toughness is the toughness of the zone or encounter you are in for instance lets take outcasts a toughness of 4 means daggers and 19 mean stelettos you see . its just the ships you set up in npc ships ini

Thanks Richard, it's pretty much what I thought for the zone then, and from reading other posts on this forum - but what still throws me off is that in several mod system files where the toughness is less than the encounter level, the encounters still take place, and this is why I became unsure.

The difference I can see in a couple of cases when zone toughness is less than the encounter NPC skill, is that the density and max battle size limits don't seem to work, and I end up with 8 attackers instead of 4, for example. This may be because of the toughness being incorrect? but I need to do some more heavy testing to be sure I guess.

Any more info on this?

And for weapon toughness?

Roleplay: - the art of self-deceipt!

Edited by - StarTrader on 9/20/2007 12:27:18 AM

well tell you the truth i just started making zones my self. i havent been doing it for too long

[Zone
nickname = Zone_St01_001_Planet_St01_01
pos = 1072, 0, -2414
rotate = 0, 0, 0
shape = SPHERE
size = 7000
comment = Toledo
sort = 99.500000
toughness = 4
density = 15
repop_time = 10
max_battle_size = 8
pop_type = fc_or_grp, single_base_law
relief_time = 10
faction_weight = fc_or_grp, 20
density_restriction = 8, lawfuls
encounter = area_scout, 4, 1.000000
faction = fc_or_grp, 1.000000
encounter = area_trade_trader, 4, 1.000000
faction = fc_or_grp, 1.000000
encounter = area_defend, 4, 1.000000
faction = fc_or_grp, 1.000000
encounter = capitalships_Liberty, 19, 1.000000
faction = fc_or_grp, 1.000000
encounter = area_assault, 4, 1.000000
faction = fc_ou_grp, 1.000000 heres one i created for story line one base the number 4 by the enouconter discribes the toughness

I'm very interested in this answer as well. Toughness seems to be redundant. I've written a small program to do essentially "data mining" into the ini files to help learn stuff, and in my searches for toughness & encounter in the systems, toughness level is always the same as encounter level. Like so:

Results for file "Rh01.ini":
In the 3rd section named "zone", found the following:
comment = Ruhr Field ; Line #319
toughness = 11 ; Line #321
encounter = area_scout, 11, 0.330000 ; Line #330
encounter = area_bh_scout, 11, 0.380000 ; Line #332
encounter = area_bh_assault, 11, 0.050000 ; Line #334

And this is consistent for like 500K worth of matches. I wonder if it has to do with those rare times when enemies say something like "No way, he's way too tough for us. I'm getting out of here" or whatever...
If it is redundant, it's certainly not the first redundant thing. They must have had a nice system-editing program that wrote these values out for them automatically based on some common property....

then again i could have made some errors but you can still play my game and everything works

I am at a mystery at this topic too, but I suspect it is to do with minimum level within zones so how about try setting toughness = 9 perhaps and have only level 4 ships defined for the encounters?

I max_battle_size I strongly believe deals with maximum level of ships, I haven't tested it but I believe it is

Yes max_battle_size limits the total ships in combat, so if it's 4 then you should see only 4 NPCs around you.

Density is how many ships will be generated in the zone within 2400m of you.

But as I said mine don't do this limiting, and I can't see the reason at the moment - instead of getting the 4 NPC ships spawning that I expect, I get 8 - two batches of the encounter at the same time! lol

My zone:-
<pre><font size=1 face=Courier>
[zone
nickname = Zone_Rw01_pop_ambient_02
pos = 30000, 0, -10000
rotate = 0, 0, 0
shape = SPHERE
size = 2000
sort = 99
toughness = 6
density = 5
repop_time = 5
max_battle_size = 4
pop_type = attack_patrol
relief_time = 5
mission_eligible = false
faction_weight = fc_tr_grp, 100
encounter = area_assault, 6, 1
faction = fc_tr_grp, 1
</font></pre>
My encounter ini file is set to generate 1 leader and 3 wingmen. But I get 8 NPCs every time, and when I destroy them all another two batches of 4 appear after the relief time is over (5 seconds). They are clearly two sets of the same encounter, and both fly in the right formation (I am using fighter_wall) and there are two distinct formations, they come from slightly different directions in two groups. It's actually wonderful to see, and I hope I get to understand why so that I can use it at will!!

I mean, everything is great but I want to control the limit to have 4 ships at a time only in this zone, or precisely another number of ships, like 6 or 12 - I know I will need to adjust my encounter to allow 2 x 3 and 2 x 6.

Glad of any help.

I did something in a battle zone to give the appearance of a lot more ships than is allowed in "max_battle_size" .
How I did it was to create encounter zones that overlapped each other.
This could be what you're experiencing. Simply overlapping zones.
Each encounter for each zone is valid with it's limitations, but they don't supercede the encounters of the zones that overlap it. So that may explain why you're seeing more ships than you expected.

Overlapping zones.
Zones within zones.

(it adds up)

@Startrader

You have a density of 5.
If there are only 4 spawned NPCs, FL will spawn any additional NPC encounter, until the number of spawned NPCs > density restriction.
So, if you do not want to have more then 4 npcs in an area, you need to set the density to 1. Then again, if you have an encounter that can spawn more then 4 npcs, a density = 1 setting will still spawn more then 4 npcs.

Good tips guys, thanks both.

As it happens my zones are small and separated, but your tip on overlapping them will be useful at some point, thanks.

Wodka - thanks, I wouldn't have thought of that for some time, it looks favourite for causing my problem in this case. I'll implement it and report back.

So from what we have discussed, toughness = for zones doesn't limit the NPC difficulty, does it? Since even if it is lower than the encounter parameter, I still get the encounter with higher rank NPCs as the encounter specifies. I wonder if it can be omitted altogether in this case? I will try that too.

How about the weapon toughness = ? What does that one do?

Thanks guys

FYI, I did an experiment with toughness = (for zones) today. I tried two things: 1st, I set toughness = 19 for the zone around Buffalo base (liberty rogue base in Manhatten.) That did nothing.
Second, I set toughness = 19 for every zone in Manhatten where "mission_eligible = True". Then I took a couple missions. No change. (These were after starting new games, just in case...)
As far as I can tell, toughness does nothing Or, maybe it effects something in a very specific, very rare circumstance...

If I remember correctly toughness is the level of the Pilot.

That's exactly what toughness is, it defines the level of the pilot for the encounter, simple as that. The reason it won't work in new york is that there aren't any level 19 ship loadouts for liberty ships. You have to define it in npcships.ini. and then give the ship a loadout in loadouts.ini and also define the ship in the relevant faction entry in faction props.ini.

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What I don't seem to understand is that if it is the level for pilots, then how come when I set toughness for 30 then I get ships that are level 19 anyway?

If I misunderstood something above, I apologize for inconveniences, because from what I read from above, I work out is that toughness is the minimum level of ships?

and that max_battle_size controls the maximum level of pilots and with

the density itself judging how many ships are allowed in a zone?