Dummy question for making a mod

[Falkenstein]

Hi, please I'm facing an issue with setting up a mod. My final goal is to make a mod (most likely just for personal use) that will prevent the AIs from using covert operations. Please let's not discuss if it's a right thing or not - the game is meant to have fun and for me a game without constantly being hit by covert ops would be far more fun that it is now (hardest difficulty, so it's not even reasonably possible to defend).
I don't really care how the operations will be disabled - through extremely low AI priority, through being insanely expensive, through having no actual effects.. basically anything works for me, I don't care if it also prevents me from using the operations.

How I'm going about it:
- I start modding tools from the launcher
- in the package manager I create a new package
- I open Tools > Resource Editor
- In Resource Editor I click File > Open and try to find the rpk that contains settings of covert operations
- however, I am unable to locate the file in which the covert operations data is - the directory I'm searching is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Wonders Planetfall\Content\Title\Packs (as suggested in the modding guide)

Please, could you point me in the right direction? Thanks a lot in advance!

 

[atord/Nordos]

so, to do what you want, you can go multiple ways, but I assume the easiest way would be:
- change the Operations itself. These should be located in the .../Title/Packs/TechGroup/SpecialOperations_Operations_TechGroup. These are the 'neutral' Ops, which are avaible for each player . There is an 'Logic' Subset, which controls the AI behaviour. You can set them to 'Ignore' for all these (or which you want). I assume you want to change the Sharkan, too, which can be found in .../DLC04/Packs/TechGroups/Sharkan_Operations_TechGroup in the Category of Strategic Operations.
If you want to change Operations bound to any species or Secret Techs, they will also appear in TechGroups under the defined Species/Secret Tech name.

Hope that helps

 

[Falkenstein]

Hi, thanks a lot for the perfect reply! It did help, or at least seems to have helped so far. I.e. I have met multiple AIs on very hard difficulty, but no covert ops hitting me so far. My change was setting all the covert ops to Ignore, just like you suggested.
Strangely, though, just after installing the newly crafted mod I started a new game (Empire mode) that had the modifier that covert operations are never detected. There I had friendly relations with Psi-Fish and there was a really weird thing happening. Whenever I met a new AI, my relations with the Psi-Fish immediately deteriorated. After meeting the first AI the relationship was reset to basic 0. I got it back up to friendship, but after meeting another AI Psi-Fish immediately declared war on me. The change always happened immediately on meeting the new AI and very early in the game. I suppose that the only reasonable explanation is that the AIs used the covert operation that sabotages my relationship with the Psi-Fish. However, since the operations were never detected, I can't say for sure. Thereby I quit that planet and started a new one where covert ops can be normally detected - and so far no covert op on me at all. So I'm not sure so far - the Psi-Fish incident might have been something different, or maybe the hardest settings override the Ignore flag for the AIs.. hard to say.
Either way - thanks a lot for your advice, I will be experimenting with it further

 

[Falkenstein]

Found - I forgot about Celestian operation Sway Ideology