Topic: SFCOP+ - Questions and Bug? - Fighter UI "Fix"

[TarMinyatur]

I wonder if Fast Patrol craft (PF) use the same BPV ranges for icons and hover-text. Ardak, can you test this, too?

(My Kindle Fire doesn't run StarfleetOP.exe otherwise I'd modify my shiplist.txt to test PFs.)

[Kumerian14]

Well, thanks for the inadvertent compliment, Tar, but I'm not Ardak.    My understanding is that Ardak Kumerian is a character created by an SFB player who wrote fan fiction.  This commander was sort of the prototypical Klingon strategist who made a name for himself along the Federation border and rose in the ranks over time.  Sort of the Klingon version of Horatio Hornblower.

As for the PF data, I might be able to look at this in the next few days, but my work schedule is picking back up, including some overtime projects that are coming due.  If possible, I'll try to fit in some additional testing time here and there.

The standard PF data is confined to the shiplist.txt file, just like the main-line ships, yes?  There isn't another data file floating around with additional stats, maybe one that I missed somewhere?  You guys know more about the directory structure than I do at this point.

[TarMinyatur]

The data for the BPV of Fast Patrol craft is only found in the shiplist.txt files. The *.gf campaign files can affect prestige costs, but not BPV.

[Kumerian14]

Folks,

I haven't had much time to follow-up on this (work and real life keep intervening), but I have determined a few things:

1) Using the Gorn as a reference, the BPV values in the original shiplist.txt and the OPPlus 4.11 shiplist.txt appear to be the same, in particular for the 5 main types of PFs (INT, PFS, PF, PF+, and PFL).  I've checked through my directories and compared several versions of each, just to be sure they were all the same (I made backups at several points before installing various mods).  This appears to be the case.  This result would suggest that the roll-over text for the UI is not linked to the BPV, at least not in the same way that fighter shuttles are linked.

2) Assuming that the numbers for the OPP4.11 shiplist.txt were the starting point, I wonder if changing the BPVs in a way similar to the fighter shuttles would be a valid fix anyway.  To get the UI text correct, I had to roughly double the BPV of the fighter shuttles (per squadron of 4, Hydran Killer Bee III went from 20 to 36, while Hornet III went from 28 to 56).  Assuming that we had to apply the same process by scaling the BPVs upward, a squadron of Gorn INT (26 each) might increase from 78 to 156 while PFL squadrons (53 each) might increase from 159 to 318.  That would make the cost of a PFL disproportionate to its actual combat effectiveness.  If, on the other hand, we scale the BPVs DOWNWARD, then PFs almost become more cost effective than fighter shuttles, which is also disproportionate to their respective combat effectiveness.

Now, I don't know as much about the innards of the code as some of you do, so maybe I'm missing a key item here.  However, it seems to me that using altered BPV numbers to "fix" the UI for Fast Patrol ships is less practical (and less cost effective) than for fighter shuttles.  Due to time constraints, I haven't tested any altered BPV numbers in-game yet, so I would still have to try this to get actual BPV data (assuming it works that way).

Sorry I'm slow on this, but I hope the analysis so far helps to clarify a few things.  Let me know if I'm way off track here.

EDIT: Looked at wrong column of numbers from fighter testing--had to correct BPV listings.  Sorry about that.

[TarMinyatur]

Thanks for checking this out. I bet Taldren used a multiplier for the PF icon and hover-text.

An excellent PF is very roughly equivalent to two top-tier fighters. But a basic PF is just as crummy as 4 primitive fighters in Taldren's Ph-3 insane universe (firing at range 8+ consistently).

Since each "bay" on a carrier typically holds 4 fighters or exactly one PF, a multiple of four may be present.

Let's say a PF has a BPV of 41. It'll use the "interceptor" icon because it is greater than 4x10. Any PF with a BPV less than 40 would use the wimpy "patrol" icon. I don't know if the actual multiplier is x2 or x3 or something weird like x1.67. I highly doubt the calculation is logarithmic or exponential.

[Kumerian14]

Tar,

Hmmm...a "built-in" multiplier for PFs seems plausible, although that obviously complicates things just a bit.  It is a place to start, though.

Due to some technical issues, I just re-installed SFC:OP using the 2564 HD community patch, plus the Fests and OPPlus 4.11 packages.  Since I've never run this combination under Linux / WINE (or ever, for that matter), I'll need to do some basic stability tests before I can start testing BPV numbers for the PFs.  My current version of WINE is pretty stable, but I had a box pop up on the 2564 patch install, saying that WINE required Gecko for the embedded HTML.     Haven't ever seen that message before with WINE.  I installed the Gecko package for my flavor of Linux, so we'll see what happens.

I'll let everyone know when I have something to report.  If you see a Hydran Lord Bishop cruise by, that's probably me.

[TarMinyatur]

I put my hard drive from my Win7 laptop into an old Vista laptop. Amazingly the machine works.

So I looked at the icon functions yesterday with IDA. I can see a comparison to 8, which is either the array size of shuttle/fighter icon varieties or the maximum number of icons shown in the shuttle bay panel.

Another function is called to assign a suicide shuttle a value of 1, a wild weasel a 2, a Hornet.ll a 5, a PF an 8, etc. This arbitrary integer is used to load the icon bitmap and write the hover-text quicktip.

I suspect that Taldren didn't treat PF BPV differently from fighter BPV. A PF with a value of 15 or more will always use the "Heavy" icon and text. There are no defined icons for PFs in sprites. Only a very cheap PF will use a Patrol icon, for example, I believe.

[Kumerian14]

Well, a Hornet.II in the original ftrlist.txt is definitely 5 BPV.  However, the cheapest PF from any race is 19.  Now, there is a column in the shiplist.txt called "Balance" and each PF for every PF-using race has a value in this column of "-5".  If you shave off 5 from 19, that's still 14.  The economy.gf file could have an impact on this, but if it hasn't been edited, then it shouldn't have an impact on what's seen on the display.

Here's where the confusion starts for me.  If the cheapest PF in the game will cost no less than 14 (assuming there aren't any other hidden factors), then it appears that the icon / text in the shuttle bay will never work correctly, even right out of the box with no mods.  At the same time, if the PFs require the same BPV value ranges as fighters to display properly, then that would seem to insert a significant and obvious game imbalance in favor of PF-using races.    I'll try to investigate further on my end.

BTW, I was re-reading your post on the H/S forums regarding the shuttle panel, and I was curious about something.  The three fighter icons with the I / II / III designations--where do those appear?  I wondered if they were a hold-over from the Hydran Stinger fighter designations.  I've never seen them in the game anywhere.

[TarMinyatur]

If the balance of a 25-BPV unit is 5 or -5, the game will treat it as a 25, never as a 30 or a 20. The "balance" data is to show programmers which ships are weaker or stronger than the sum of their parts. It's not "economic BPV" from SFB. You can override the balance data by directly editing the shiplist.txt. The entire column can be set to zero or 999, and it won't affect the game.

Fighter icons with I, II, and III were an idea that was never implemented. The old Stinger fighters were in shiplist.txt because there wasn't a ftrlist.txt. I think a H-ST6 represented six fighters.

Hmm would it make sense to use any icon for a PF besides the "heavy" one? Ideally the PFs should have four icons that aren't shared with fighters.

[Kumerian14]

Ahhh...didn't know that about Balance.  I was definitely thinking SFB and making the assumption that it would affect BPV.

That's interesting--the I / II / III icons were never implemented but are still in there.  I had forgotten about the location of the Stinger data, so I guess these wouldn't be connected after all.

Ideally the PFs should have four icons that aren't shared with fighters.

See, that's what puzzles me.  I agree that you could think of all PFs as some sort of "super heavy" fighter.  However, since there are multiple types of PF and since some ships could mix-and-match types, it only makes sense to have separate icons for each PF type.  Otherwise, just like the fighters, you're launching craft blind without knowing what you are doing.

I don't know if this is remotely possible, but if the I / II / III icons are unimplemented, could they be "borrowed" to represent the PFs in some way?  It would sure help in keeping track of what's on-board, and people wouldn't have to use arbitrary BPVs to get separate icons.

[TarMinyatur]

Yes, the icons can likely be reassigned. This requires a week of labor, maybe more, to expand the array, adjust the strings.txt, update the sprites, etc. The question is whether 40 hours of study is a good investment for the potential result. Usually carriers in SFC have uniform squadrons of Hornets or Wasps. SFB demanded Fusion Beam fighters to escort the Hellbore fighters, but this restriction doesn't apply in SFC. I understand how the icon ambiguity in the shuttle bay is annoying. If we could tweak one function to accomplish this in an hour, it would be reasonable. But it isn't a simple task -- for me. I'll take a look at two functions this week. I'm very rusty with assembly code.

[Kumerian14]

Before you commit to that, I managed to accumulate some hard data.

After making sure my re-install was stable, I went back and systematically tested some BPV ranges for the PFs.  For testing, I used the Gorn PFs in Skirmish mode (Aside: from what I could tell, Skirmish mode uses the shiplist from the Specs folder, while the Campaign mode uses the shiplist in the MetaAssets folder--didn't know that).  PFs don't appear to use quite the same, clean BPV pattern as the fighters:

BPV (or range) = Shuttle Icon Used

14 = Heavy
15-18 = Patrol
19-20 = Interceptor
21-22 = Assault
23-25 = Interceptor
26 - Assault
27-29 = Heavy
30-39 = Assault

I stopped after 39, as I have an early day tomorrow and it's already the small hours of the morning here.  I might have time to continue testing later this week, but for now, we at least have some idea of how the BPVs correlate with the icons / text.

[TarMinyatur]

Thanks for the experimental data. Looks like a broken relationship by sloppy programming. Can't imagine this is working as intended.

The campaign uses the shiplist.txt in the MetaAssets folder by default. Skirmish Mode uses the shiplist.txt in Assets\specs.

Taldren specifically did this to allow players to simultaneously have different specification environments. One for mPlayer Arcade (later Gamespy and Gameranger and Evolve) and a second for Dynaverse campaigns. You could play on a TNG Dynaverse server for a while and then jump into the arcade version for a free-for-all without having to overwrite your shiplist and ftrlist.

If you want to automatically use your skirmish specs for your singleplayer Dyna campaign, change the assets.gf in MetaAssets\ServerProfiles\Singleplayer.

[Files]
ShipSpecs      = ".\Assets\Specs\shiplist.txt"
FighterSpecs   = ".\Assets\Specs\ftrlist.txt"

[Kumerian14]

I just ran across something confusing about the v2564 HD patch, so I need to ask a question.

I am 34 missions into an ISC campaign using the v2564 HD patch + OPPlus 4.11 (for the HD patch).  I modified my MetaAssets folder to use the updated fighter and PF BPV data (weird though it may be).  I also modified several of the .gf files so that I could minimize how fast the size of the database file grows (thereby slowing the "creeping turn lag" problem).  However, the game doesn't seem to be using my data.

Upon investigation, I noticed that there are 3 locations where .gf files are located:

* Assets / Settings / Dedicated
* Assets / Settings / Local / SinglePlayer
* MetaAssets / ServerProfiles / SinglePlayer

Tar, you indicated that the shiplist and ftrlist from MetaAssets are used for campaigns.  However, the .gf files from the MetaAssets folders don't seem to be the ones that are being used for my single player campaign.  Further, in the main SFCOP directory, there is a "SinglePlayerSettings.gf" file that sets the Profile path to Assets / Settings / Local.

So based on your last comment, if "Dedicated" is read for Skirmish Mode and "MetaAssets" is read for Campaign Mode, then what does "Local" control?  What am I missing here, folks?

Thanks for any help.  If this means what I think it means, I'll be abandoning yet another campaign because of incorrect settings.

[TarMinyatur]

Version 2.564 may have a reorganized asset directory. I'll take a look at it today. There should be exactly one file named assets.gf, and that controls the paths to your active shiplist.txt and ftrlist.txt for singleplayer campaign mode.

Assets\Settings\... ?

This must be a modification by Carlos for the last patch. I'm sure there's a good reason for it. The .exe needs spec paths in assets.gf to load the ship and fighter data files. If there are two or more assets.gf, that would be a problem.

[d4v1ks]

Surprise, surprise.
In 2564 both the client and server were merged into a single folder, and their settings into a fresh location at ".Assets\Settings\".
The folder ".\MetaAssets\" exists only as part of the OP+411 package to keep compatibility with old missions that could have used MagnumMan shiplist's source code.

The picture here, illustrates well how a clean 2564 installation should look like.

[Kumerian14]

I appreciate the explanation, gentlemen, but I'm not sure that answers my question.

Tar - Got it.  That may explain why "SinglePlayerSettings.gf" exists in the base directory for SFCOP.  I'll take a look at the assets.gf file to see if that enlightens things a bit.

d4v1ks - Yeah, surprise indeed.  I saw that image when I was installing, but I wasn't sure if it was exactly the same for OP.  Part of those examples were based on CE and the notes indicate they are similar, but I didn't assume that meant "identical".

Based on your two emails, I still have three questions:

1) Which folder actually contains the data for single player campaigns?
2) Must all the relevant files from that folder match MetaAssets to prevent OPP411 from getting out-of-sync with the rest of the game?
3) Is my current campaign toast, or can I just copy the relevant files from MetaAssets into whichever directory controls single player campaigns, then go on from there?

Here's hoping I'm not demoted back to a frigate again...

[TarMinyatur]

If you change the shiplist and ftrlist during a campaign, it shouldn't crash if your ship and fighters exist in the new specs. Most missions load opposing and allied ships indirectly, rarely by name such as G-CCH. It'll request a Heavy Cruiser or Frigate or Dreadnought, etc.

Your current campaign cannot continue if you change the mission roster. Let's say you don't want to do scout missions. Your saved campaign data file will contain references to the scout missions and if your new roster lacks them, your game could fail to load or crash.

You shouldn't encounter any serious problems if you edit the economy.gf or similar files. They are meant to be edited mid-campaign, afaik.

Changing the hex map will likely crash the game if you're in hex ( 20, 15 ) but those coordinates don't exist in an edited galactic map.

Honestly, the singleplayer campaign never interested me beyond my first one as a Lyran. So my expertise in .gf modifications is lacking.

I hope you can salvage your 30+ scenario investment in your current game save.

[Kumerian14]

Tar,

Wow, thanks for the quick service.   

The only files types that I edited were:

* shiplist.txt / ftrlist.txt - altered the BPV as stated to get the correct fighter / PF icons (man, PFs are EXPENSIVE now!)
* .gf files - altered Economy, MetaMap, MissionMatching, and Time for various reasons / effects
* bindings.ini - obvious

That being the case, it appears that I can either:

a) copy the files from MetaAssets into the correct Assets folders, or
b) change the "SinglePlayerSettings.gf" value to point to the MetaAssets file (assuming that I understand this file correctly).

And I can save my existing campaign.    Woohoo!  If I'm waaaay off-base on this (pun partially intended), please, let me know now!

[TarMinyatur]

I think you'll be able to resume your campaign. I'd update the path to the assets that you want to use, rather than copy and overwrite several .gfs. Whichever way helps you keep organized is recommended.

PFs can perhaps be made affordable, in terms of prestige, in the economy.gf file.

[Cost/Ship/ClassType]
SHUTTLE = 1.0
PF = 1.0 // change to 0.5 to cut cost in half
...

 So a 100 bpv PF can cost 100 prestige instead of 500 prestige. Unless PFs are treated exactly as fighters in spacedock. I don't see a PF item in spacedock.