Puzzled, is there a way to change this?

[Fighting 4 Survival]

Hi everyone, I've recently download the new/latest version and it's good to be playing stellar frontier again, much appreciated to all those who worked on bringing the new update.

However... i remember being able to have more than 10 ships a side.. or at lest being able to capture an AI ship and if it died, it would re-spawn under your race until player/AI captured it back.

As it is now you can capture them but it only lasts until it dies.. 

I would love to increase the size of teams, say 15 ships a side maybe more, failing that be able to capture an enemy ship and have it on your side until an opposing team took it back, hopefully someone knows what im talking about..

I just really like having those sprawling big battles, where chaos ruled and you were at times lucky to make it out alive. SF is still a great play as it is, but i would just like to make the teams a little bigger.

so if anyone can point me in the right direction or explain how to do this i would be really grateful!

[NiteHawk]

Hi everyone, I've recently download the new/latest version and it's good to be playing stellar frontier again, much appreciated to all those who worked on bringing the new update.

However... i remember being able to have more than 10 ships a side.. or at lest being able to capture an AI ship and if it died, it would re-spawn under your race until player/AI captured it back.

As it is now you can capture them but it only lasts until it dies..  

I would love to increase the size of teams, say 15 ships a side maybe more, failing that be able to capture an enemy ship and have it on your side until an opposing team took it back, hopefully someone knows what im talking about..

I just really like having those sprawling big battles, where chaos ruled and you were at times lucky to make it out alive. SF is still a great play as it is, but i would just like to make the teams a little bigger.

so if anyone can point me in the right direction or explain how to do this i would be really grateful!

It was adjusted for default to prevent one side having all the AI for unbalanced game, however:

If you want more AI on one side, kind of how it 'was' before, in sf_data_game file, you'll remember the AI players. in default, its normally  32 on servers. If you capture a ship, check the Census, you will see they are OVER the max AI's for that ship and another race will be under, thus when a respawn happens for that team, it will rebalance.

However: Open up the races file, you will see each race gets 10 ships and pirates get 2 ships total, for a total of 32 ships. If you set this higher, lets say, 20 ai ships per race, the max on the race will be 20 ships, for a total of 80 AI ships, lets say for example, but the 'max AI count' is 32. Thus when you capture a ship, if you look in the CENSUS, you will see now that the 'AI ships' have several free slots, because in the sf_game_data file, you only said '32 max ai'.

Basicly you can make it so they can only have lets say for example, 5AI more max, so that one race doesn't end up getting 'all' the ships.

If you don't understand then just open up the main sf_data_race.sec file for SOL and look at those to see the 'max ai slots' per race. I do have difficult explaining a few things, but you'll hopefully get it if you open up the data race file. Basicly theres a MAX AI TOTAL (sf_data_game) and MAX AI PER RACE (sf_data_races or similar). making the MAI AI PER RACE greater then the MAX AI TOTAL, will give you what you want.

I might in the future change the mod so that there can be a 2-3 ship unbalance (which is easily changable using the dat files) in the future. Also when a race does have no planets, they won't spawn anymore until they get a planet again (By player cap usually)

[Fighting 4 Survival]

Thanks NiteHawk this was a huge help!, i had one small problem and wasn't sure if it was changeable or if i did something wrong..

Now you said the max AI was 32, when i tried to change this it had no affect. I could change the max per race which was great, but i couldn't seem to bring the overall number of ships up.

I tried adding another 10, but when i entered the game it still added up to 32. It did show the extra slots so if i captured them that would work perfectly and re-spawn until the new limit was reached.

[NiteHawk]

Thanks NiteHawk this was a huge help!, i had one small problem and wasn't sure if it was changeable or if i did something wrong..

Now you said the max AI was 32, when i tried to change this it had no affect. I could change the max per race which was great, but i couldn't seem to bring the overall number of ships up.

I tried adding another 10, but when i entered the game it still added up to 32. It did show the extra slots so if i captured them that would work perfectly and re-spawn until the new limit was reached.

If you want more AI you still need to change the values in sf_data_game for max AI then too like stated. Changing it in the races only is what is the 'max' AI it 'could' get, but in the sf_data_game is still the main 'how many AI' there actually are.

[Fighting 4 Survival]

Alright im still a bit lost this is what i changed..

sf_date_game

*  name                           value
*  ----------------------------------
   year                         3015
   players (added 10 here)    60   robots       (added 20 bots here )      52   AI_level                     high
   laser_defense                off             
   max_acc                      50
   light_speed                  250
   ship_g                       50
   planet_g                     0
   debris_count                 4
   extra_colonies               12
   offensive_factor             150
   loyalty_cycle                1800
   powerup_action               level+30%
   name                         "My Server"
   desc                         "Come join!"

*  new/changed for 1.3.x
*  ----------------------------------
   balance                      off
   max_balance_gap      3
   starbase_damage              25
   starbase_popdamage           85
   AI_vanish_wait      60
   AI_maxaway_distance      3000
   AI_blowup_timer      300
   laser_equip_mode             0
   supply_tractor_time          10
   supply_free_float_time       1
   max_colony_millions      1000
   auto_spawn                   off
   default_angles               36

sf_data_races

* To make "spaces" for names, highlight a character and hold ALT and punch in 0160 on the numpad.

*

*  name       raceid  teamid  colorid  home     dt    debstart   aipop  aionly  temp  atmP  grav  bonus   col%  condition

*  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                              (Added another 5 to each race here, except pirate)
Arcean     0       0       0        Titan    10    0          15     no      170   0.50  0.5   5000  60    "hold (Mercury,Venus,Earth,Luna,Mars,Callisto,Io,Ganymede,Europa,Titan,Rhea,Phobos,Deimos) planets for 5 minutes"
   Terran     1       1       1        Earth    20    1*         15     no      300   1.00  1.0   5000  80    "hold (Mercury,Venus,Earth,Luna,Mars,Callisto,Io,Ganymede,Europa,Titan,Rhea,Phobos,Deimos) planets for 5 minutes"
   Drengin    2       2       2        Mars     20    2*         15     no      240   0.50  0.3   5000  60    "hold (Mercury,Venus,Earth,Luna,Mars,Callisto,Io,Ganymede,Europa,Titan,Rhea,Phobos,Deimos) planets for 5 minutes"
   Pirate     3       3       3        Ceres    20    1*          2     no      300   1.00  1.0   5000  30    "hold (Mercury,Venus,Earth,Luna,Mars,Callisto,Io,Ganymede,Europa,Titan,Rhea,Phobos,Deimos) planets for 5 minutes"

If ive missed something, would it be possible to give me an example NiteHawk.

Sorry if this is taken abit lol, i very much appreciate the help tho.

[Sandtrooper]

Its not that hard to add additional bots to the game.

You need to change these values in TWO files:

Code: ("<Insert Scenario Name HERE>.DAT/SCN")

game data {
#INCLUDE sf_data_game.sec
*  name value
*  ------------------
   players   50
   robots    32

Increase the # of Players AND Robots, or else there will NOT be room for human players.

Code: ("<Insert Scenario RACE FILE HERE>.SEC")

* To make "spaces" for names, highlight a character and hold ALT and punch in 0160 on the numpad.
*
*  name       raceid  teamid  colorid  home     dt    debstart   aipop  aionly  temp  atmP  grav  bonus col%  condition
*  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Arcean     0       0       0        Titan    20    0          10     no      170   0.50  0.5   5000  60    "hold
   Terran     1       1       1        Earth    20    1*         10     no      300   1.00  1.0   5000  80    "hold
   Drengin    2       2       2        Mars     20    2*         10     no      240   0.50  0.3   5000  60    "hold
   Pirate     3       3       3        Ceres    20    1*          2     no      300   1.00  1.0   5000  30    "hold

The 3rd set of numbers after "Home Planet" is the robot population. Increase this if you want more bots. Put an ASTERICK there if you want 1.2x's spawning method, in which it is determined by how many planets that race has/population to support X amount of robots.  SF_data_races.sec is shared by all 3 Sol System scenarios.


Optional setting, but sometimes mandatory:

Code: ("<Insert Scenario ROBOT FILE Here.SEC")

* To make "spaces" for names, highlight a character and hold ALT and punch in 0160 on the numpad.
* name        login     rank  race   st  ship_name    nm nk
* -------------------------------------------------------
  Sharp Claw  SharpClaw  14     0 0006  Arceus Prime  0  0
  Red Fang    RedFang     0     0 0001  Ursa          0  0
  Little Paw  LittlePaw   1     0 0000  Claw          0  0
  Bad Wind    BadWind     2     0 0000  Fang          0  0
  Long Legs   LongLegs    3     0 0001  Slasher       0  0
  Sharp Tooth SharpTooth  6     0 0000  Gnasher       0  0

You'd have to "add" robots to the scenario's robot file if you go over 20 bots. Be warned that SF_data_robots.sec is shared by almost all scenarios. Just duplicate one of the lines after SharpClaw and assign a starship class/shipname for the new bot (you can have duplicates of bots).  Be sure to check SF_data_ranks.sec to see what number corresponds with the number atfer the bot's "Login" name.

• #000 = Freighter
• #001 = Scout
• #011 = Frigate
• #002 = Destroyer / Raider
• #003 = Cruiser
• #012 = BattleCruiser
• #004 = BattleShip
• #005 = Dreadnaught
• #006 = Starbase

[NiteHawk]

Sands right on, easy way to explain it I'll probably make a robot file with 128-200 robots in it (max robots basicly).

I believe theres 64 robots (or around) in the current one so you should be ok with 52 robots.

Make sure there is no robot define in your main dat/scn file (like server.scn/server.dat) else it will overwrite the current max_ai. But by default I did not add it there.

[Fighting 4 Survival]

Sands right on, easy way to explain it I'll probably make a robot file with 128-200 robots in it (max robots basicly).

I believe theres 64 robots (or around) in the current one so you should be ok with 52 robots.

Make sure there is no robot define in your main dat/scn file (like server.scn/server.dat) else it will overwrite the current max_ai. But by default I did not add it there.

Ooh sounds nice NiteHawk, cant wait 

I'll search for this robot define, as i've done everything and triple checked it quite afew times and still having problems changing it from 32 bots.

This must be whats tripping me up... i've followed all the advice really carefully. Thanks for the help thus far guys 

[NiteHawk]

Sands right on, easy way to explain it I'll probably make a robot file with 128-200 robots in it (max robots basicly).

I believe theres 64 robots (or around) in the current one so you should be ok with 52 robots.

Make sure there is no robot define in your main dat/scn file (like server.scn/server.dat) else it will overwrite the current max_ai. But by default I did not add it there.

Ooh sounds nice NiteHawk, cant wait 

I'll search for this robot define, as i've done everything and triple checked it quite afew times and still having problems changing it from 32 bots.

This must be whats tripping me up... i've followed all the advice really carefully. Thanks for the help thus far guys 

Can you show us your sf_data_game.sec, sf_data_races.sec file, and what SCN/DAT scenario you are using? (Or just the name of the scenario).. If you are using other then The Sol System there are different race files around, and beginners sol uses sf_data_game_beginners or something similar to that for the main game file.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I think we're going to have to design some kind of settings interface in the server before long.

Just so people can start a server and go:  "I want X AI today" without having to perform file surgery in twenty-two seperate locations every time they want to change it up.

[ChillFactor]

Develop a GUI with the preset values. It'd rule over the server config file.

Sounds quite interesting, since 99% of multiplayer games nowadays have that option: to set up everything auto, limiting you to X options.

[Fighting 4 Survival]

Wooohoo! thanks everyone for your help it was much appreciated! 

The problem was with the server.scn file NiteHawk, so thank you very much for bringing that up.

I cant believe it was so simple, i feel a little silly lol. However i have learned alot.