Changing Units questions

[OmniGod]

Okay... I was just checking around the units.txt file and found out that you can land a flying fortress sized aircraft and Stealth bomber on a carrier... is that just totally impossible or do I have a different theory on physics and aerodynamics? And further more you couldn't land a helicopter on it? My question is there anyway to expand the classifications for size to 4 - small, med, large, huge... since I hear wind of adding things like arrows, cannon balls and other carriable units to the game? I know I could reclassify based on the 3 class system... but how about destroyers which in life can carry a helicopter, cruise; a sub which can only carry missles; aircraft carrier which can carry helicopters, missles, small aircraft; and then there's the bombers and space shuttle which can't be carried by any of the previously mentioned units.... I'd like to make the helicopter more useful to naval armies and make troops and ordinace transport more feasible...

any suggestions? or comments?

Omni

[Colonel Kraken]

I think you can work it all out using the 3 class system.

I think land units through Infantryman and Cavalry should be classified medium and allow Carrack and previous naval transports only able to transport "medium" land units. This would prevent the use of ancient transports as modern day transports (which would not be able to transport the massive men and materiel of modern armies) and necessitate the building of modern Troop Transports.

I would then classify large military units such as Tank as "large" which would then only be able to be transported on Troop Transports (which would be able to carry "large" land).

I would then make units you wish to be carried by helo as "small" land. This would disallow putting ancient, medieval, and Napoleanic units on a helo.

Classifying Cruise Missile and Nuke as "small" air, Helos and Fighters as "medium" air and Bombers and other as "large" air should alleviate most basing problems. Carriers would be able to handle "small" and "medium" air. Any ships and aircraft you want would be able to carry "small" air for those missiles.

One thing you should keep in mind is that things like the helos and anti-ship SSMs on modern warships are "inherrant" and understood characteristics of the Attack, Defense, and Firepower values and Bombard capabilities of units in CTP (at least they should be). These values should reflect such capabilities. As far as carrying a cruise missile, you could allow ships, that you wanted to have that capability, to carry small air.

But you can set it up however you want. It's your game. If you want Helos to be able to land on Battleships, go for it. Make Helos "small" air so that you wouldn't also be able to land a Fighter on the ship.

Just my 2 cents worth.
[This message has been edited by Colonel Kraken (edited December 11, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Colonel Kraken (edited December 11, 2000).]

[marc420]

I like Omni's original question, so I thought I'd bump this one back up the list. Although, since he didn't get an answer, I'd probably have to assume we are stuck with 3 classifications for size.

In case anyone from Activision or other civ-type game companies reads this, here's why I like the idea of expanding this.

I want to have another classification for "single-person" units. For example, SPIES. I should be able to transport a SPY on virtually any ship or aircraft. It is very common in the WWII and beyond world that SPIES would be transported by SUB, by DESTROYER, by flying them in as additions to a BOMBER crew, etc.

So, I've been vaguely thinking about how to model this. I might be able to do this with three classifications, but it looks like its going to be a pain. Four classifications would really, really help. And if the system was generally made expandable, then that might help with some one else's problem down the road.

Here's the system I'd like to see.

Size:
Single
Small
Medium
Large
Huge (while I'm dreaming, lets dream to 5 of these)

Then the various units could be set so that.... (EDIT, I reread CK's post and I like his system too, but here's the one I typed up....I was thinking more in a single era)
Carry: Single -- Most units would have that so that spies, etc could hitch a ride with most any other unit if it helped.

Carry: Small -- Helicopters, small transports, etc. .... generally you could use this category to limit transports to carrying small infantry-type units.

Carry:Medium -- Dedicated combat transports...use this category to creating combat transports units that can carry tanks, artillery etc.

Carry:Large -- Mombo super transports... Big units that wouldn't normally be transportable, but given certain techs late in the game would become transportable.

Carry:Huge -- You wanna carry what?!?!?!?!?! The stuff you never, ever want to see carried.

Admittedly, I can probably do without the last split between LARGE and HUGE, so I could probably get by with four categories, but if we really got someone to change this, then might as well go for five and cover as many bases as you could.

But I really, really would like to be able to model the movement of small single-person or very small teams like spies, commandos, diplomats etc. These really should be able to ride on a lot of units that normally shouldn't be carrying combat troops.

If I try to do this in a three category system, I'm left with a Carry/Don't Carry option for every other combat unit, where the Infantry carry/Big Carry/Don'tCarry model would be and is much, much better.

[This message has been edited by marc420 (edited December 22, 2000).]

[Harlan]

In CTP1 at least, I recall the carrying classes and vision classes to be pretty generous. I think there were at least 16 slots. So you might try adding more in CTP2.

[Alpha Wolf]

quote: Originally posted by Colonel Kraken on 12-11-2000 05:12 PM I would then classify large military units such as Tank as "large" which would then only be able to be transported on Troop Transports (which would be able to carry "large" land).

I did this in CtP1, but what do you classify Leviathons as? Since the largest you can get is large, that means they can also be loaded onto modern transports.

------------------
History is written by the victor.

[Harlan]

I could be wrong. Mr. Ogre talked about this at some point, maybe you can find it in the modifications directory of the CTP1 site. Vision classes went up to 16 or so, I thought size classes did the same. A good thing to ask Mr. Ogre when he gets back from vacation.

[OmniGod]

Can you give me a hint Harlan... I tried now what was it... gigantic, huge, dam that's big... sorry this area of mods is new to my little brain

Rich

Poking around in ctp2.exe, I found reference to 12 Movement Types:

SmallLand
MedLand
LargeLand
SmallAir
MedAir
LargeAir
SmallWater
MedWater
LargeWater
SmallSpace
MedSpace
LargeSpace

I'd been interested in the question of carrying Spies on Subs, mentioned above, as it seemed like a logical capability to have.

I added "MovementType: Space" to all Stealth units, and gave Subs the ability to carry 1 "SmallSpace" unit. Seems to work fine. Since the Stealth units still have their Land and Mountain movement types, they're also members of "SmallLand," so they can still ride on regular transports like Carracks, etc.

I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that Activision hasn't used Space for anything in this game. As I said, it seems to work. (Interesting how this game makes us all Empiricists; it's not "Here's what I know," but rather "Here's what I've observed.")

If there isn't a problem with using Space movement as a flag, then MedSpace and LargeSpace would still be available.

[XMon]

Hey Lago,

Could you snoop around a bit more and see how many different vision categories there are? I used to use a hexadecimal editor to examine/edit the original Civilization app but that was a long time ago with a different computer. I don't know if I even have a program to peep in an .exe now. I'd like to know if there are more vision classes than the two used in the game. Two's not acceptable to me. C'mon, subs aren't stealth? A lawyer can see a stealth bomber but a military unit can't? Crazy. I'm desperately hoping the other classes are still there.

XMon, this is kind of embarrassing. I have Visual Studio (90% of which I never use), but for this task I used a little known diagnostic tool called Wordpad.

I wasn't interested in making changes, just in looking for text strings. In particular, I was trying to find where terms like 'MedAir' (used in Units.txt) are defined. I was hoping it would be in a text file, but it doesn't look like it.

Obviously, MedAir is a Medium size unit with the 'MovementType: Air' attribute. If you could create other sizes like Tiny & Huge, then I was hoping you could create a MovementType for that size unit.

This would give a finer breakout of units, and make it easier to do things like specify what kind of unit can carry other kinds of units (ie, specify that a unit could carry Stealth units but not other land units, or carry ASW Helicopters but not Cargo Helicopters & Bombers, etc).

No such luck. But at least I got something from it.