A little bit of experimentation with leaders

[Dragatus]

So I made a little test mod and I'm leaving notes on what I found here in case anyone wants t do anything with it. This was inspired by the idea that generals and admirals could be merged into a single Commander leader class.

The mod just adds a line to the admiral class that allow admirals to lead armies. It doesn't remove any line from generals.

admiral = {
    name = admiral
    name_plural = admiral_plural
    description = admiral_description
    can_lead_navy = yes
    can_lead_army = yes
    max_trait_points = 1
    can_have_traits = yes
    (...)
    default_category = admiral
    (...)
}

general = {
    name = general
    name_plural = general_plural
    description = general_description
    can_lead_army = yes
    max_trait_points = 1
    can_have_traits = yes
    (...)
    default_category = general
   (...)
}

This lead to some interesting behavior. First, I was able to put admirals in charge of armies. However, this changed their icon to that of a general and their background becomes green. But they still show up as admirals in the leader window. What's more, if you try to look at just your generals it will show no owned leaders and the leader pool to hire from will be admirals. And when the admiral turned general levels up he gets admiral traits to choose from.

The change also allows admirals to be put in council positions that require a general.

Spoiler: screenshots

It's worth comparing to what the wiki says about modding leaders. https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Leader_modding (Note that the wiki article was written for version 3.0 and is likely outdated.)

 

[Dragatus]

Removing a leader entirely from the files does not crash the game. Any empires whose ruler is defined as a general will instead be ruled by a governor, but the governor will still have whatever trait the general had. And predefined general paragons become extra envoys.