I feel your pain... been hacking on my mod pretty seriously again lol...

OK... here's how it works, in a nutshell:

Random Encounters (not Missions, which is totally different) are spawned by Zones.

Study the Zone marked Zone_Li01_001_Planet_Li01_01 , as it's what you're going to want to fool with initially. Basically, it's divided into 3 sections:

1. Data about its dimensions/position and other basic information, that every Zone needs (in several different formats, but I digress)

2. Data about the Factions which can spawn here. You can give them various Weight settings to subtly "unbalance" the computer's semi-random dice tosses when it decides what to spawn next, but it's very subtle- setting all the Weights to 10 is a good start.

3. The Encounters themselves. These consist of two parts:

A. The type of Encounter, whether it's area_defend, area_trade_trader, or whatever. This determines the types of ships that spawn when a Faction spawns there, and what they're going to do (vaguely).

B. The Factions that can spawn as part of the Encounter.

Each listing has the following format... like this one:

encounter = area_defend, 1, 0.070000

The two numbers are the Difficulty and the Probability of the Encounter.

Difficulty can be set to whatever you want, but if it's higher than the Toughness setting for the Zone, it's often ignored, and nothing will spawn (I usually set my Zones to 19 or higher so that this doesn't happen, and then tweak downwards)

The Probability is compared to the Probability of the other listings. FL adds all of them together when it "rolls the dice" and decides what is going to spawn, so you must keep the combined Probabilities of ALL the Encounters at less than 1.000000. Failing to do so can result in CTD!

Now, that's a pretty hectic Zone to start playing with... so here, try substituting this one... it'll be a little easier to see what the other variables are doing, with less going on:

EDIT... don't forget to close that first bracket around {zone}... this 'board eats them...

[zone
nickname = Zone_Li01_001_Planet_Li01_01
pos = -33020, 0, -27925
rotate = 0, 104, 0
shape = SPHERE
size = 7000
comment = Manhattan
sort = 1
toughness = 1
density = 12
repop_time = 10
max_battle_size = 8
pop_type = li_p_grp, base_cluster_law
relief_time = 10
faction_weight = li_p_grp, 10
faction_weight = fc_x_grp, 10
faction_weight = co_hsp_grp, 10
density_restriction = 4, unlawfuls
encounter = area_defend, 1, 0.5
faction = li_p_grp, 0.5
faction = fc_x_grp, 0.5
encounter = area_trade_freighter, 1, 0.5
faction = co_hsp_grp, 1


Basically, what I did here was build a Zone where half the time, a freighter convoy with escorts will show up. And half the time, either the Liberty Police or the Xenos will show up... each one has a 25% chance of showing up, every 10 seconds (which will probably get tricky in stock FL hehe).

Where'd I get that "10 seconds?"... that''s the repop_time. The relief_time seems to only come into effect after bad guys show up and have a Battle (the FL engine seems to be "aware" of this, and reacts accordingly, so that the chances of yet more Xenos spawning during the Battle are low to none).

Anyhoo... play around with this simple model, and you'll get it, and then you can find the Zone for Pittsburgh and take care of it

Edited by - Argh on 11/23/2004 2:21:23 AM

Random missions will only be available where a vignette zone AND an encounter zone coincide. In otherwords, if you have encounters near manhattan but vignette's near pittsburg, you will never have any missions. The vignette zones need to be at the same place as the encounter zones/paths. An easy way to make missions available across the whole system is to make something like this:

[zone
nickname = Zone_system_missions
pos = 0, 0, 0
shape = ELLIPSOID
size = 120000, 15000, 120000
sort = 1
toughness = 20
density = 4 <----- very important line
repop_time = 90
max_battle_size = 4
pop_type = Background
visit = 128 <----- Be sure to make this 128 so this zone is invisible
relief_time = 90
faction_weight = li_n_grp, 5
faction_weight = li_p_grp, 5
faction_weight = li_lsf_grp, 5
faction_weight = fc_j_grp, 5
faction_weight = fc_lr_grp, 5
faction_weight = fc_ou_grp, 5
faction_weight = gd_z_grp, 5
encounter = area_scout, 30, 1.0000
faction = li_n_grp, 0.05
faction = li_p_grp, 0.05
faction = li_lsf_grp, 0.05
faction = fc_j_grp, 0.05
faction = fc_lr_grp, 0.05
faction = fc_ou_grp, 0.05
faction = gd_z_grp, 0.05

This will basically only effect missions, except for the "density" line. Be careful with that one because it will effect the density of the entire system (it will effect other zones). Make sure the line "encounter = area_scout, 30, 1.0000" has a number like 30 in there so that these ships will never actually spawn anywhere except for mission. Include all factions you want to have missions for, both "good guys" and "bad guys".

There are a few other things that effect missions, but this is a good start. And especially if you already did all the other stuff like copied the vignette zones and the mbases.ini stuff, it should work. Remember, missions are only offered against factions that are hostile in the initialworlds.ini.

Erm, since you copied all the entries for Li01, I am going to ignore those two, and plumb for the old fashioned Mbases.ini file corruption!!!

Lets go with:

Can you get missions anywhere?
When you open up Mbases.ini file - do you get this?

[BaseFaction
faction = li_n_grp
weight = 13
offers_missions = mission_type = DestroyMission, 0.000000, 0.897413, 100
npc = li0101_lnavy_001_f
npc = li0101_lnavy_002_m
npc = li0101_lnavy_003_f

[BaseFaction
faction = li_lsf_grp
weight = 13
offers_missions = mission_type = DestroyMission, 0.000000, 0.812387, 20
npc = li0101_lsf_001_f
npc = li0101_lsf_002_m
npc = li0101_lsf_003_m



See if you see lines like the bold ones above
It should say:

[BaseFaction
faction = li_n_grp
weight = 13
offers_missions = true
mission_type = DestroyMission, 0.000000, 0.897413, 100
npc = li0101_lnavy_001_f
npc = li0101_lnavy_002_m
npc = li0101_lnavy_003_f

[BaseFaction
faction = li_lsf_grp
weight = 13
offers_missions = true
mission_type = DestroyMission, 0.000000, 0.812387, 20
npc = li0101_lsf_001_f
npc = li0101_lsf_002_m
npc = li0101_lsf_003_m


Of course, if it doesn't - then go with what they said

You guys are the best !

Alright, wasabe was correct, after I added that system-wide zone I got some random missions at the bar.

Can you be more specific about how the two zones have to coincide ? Does one zone have to be totally inside the other (if so, which one should contain the other, or maybe they can both be the exact same size) ?

It seems logical now, you have a zone where, say, the Rouges hang out, and a mission can become avaliable at that zone.

For the non-vignette zones does the 'density' always have to be exactly 4 ? And what about the 'pop_type' and the 'population_additive' values, I never understood those.

Thanks for the help guys, from your posts I learned a lot and am all excited to populate my system today. Take care.

You know what.....I didn't read the 'I removed everything except the encounter parameters at the top'

My bad

I don't get it... where are the long numbers coming from in mbases.ini?

--------------------------------
[email protected]
Leader of the Republic Mod Team.
"Criminal Organisations don't just spring up overnight. It's a conspiracy" - overheard on a a Liberty comm frequency

mission_type = DestroyMission, 0.000000, 0.812387, 20
The 0.000000 is the minimum level you need to be in order to be offered a mission.
The 0.812387 is the maximum level you need to be in order to be offered a mission.
The last number is the percentage that that faction offers on that base.
(The total has to be 100%)

Only numbers in the Diff2Money.ini file may be used.
(The first number. The second numbers in Diff2Money are payout, and you can change those.)


Watch your 6!

Warzog - I disagree, I think its the difficulty range. if you have 0 to 100 - then you get missions from 1k all the way to 230k (or whatever is max), which is easy to max hard.

If you make it 53, 100 then you get missions from difficulty 53 to 100, which means top end missions only (200k+).

This is why on manhatten you get only 1-2k missions, whereas in the omicrons you get 200k+ missions etc. The difference is not your level, but the difficulty on offer - with manhatten being 0.001, 0.13 or something, and the omicrons being 28, 53 etc.

Edited by - Chips on 11/28/2004 4:31:33 AM