How to change the starting mechwarriors?

[Herodriver]

I want to start a new game with the backer starting pilots,instead of the bland original ones. Is it possible?

 

[ronhatch]

Well, first off... if you're talking about career mode, there does not appear to be any way to specify which pilots you will have at the start... they are randomly generated, and that's that (short of modifying the code anyway, which is presumably a lot more work than you're willing/able to do).

For campaign mode, it looks like it should be pretty straightforward... in [install directory]\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\simGameConstants\SimGameConstants.json it has the following section:

        "StartingMechWarriors" : [
            "pilot_sim_starter_glitch",
            "pilot_sim_starter_behemoth",
            "pilot_sim_starter_dekker",
            "pilot_sim_starter_medusa"
        ],
        "StartingMechWarriorPortraits" : [
            "PortraitPreset_glitch",
            "PortraitPreset_behemoth",
            "PortraitPreset_dekker",
            "PortraitPreset_medusa"
        ],

The list of MechWarriors uses the IDs that you can find in [...]\data\pilot. Unfortunately, the image to use is not just taken from the pilot definition, so you have to specify the portrait to use for each one... and it doesn't appear to allow custom portraits except via a weird work-around. See this thread for more information:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...w-to-use-custom-portraits-for-pilots.1140929/

Edit: Oh, and basically the same question came up on this thread:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/mod-the-starting-lance.1141334/

I think I covered the main points, but just in case there's a detail that I forgot to mention you can look through that as well.

 

[Herodriver]

Well, first off... if you're talking about career mode, there does not appear to be any way to specify which pilots you will have at the start... they are randomly generated, and that's that (short of modifying the code anyway, which is presumably a lot more work than you're willing/able to do).

For campaign mode, it looks like it should be pretty straightforward... in [install directory]\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\simGameConstants\SimGameConstants.json it has the following section:

        "StartingMechWarriors" : [
            "pilot_sim_starter_glitch",
            "pilot_sim_starter_behemoth",
            "pilot_sim_starter_dekker",
            "pilot_sim_starter_medusa"
        ],
        "StartingMechWarriorPortraits" : [
            "PortraitPreset_glitch",
            "PortraitPreset_behemoth",
            "PortraitPreset_dekker",
            "PortraitPreset_medusa"
        ],

The list of MechWarriors uses the IDs that you can find in [...]\data\pilot. Unfortunately, the image to use is not just taken from the pilot definition, so you have to specify the portrait to use for each one... and it doesn't appear to allow custom portraits except via a weird work-around. See this thread for more information:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...w-to-use-custom-portraits-for-pilots.1140929/

Edit: Oh, and basically the same question came up on this thread:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/mod-the-starting-lance.1141334/

I think I covered the main points, but just in case there's a detail that I forgot to mention you can look through that as well.

I see,but I still don't quite understand about portraits. Do I just replace the name with the desired pilots,or is there any thing that I should tweak before that?

 

[ronhatch]

I see,but I still don't quite understand about portraits. Do I just replace the name with the desired pilots,or is there any thing that I should tweak before that?

Well, let's say for the purposes of an example that you want to replace Glitch with Eck.

In that SimGameConstants.json file, "pilot_sim_starter_glitch" becomes "pilot_backer_Eck" instead (you can see the ids in the pilot directory... it's named based on the last name of the backer, not the callsign). If you try that change by starting a new campaign, you'll get Eck's stats with Glitch's portrait... which I'm now thinking might be the best we can do.

You'd think you could just make a similar change to the "PortraitPreset_glitch" bit and you'd be done... but Eck doesn't have a portrait preset, nor do any of the other backer pilots. Turns out that a "PortraitPreset" is just a list of parameters for the portrait generation system. Basically telling it to use hairstyle #7, scar #3, and so forth. I thought you could change the "Icon" field in the portrait preset to match the one in the pilot file for Eck, and that's what I was recommending on that other thread. Now that I've tested it, though, it doesn't look like that works, so I don't see any way to have the starting pilots use custom portraits. (I suppose it's possible that 1.4 changed this somehow, since I tested on 1.3... but seems unlikely.)

 

[Eximar]

I'm not at my gaming comp to be able to specify the exact files, but my work around for career mode is to change the ronin hiring chance in SimGameConstants from 0.08 to 0.99 so that all the pilots in the hiring hall are Kickstarter/Ronin pilots.

It may take a while to get the exact ones you want, but you can have them from day one of your campaign on and just dismiss the randoms that start in your barracks.

It makes every new planet hiring hall check a lot more interesting, imho.

 

[MechGhost]

Hi,
if you want to start a new game (Campaign or Career) with pilots of your choice, have a look at my thread:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...areer-mode-with-custom-pilots-solved.1157001/