Minor Factions (split from Imperial Unit Suggestions)

[Slornie]

And the reason the minor factions don't build past level one stations is they don't have them available, and they don't build ground structures for the same reason. It causes strange crash errors if they do get them.

Is that because the game counts them as Pirates? So they would only have the Pirate Asteroid Base (one level), and the Pirate Command Center (which has its own map marker)?

To get around it couldn't you give them a variant of the Pirate Command Center with the properties of the Underworld Headquarters. Eg. Zsinj could have Corporate Headquarters (see X-Wing: Wraith Squadron/Iron Fist/Solo Command) and the Hapans could have Noble Houses.  That would also give them a ground garrison and a boosted income stream.

[Lord Xizer]

Thank you very much. I appreciate it a lot. I'm on an oil rig for the next 4 weeks with slow internet so I can't download the newest version of beta but am still following the threads religiously. I've seen some of the screen shots and I am quite impressed. You guys just keep topping what you've done before.

I think Slornie might have an interesting idea on the corporate thing for Zsinj and the Hapans Noble Houses. Could you code them like the Zann Consortium similar to what you did with the EOTH?

[Corey]

Clarify that last bit about the Zann Consortium and EotH please.

[Meyer]

EotH won't be getting any Imperial units, we'd rather keep the factions diversified. And the reason the minor factions don't build past level one stations is they don't have them available, and they don't build ground structures for the same reason. It causes strange crash errors if they do get them.

Is this the reason EotH doesn't have it's own space station? I thought they were going to have different from the empire's

[Corey]

EotH won't be getting any Imperial units, we'd rather keep the factions diversified. And the reason the minor factions don't build past level one stations is they don't have them available, and they don't build ground structures for the same reason. It causes strange crash errors if they do get them.

Is this the reason EotH doesn't have it's own space station? I thought they were going to have different from the empire's

No, the reason the EotH doesn't have a unique one is because the one we made is ugly as fuck (you may remember it, we posted pictures of it a few years back, it was the large capital T basically) and never made a replacement.

[Lord Xizer]

What I meant was that the EotH seems to be skinned over the consortium.
For instance the bounty bonus when you kill them. Their units are about the same price to build and have similar features to the consortium. I assumed you merely replaced the consortium with them. Modified the Empire and the Rebellion into the IR and NR.
So is there a way you could code the other minor factions like that? I admit my knowledge on this is very limited.
If the minor factions can't build structures it might be simpler to just give them an abundance of warships and ground units.
For instance give them the full ten units on each planet they control and a decent amount of ships in orbit.  This could make them a larger threat to the main 3 factions in the beginning. The advantage they would have in numbers would be short lived because they wouldn't be able to replace their losses but it would get the other factions to have to use strategy to deal with the onslaught.
Some of the little factions are almost doomed from the get go. The Duskan League gets annihilated by the EoTH or IR within the first few weeks could you give them a few more Thrustships? Warlord Zsinj is between, the NR, The Hapans(which are vicious, I love fighting and destroying them) and the Pentastar Alignment all of which pretty much focus on him is there any way to beef up his forces with more Victory class destroyers in AoW?The pentastar alignment survives a decent while as long as you ignore it because they seldom attack the IR. They pretty much only attack Zsinj and Generis. In the process they end up losing all their fleet making them incapable of attacking.
I was wondering if instead of leaving Bonadan and Etti IV in Art of war neutral, could you give them to Zsinj? It would connect his systems and present a more united front as well as giving him added forces.
Perhaps do the same with Adumar for the Pentastar Alignment? They take it anyway since all they have to do is land on it. Just a thought.
Incidentally to all those who are always saying the Executor is Invincible or too strong, they are easy to kill if you THINK. get behind them with B wings to destroy the hardpoints and correllian corvettes to take out the fighters and you can pretty much attack with impunity.
Oh with the Executor's names, is there any way to have their names after the actual SSDs? Like Razors Kiss, Guardian, and Annihilator. It's a little odd to be the IR with 2 SSDs named Republic.
Again you guys are doing a great job and I love the mod. I'm just trying to help out, not tell anybody what to do. You all rock!

[Corey]

What I meant was that the EotH seems to be skinned over the consortium.
For instance the bounty bonus when you kill them. Their units are about the same price to build and have similar features to the consortium. I assumed you merely replaced the consortium with them. Modified the Empire and the Rebellion into the IR and NR.

No. They use the same faction name for mechanical purposes, as the game will only recognize story scripting for 3 factions with specific names; Empire, Rebel and Underworld. Other than that their coding is more similar to the Empire/IR and Rebels/NR than the Consortium. Some of the EotH buildings were given Underworld building names for map marker retention/other mechanical reasons as well,but it wasn't a matter of just redesigning the Underworld aesthetically. The bounty bonus in stock FoC was usually for the Underworld when they killed other ships, in the mod it's vice versa as the result of a bug that happened when I was trying to reuse that feature in favour of the Rebellion (before we cut the first release and simply made it into Imperial Civil War instead of the Rebellion era). As for any similarities in unit function, price, etc. that is also coincidental. The mod was originally for Empire at War, not Forces of Corruption, and the general structure of the faction had already been outlined by the time we switched to FoC, so that involved deleting all the Underworld units, and then putting in EotH ones rather than overwriting Underworld with EotH

So is there a way you could code the other minor factions like that?

This is a slightly more complicated question than it seems, I think. Especially since the "like that" doesn't mean what you think it means. There is nothing to do with the ability to build things within the faction's coding, so it;'s not that simple, it all deals with how the game treats it. We could make every single minor faction playable by changing two lines within the factions coding (provided the skirmish markers and GCs were all updated accordingly, but we're focusing on the faction coding itself here).

The simplest answer is EaW factions are very tempermental. You can't go past 21 (or so), and they have to stay the same order within the file or else bad stuff happens, specifically with maps and affiliation. Any additional factions have to be added to the end of the Expansion_factions.XML file. There is 0 difference in how the Hapans, Hutts or Zsinj are coded, but their places seem to affect what happens. Previously Pentastar and Zsinj were given their own entires, but after about the 8th place you can not give the factions AI without causing a crash. As a result of this, we put Zsinj in the Pirate position with their name and Pentastar as the Sarlacc (yes, this is a faction). These are the fourth and fifth, making them the most high functioning of the minor factions. They are able to handle buildings to a certain extent for some reason, whereas the Hapans aren't because (probably not the right word, probably more of a correlation) even though they're the same code-wise, they are way farther down on the list numerically. This is why the Hutts start off with so many more units; they can''t build things whereas Zsinj, Hapes and Pentastar can. The Yevetha don't even have an AI. This is part of the rationale behind merging Zsinj and Pentastar; now Hapans are the Sarlacc and the Hutts and Yevethans can move up one slot in the evolutionary chain of factional functionality.

Hopefully that clears some of it up.

If the minor factions can't build structures it might be simpler to just give them an abundance of warships and ground units.
For instance give them the full ten units on each planet they control and a decent amount of ships in orbit.  This could make them a larger threat to the main 3 factions in the beginning. The advantage they would have in numbers would be short lived because they wouldn't be able to replace their losses but it would get the other factions to have to use strategy to deal with the onslaught.

Once we get the AI properly sorted out, this won't be necessary. After making some more changes, the minor factions (at least Hapans and Warlords) should be able to build and attack on par with the Playables. The Warlords may be even better off considering their territorial superiority. It'll just take some tweaking.

Some of the little factions are almost doomed from the get go. The Duskan League gets annihilated by the EoTH or IR within the first few weeks could you give them a few more Thrustships?

They will get more ships, but it's not going to help much. They're still right on the closest direct route between IR and EotH space, as well as being right next to Coruscant. They were never meant to survive the long haul.

Warlord Zsinj is between, the NR, The Hapans(which are vicious, I love fighting and destroying them) and the Pentastar Alignment all of which pretty much focus on him is there any way to beef up his forces with more Victory class destroyers in AoW?The pentastar alignment survives a decent while as long as you ignore it because they seldom attack the IR. They pretty much only attack Zsinj and Generis. In the process they end up losing all their fleet making them incapable of attacking.
I was wondering if instead of leaving Bonadan and Etti IV in Art of war neutral, could you give them to Zsinj? It would connect his systems and present a more united front as well as giving him added forces. Perhaps do the same with Adumar for the Pentastar Alignment? They take it anyway since all they have to do is land on it.

Shouldn't be as big of an issue when they rebuild things properly. Especially now that Pentastar and Zsinj have been merged (yet another reason for it). Adumar is neutral because no major power controlled it. Etti IV and Bonadan are neutral for a very specific reason that will be discussed in a future update.

Oh with the Executor's names, is there any way to have their names after the actual SSDs? Like Razors Kiss, Guardian, and Annihilator. It's a little odd to be the IR with 2 SSDs named Republic.

They're supposed to be. Because of a coding error they were reading from the Republic SD's file.

[Lord Xizer]

Thank you for clarifying that. I'm looking forward to playing this. I'll say it again, you guy's are the most professional mod creators around.
I appreciate all the work you guys put into the mod, especially considering how much time these things take.

[Lord Xizer]

A quick question if I may, You said you were combining Warlord Zsinj and the Pentastar Alignment. Will they still have all their heroes except under one banner or you meant combining them under one AI? Just curious.

[Slornie]

Essentially they have been combined into one faction with the same AI.  The planets that used to be labelled "Pentastar" in GC are now labelled "Warlord Zsinj" (this will be most obvious in the battle/planetary control notifications). The merged faction retains the heroes from both Pentastar and Zsinj, but you will now find them working together (eg. i have quite often seen a notification saying Ardus Kaine and Zsinj both died atttacking Yavin).

[Corey]

Ther faction text will be revised, probably to just "Warlords". This also leaves us open to add others if we like in the future without taking up a faction slot.

[Lord Xizer]

Will there be a chance of the Pentastar Alignment being a playable faction in future versions? Such as in Warlord Zsinj's scenario, Hunt For Zsinj where he is playable would the Alignment have something like that? Perhaps since they sponsored the hunt for the Valley of the Jedi with jerec? Could have them vs, the NR perhaps.

[Corey]

I may have been largely wrong about the groundstructures for minor factions. If I was, we should have them working better soon.

[Rukh]

In the update they said the Hutts are being replaced what faction(s) are they going to be replaced with? Vong maybe? 

[Lord Xizer]

Will the Imperial warlords have Golans over strategic planets? Like Yaga minor, bastion, Garos IV, and Muunilist?

[Slornie]

If we get the AI working right the Warlords should have Golans wherever they want to build them, assuming we give them Golans that is.

[Lord Xizer]

Ah, excellent news indeed. it would be cool to give them Golans. It would give them a decent defensive advantage.
With their shipyards, will they be getting a few heavy capital shipyards to start with? Like how the Imperial Remnant has one over Kuat to start with, NR has one over Mon Calamari. For instance giving the Warlords a starting Heavy cap shipyard at Dathomir or Yaga Minor since they were both major ship repair and construction yards in the EU?

[Lord Xizer]

Hey any chance that the Imperial Royal Guards(Palpatine's Red guard) might make an appearance in the future? As an escort for the Emperor perhaps?

[fFoxfire]

Hey any chance that the Imperial Royal Guards(Palpatine's Red guard) might make an appearance in the future? As an escort for the Emperor perhaps?

why hes quite strong by him self and in space can 1 shot anything in the game.

[Lord Xizer]

True The Emperor doesn't really need them. Just thought it would be interesting to see them again. For such seemingly kick ass warriors there is virtually no presence in games for them I've noticed.