Rejigging contract spawns in post-completion campaign

[hongooi]

Since the Heavy Metal minicampaign is broken in my career game, I've gone back to my campaign game which I absolutely played to death back in 2018.

The company management side is hilariously out of whack when you have 500 million C-bills in cash, plus multiple mechs of every type in storage. I allied with Kurita, flew to their planet and bought snub PPCs and ++ heat exchangers in bulk. When the black market opened, I snapped up multiple SLDF Griffins, Black Knights and Highlanders (after editing the json files) and stripped them for their heatsinks. But I digress.

One thing I've noticed is that, even with the changes to contracts that HM introduced, my game is still using the old pattern of contract spawns. I only get 2 per planet, and they all tend to be pushing me towards the top-right corner of the map. The contract difficulties are also jacked up; even the starter planets are rated 4-5 skulls.

Is there a way to change this? I'd like to be able to get 5-6 contracts per planet and a wide spread of skull ratings, like in my career game.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

Not sure about the issue with the contract spawns but in campaign the level of the planets are set by the number of campaign priority mission you have completed. There is no way (short of presumably a mod) to get a range of skull levels post campaign.

 

[Donvale]

Not sure about the issue with the contract spawns but in campaign the level of the planets are set by the number of campaign priority mission you have completed. There is no way (short of presumably a mod) to get a range of skull levels post campaign.

Unforunately true, one of my least favourite design decisions with the campaign, it's like the galaxy just gets more and more dangerous, without anything really happening to make it so... The way you just choose your own level in career mode is so much more enjoyable.

 

[Eelectrica]

Yes. I'd prefer systems staying at their skull level so if you want to do a one skull mission you can. Not every system needs to be 4 or 5 skulls.

 

[TheSicknessWithin]

Hi,
for more contracts and more variance in contract difficulties you can edit some lines in the file
...\BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\simGameConstants\simGameConstants.json

Works with inbuild mod-loader and of course modtek.

Line 273:
"ContractDifficultyVariance" : 1,
this setting is how far the contract difficulty can deviate from the difficulty of the star system (in "half-skulls")

Line 331:
"MaxContractsPerSystem" : 7,
this sets the maximum number for contracts per system,
except if the override in the json of the star sytem is activated, for such systems the maximum number of Contracts is set there.

What you should know, the game is "pretty slow" in generating contracts, so if set a high number, it can really take some minutes to generate the contracts (use myself 40 per system, which takes 1-2 minutes for the generation of contracts), so have some patience there.
Contracts (like shop items) are generated when you open the contract (or shop) screen the first time after reaching the jump point of the system, so for testing my advice is to take a savegame where you just arrived at a system, so you can see the changes just after loading.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Worthy Challenges...

I want worthy challenges when I take Missions. Once I have a 5-Skull Lance those are fewer and further in between, even with the Campaign Universe becoming such a dangerous place and all the lower Skull Contracts disappearing from the Contract Marketplace.

Any improvement/development of the BATTLETECH Contract Process would be greatly appreciated. :bow:

 

[ronhatch]

As far as modding the difficulty, I answered a similar question here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?goto/post&id=26116359#post-26116359

The main difference is that once you're done with the campaign, you won't be getting any more story missions, so the overall difficulty is set and can't be easily changed (unless the save editor on Nexus mods has that as an option). There's no reason the individual star systems couldn't be given negative difficulties, though, which would result in any difficulty setting you'd like as long as you know what the overall base difficulty is set at. The only problem with any mod switching system difficulties is that you'd be making changes to a LOT of files.

 

[hongooi]

Hi,
for more contracts and more variance in contract difficulties you can edit some lines in the file
...\BATTLETECH\BattleTech_Data\StreamingAssets\data\simGameConstants\simGameConstants.json

Works with inbuild mod-loader and of course modtek.

Line 273:
"ContractDifficultyVariance" : 1,
this setting is how far the contract difficulty can deviate from the difficulty of the star system (in "half-skulls")

Line 331:
"MaxContractsPerSystem" : 7,
this sets the maximum number for contracts per system,
except if the override in the json of the star sytem is activated, for such systems the maximum number of Contracts is set there.

What you should know, the game is "pretty slow" in generating contracts, so if set a high number, it can really take some minutes to generate the contracts (use myself 40 per system, which takes 1-2 minutes for the generation of contracts), so have some patience there.
Contracts (like shop items) are generated when you open the contract (or shop) screen the first time after reaching the jump point of the system, so for testing my advice is to take a savegame where you just arrived at a system, so you can see the changes just after loading.

Thanks. I went into the json file, and ContractDifficultyVariance and MaxContractsPerSystem were already at 1 and 7 respectively. I did notice that the file had a syntax error (missing comma on line 330, right above MaxContractsPerSystem) so I fixed that.

It hasn't had any effect. Cruising around for a bit, I still get only 2-3 contracts per system, and they are still mostly offworld in the direction of the top-right corner. This is for an old campaign game, which was started basically when the game was first released. I'm guessing those constants only apply to career mode.

 

[hongooi]

I can live with the skull difficulty rating, but it would be really nice to have more than 3 contracts per world. Right now I have to do a lot of flying around between contracts, which is just boring.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

The locked skull ratings likely has to do with the limited number of planets that we can visit in campaign before you beat it.

 

[TheSicknessWithin]

Thanks. I went into the json file, and ContractDifficultyVariance and MaxContractsPerSystem were already at 1 and 7 respectively. I did notice that the file had a syntax error (missing comma on line 330, right above MaxContractsPerSystem) so I fixed that.

It hasn't had any effect. Cruising around for a bit, I still get only 2-3 contracts per system, and they are still mostly offworld in the direction of the top-right corner. This is for an old campaign game, which was started basically when the game was first released. I'm guessing those constants only apply to career mode.

I think you misundestood, the lines I posted are the unmodified values of the base game, try higher values.
Also 7 max contracts means that there are maximal 7 contracts, not always 7 contracts (don't know how the game calculates that) and then there are always some systems who use their own value (override), IIRC the starting systems for the campaign for example. IIRC all systems of the Arano Restoration shouldn't use the override after they are flipped.

The values are working for both campaign and career, the difference of the increasing overall difficulty of systems in campaign and the fixed difficulty in career is defined somewhere else (I think the json files of the star systems).
In general the career modus uses the settings of the campaign in the simGameConstants.json except where the career mode definitions (near the end of that file) state explicity something else.

 

[hongooi]

No, I know what you meant. 7 contracts should mean 7 contracts listed, or at least that's what happens in my career mode game. In my campaign game, I still only get 2-3 (or sometimes 4) contracts. This is in Arano space as well as elsewhere.

I think I read on reddit that any changes to the constants only take effect in a campaign once you pass a milestone. The problem is that if you've completed the campaign, there are no more milestones so the changes never happen.

 

[ronhatch]

I think I read on reddit that any changes to the constants only take effect in a campaign once you pass a milestone. The problem is that if you've completed the campaign, there are no more milestones so the changes never happen.

That makes sense. I wonder if the save game editor can change those settings... and if not, how hard it would be to add them.