Fleet Commanders

[Jkrueger]

What is the whole story on the NR fleet commander spam? Will they be returned the mod at some time or replaced by something else? Having only Ackbar to provide fleet bonus limits effectiveness in Art of War with 3 separate pockets on the map.
Perhaps the NR (Empire too?) could be given a command and control ship with a limit with how many are allowed at once if possible. Could the new planet rewards be made to pseudo random spawn an FC hero? ie captains gaining experience getting a promotion to commodore.
Doesn't have to be a capital. I'd really like something to send with my early game snubfighter/nebulon fleets.

TL:DR been torn a new one by EOTH hero blob too many times

[Enceladus]

What is the whole story on the NR fleet commander spam?

http://screenshots.filesnetwork.com/70/potd/1291268880_73.jpg

Pretty much sums it up...

[Lord Xizer]

They were as prolific and ever spreading as Flood through Halo! Everywhere they infested the NR bringing lag and redundancy to every system from which they were spawned! Thus were the dark times before the saviors of the mod team did vanquish the plague that threatened to cover the galaxy in an infinite number of Fleet Commanders...
(melodrama aside it was really an issue in the Thrawn Campaign GC, Shadow Hand GC, and Reunification GCs which until the Fleet Commanders overpopulated EVERYTHING else in the game were some of the best GCs.)
 They also make heroes less strategically important, since they are basically discount heroes. I really don't look forward to the idea of seeing them again, but that's just my opinion...

[Mazzic]

Making the EotH hero blob counter be a different hero blob of your own sounds like it would just turn into a game where everyone's trying to send their own hero blob everywhere though.

[Darth Stalin]

Maybe there's a way to limit the number of Fleet Commanders available? In Nomada_Firefox' "Alliance Mod" each side can have only 3 Fleet Commanders (plus heores that provide FltCom abilities).

[Corey]

The problem isn't that we don't know how to limit unit buildability, the problem is there's some sort of spillover that allows the AI to bypass all restrictions and spam them (apparently only the NR AI at that) when nothing else can.

[Corey]

Save this to your XML folder and overwrite the existing copy (but keep a backup, this wasn't tested very extensively, just made sure it didn't crash since I've never experienced the bug myself). As far as I can tell it should work.

[Lord Xizer]

Downloading and trying now.

[Pox]

So, I have just read in the shoutbox that the AI builds tons of fleet commanders again even though it isn't supposed to be able to do that?

I recall the SMG having a similar problem where the AI was even able to build units from other factions, although all build options in the unit XML were disabled.
They eventually fixed this by adding LOCK_UNIT events for those units to the AI story files.

Well, and if that doesn't work there's still:

Code: [Select]

<Event Name="Remove_Fleet_Commanders">
<Event_Type>STORY_ELAPSED</Event_Type>
<Event_Param1>1</Event_Param1>
<Reward_Type>REMOVE_UNIT</Reward_Type>
<Reward_Param1>Fleet_Commander</Reward_Param1>
<Prereq>Universal_Story_Start</Prereq>
<Perpetual>true</Perpetual>
</Event>


[Corey]

I consdiered doing that, but figured since the unit itself was locked that they were building them off of some variant hidden somewhere, especially considering it seems to only be the one faction doing it.

[Pox]

Well, the LOCK_UNIT method worked for the guys from the SMG, so it may be worth a try.

It would also be interesting to know if the AI actually constructs the Fleet Commanders or if they're spawned by the AI's magic spawn script.
Maybe you could check this with a STORY_CONSTRUCT event with a screen text as reward.

[Slornie]

It would also be interesting to know if the AI actually constructs the Fleet Commanders or if they're spawned by the AI's magic spawn script.

That's actually a very good point.  Fleet/Field Commanders don't seem to be mentioned in any of the AI build scripts (including Magic), aside from the -Field_Comm_[Faction]_Team in FoC's BuildGroundForcesPlan.lua (interestingly not in the EAW version). That script seems to be the only one without DenyHeroAttach, so maybe the LandHero/SpaceHero category masks don't need to be explicitly included for the AI to build them?  Although how that might relate to the AI being allowed to build an unattainable unit (build locked, tech 99) i don't know..

As a side note, are the Magic scripts actually used by the game?  Their respective GoalFunctions are zeroed out in the Perceptual Equations, and i don't recall seeing anything else that could trigger them?

[Pox]

As a side note, are the Magic scripts actually used by the game?  Their respective GoalFunctions are zeroed out in the Perceptual Equations, and i don't recall seeing anything else that could trigger them?

Oh, I hadn't even noticed that, yet.
Seems they aren't used then after all.

Well, I'd still suggest to try the LOCK_UNIT method and if that doesn't work then just use the REMOVE_UNIT event.
But maybe the REMOVE_UNIT event could throw off and/or weaken the AI a bit? It would basically remove units the AI had just decided to build. In the worst case it could decide to do the same thing again I guess. But that would need to be tested.

[Corey]

Yeah, remove unit would result in a laggly loop of indecision. Almost as importantly, it would add to the ever-present problem of the kill limit freezing issue.