Any worked with modding character tags

[Tirno]

TL;DR ask:

• Anyone modded/added new character tags, including lifenodes?
• Can events be multi-stage, i.e. more than one choice in an event?

Long version:

So, one of the things I wish BATTLETECH had was a little more RPG elements for the Mechwarriors. I'm looking for more out of them than XP and combat stats. Luckily, HBS left a lot open to us, and if you don't get 100% of the game you want, you can always mod the game.

So, has anyone done anything with character tags? I don't have the game in front of me right now, but there's a JSON file that has a list of character tags, and then there is a separate directory with a set of 'lifenodes' of varying levels. Before I try to completely reverse engineer the tag system, I'm wondering if anyone has made any effort in this direction.

What's I'd like to do to enhance the company sim game is to add character tags/lifenodes to represent things from A Time of War, such as:

• Improved character attributes (assume no less than Normal for a Mechwarrior)
• Skills, particularly:
  • Weapon skills (pistol, rifle, shotgun, blades, unarmed)
  • Technical skills (hacking, technician, comm/crypto, lockpicking, etc)
  • Academic skillsets (Star League technology, history, engineering, strategy/logistics, accounting, xeno-meteorology)
• Choice of sidearm(s)
• Cybernetic prostheses (eye or eyes, ear or ears, lung, liver, heart, kidney, type 3-5 arm(s) or leg(s))
• Military unit type additional duties: Snack-O, finance officer, morale officer, range officer, hand-to-hand instructor, quartermaster, weapons and tactics instructor, etc
  
• Formal tags for Lance 1 through 8 (3 per lance because there are only targetted, secondary and tertiary event roles, but no quaternary role), and lance commander, etc

Based on these I'd add additional events to the system to represent situations using these tags, such as:

• Recruit a ship's surgeon (add a company tag) leading to...
  
• Modify a death-event to turn a mission-killed (but not dead) mechwarrior to active status with a HUGE recovery time if the Argo has a Hospital and you can pay for an expensive prosthetic
• Mechwarrior studying for a correspondence degree which could lead to...
• Mechwarrior with an appropriate academic background doing something of potential benefit/risk based on planetary tags
  
• Everyone picks on the Snack-O.
• Weapon training events that could result in leveling up character weapon skills
• Weapon choosing events that determine the sidearm for a mechwarrior
• Competitions leading to high/low morale status
  
• Loggy officer tracks down some rare mech equipment... for a price
• Faction specific reputation gain/loss opportunities
  
• Finance officer finds some potential savings
• Hijinks or shenanigans
• Hijinks then shenanigans, or vice versa
  
• Hijinks and shenanigans at the same time with optional tomfoolery

I'll need to add some more tags for event chains.

Is it possible to do multi-choice events? I've been reading through the jsons for events, but I haven't seen an example yet. Thing about programming, the most important numbers are zero, one and more-than-one. If there is an event with more-than-one choice, then it should be possible to do choose-your-own-adventure type events a la Death From Above non-mech role-play episodes. Might have to be built by hand as I'm pretty sure the editor can't do it, but the way I read the json, if it is possible a choice leads to a set of results with another presentation of choices, then we can build a tree of result-choices with end-results at each leaf-node.

 

[Pode]

DonZappo's Pilot Quirks mod is the gold standard thus far, start with a look at his code and build from there.