerate: Thought about that, but it's like the portage-- 2 is too cold, 8 is too hot, but 4 seems just right.

Many add-ons have a regenerates +4 ability you could copy. And what’s this about portage? In the context of “too cold, too hot, just right” I’d assume you mean “porridge”, but in the wider context of boats, “portage” could work too.

But it has one problem...

Perhaps each unit’s former type could be stored in its [variables]?

[junoslord]

So this should be easy, right...

I found the ability file in the core/macro folder and copied the regenerates ability to create a new one called repair. Below is the second version. In the first version I left [regenerate] because I thought I would try to 'mirror' it by leaving the bracket and id= the same, I also tried 5% instead of a value.

Spoiler:

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#define ABILITY_REPAIR
    # Canned definition of the Repair ability to be included in an [abilities]
    # clause.
    [repair] # <------ [regenerates] in v1
        value=5%
        id=regenerates 
        name= _ "repair"
        female_name= _ "female^repair"
        description= _ "Repair:
The ship will heal itself 5% HP per turn. If it is burning (poisoned), it will remove the fire instead of repairing."
        affect_self=yes
        poison=cured
    [/repair]
#enddef

For the third try I changed everything to repair and used a numeric value.

Spoiler:

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#define ABILITY_REPAIR
    # Canned definition of the Repair ability to be included in an [abilities]
    # clause.
    [repair]
        value=5
        id=repair
        name= _ "repair"
        female_name= _ "female^repair"
        description= _ "Repair:
The ship will heal itself 5HP per turn. If it is burning (poisoned), it will remove the fire instead of repairing."
        affect_self=yes
        poison=cured
    [/repair]
#enddef

The last thing I tried was replacing the value= with this from a trait macro before realizing it would increase hp not repair.

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        [effect]
            apply_to=hitpoints
            increase_total=5%
        [/effect]

Point is I get 'macro/file "Special_Note_Repair" is missing in unit_type file' errors whatever I try to do.

If I remove the "S_N_R" tag from the [unit_type] file and add {ABILITY_REPAIR} to either the [unit_type] or [unit] it runs the scenario without error, but doesn't show 'repair' as an ability. And the last time it didn't increase the hp of the unit I manually assigned it to in the [unit_type] file.

What am I doing wrong? Everything is in the core folder, with the others.

I thought I would ask before repeating this as an attempt to make a trait... But this almost does what I want it to do, and I thought I'd try to get it to work first.