Adding Stinger/Wasp/Valkyrie/Crusader: Need Advice

[DutchRits]

@DutchRits Just so you know, SolahmaJoe is actually modeling the Stinger/Wasp/Valk/Crud and mentioned that he expects to have them out soonish.

That is AWESOME news!

You should come by the Discord and chat with us some time, there's good modeling work taking place still and we're happy to help new modders. If you need a link to the Discord, hit me up via PM, I'll sort ya out.

I may take you up on that. Most of my effort has been to tweak the game to my own private liking. I hadn’t considered any discussions beyond the boards here and the other various wikis, etc. it’s awesome that y’all are willing to help new moddera out.

Also, no worries about not being an Annihilator fan, it's not everyone's favorite like it is mine. In case you didn't see, I also did the Assassin awhile back. It's on the Nexus, if you're into that sort of mech.

Oh, I have your Assassin mod; it was one of my “priority mods” to test after the 1.3 patch and get functional again. I’m a fan of all things 3025; I get the ANH, I’m just not a fan of its appearance.

 

[DutchRits]

@Pode (and anyone else interested): it's up on Nexus Mods. Let me know if I screwed anything up.

Thanks for the help, all!

 

[Pode]

Looks great! Can't wait to try it out tonight.
I see you went with just the base variant for each. Did you throw in hardpoints to support all the others? The Valk benefits from having both a medium and a small laser allowed, and a Dragoons style Wasp is a fearsome anti-vehicle / anti-light punchbot.

 

[DutchRits]

I did, actually. I had several considerations on the subject:

1) there are multiple variants of each mech available in 3025, and they should all be available for player use. The downside would be a saturation of the available chassis, which I saw after running JK_Variants, thus negatively impacting available salvage.
2) some of the designs, like the Wasp WSP-1W you mentioned, were ‘exclusive’ to the Dragoons (or other respective factions, in the case of other variants) and were thus unlikely to appear in an Aurigan Reach Periphery OPFOR.
3) the compromise I came to was to introduce the base 3025 TRO variant, but include the hardpoints in the chassisdef to allow customization by the player.

So you can run a WSP-1W or STG-3L, but don’t expect to see that variant in the OPFOR.

Now, if the unit tags are changed to allow more of a RAT-style of OPFOR generation, then I’d be all over adding the other variants as individual JSON entries. I hear rumor that Roguetech runs a bit more like that, but I haven’t tried it.

 

[Pode]

Adjusted Mech Assembly is great for dealing with variant spam, except for cases like this where you reuse the art file that it uses to determine which chassis to merge together. So the one chassis with hardpoints for all variants is the best approach for this type of art reuse mod IMO. Alternatively you can use the Sell Mech Parts mod and only ever collect parts for one art asset at a time.

It can be done, you can tag a mechdef with the factions that use it, but you then have to also tag each lance with the factions who can run that type of lance. So it's a LOT of work that so far only those RT nuts have done.

 

[DutchRits]

Adjusted Mech Assembly is great for dealing with variant spam, except for cases like this where you reuse the art file that it uses to determine which chassis to merge together. So the one chassis with hardpoints for all variants is the best approach for this type of art reuse mod IMO. Alternatively you can use the Sell Mech Parts mod and only ever collect parts for one art asset at a time.

I apologize for being dense, but I’ve re-read this three times and I think I understand your point: that you should include all variants individually, UNLESS you’re doing what I did, and are re-using the art/model. THEN just add the hardpoints with one variant...yes?

It can be done, you can tag a mechdef with the factions that use it, but you then have to also tag each lance with the factions who can run that type of lance. So it's a LOT of work that so far only those RT nuts have done.

Yeah, and this intrigued me...but I don’t have that kind of time, either to build it myself or test our Roguetech.

I’d actually started looking at the tags recently. I’d created a mod to include the new MWO Corsair, using the Thunderbolt as a base. I like the idea of a pirate frankenmech; it makes more sense to me than 2nd-Hand assault Mechs. But then I realized that, if I add it, then it will appear with ALL factions, barring significant editing to the lancedefs.

 

[Pode]

Yeah, you correctly translated from Pode to English. Sometimes that's an accomplishment, sorry.

 

[DutchRits]

No worries! I’m glad I understood you correctly. Lol

 

[Pode]

Your mod works fine on its own, but for some reason broke my fragile assembly of mods, so I wasn't able to run it any more than to see those nice portraits in the skirmish mechlab when I did a standalone check. Hoping I can get my mess sorted out tonight.

 

[unclecid]

i feel your pain @Pode at this time i am precariously balancing 40 active mods on the head of a pin and it doesnt take much to upset.
had reosrt to the old clean uninstall to sort it.

 

[DutchRits]

This was the genesis behind the whole effort on my part. (v)1.3 killed all my mods, and I had to painstakingly reload them all, one-by-one, after a clean uninstall. Then I made sure to get Janxious’ updated BTML & ModTek, since MPStark gave it up. Even then, I found that after each new mod I had to blow away the assembly dll, restore the original, and re-inject w/ BTML.

In short, I had to start over completely, since all my savegames were deleted. So I have yet to experience a Flashpoint.

It DID cause me to re-examine all my Stinger/Wasp/Valkyrie/Crusader jsons and correct errors, though.

 

[Pode]

after each new mod I had to blow away the assembly dll, restore the original, and re-inject w/ BTML

And here I've been trying to get away with only deleting the modtek cache and database and being frustrated with why that only sometimes works and then disabling the mod that breaks things doesn't unbreak them. Were you reliably successful adding mods with this method?

 

[unclecid]

the Battletech Mod Manager mod used to make finding the broken mod really easy.

it really is too bad that the author is not supporting it any longer.

 

[DutchRits]

And here I've been trying to get away with only deleting the modtek cache and database and being frustrated with why that only sometimes works and then disabling the mod that breaks things doesn't unbreak them. Were you reliably successful adding mods with this method?

Once I had Janxious’ update of BTML & ModTek, yes. There are a few minor mods that I have NOT gotten to work, but HotD is working fine (along with a few others; I’ll try to list them once I get home). That includes a few custom variants that I created using the HoTD methodology.