[General Tutorials] Complete Guide to getting Missions against Nomads

An addendum to the tutorial above: It seems highly unrealistic to fly certain mission types against Nomads. I speak of the Assassinate, Capture, Destroy Loot, etc. After all, Nomads, as far as we know, are more of a collective species, so targeting individual ones seems a bit less realistic than it does for humans. The way to make it possible to fly only Kill Ships and Kill Solar missions against Nomads is simple; simply delete the following line from faction_props.ini:

firstname_male = 229608, 229608

I realized that this would work when I noticed that you never flew missions against the GC (an all-female criminal organization) except for Kill Ship and Kill Solar. Since you can make up gibberish for Nomad names, and since they never speak, you won’t notice in-game that they’re using only female names. Also, in order to be able to fly Kill Solar missions against them, you’ll need to add a few more lines in your INI files. Example:

KillableSolars.ini (data/randommissions)

[KillableSolar]
nickname = rm_station_no_D19-D23   ;the unique nickname of the solar
solar_type = Big_Solar   ;whether they are the big middle station or a weapon platform
string_id = 8   ;what the object is called in-game... this is 'Outpost'
faction = fc_n_grp, fc_no_grp   ;the faction generates this type of station for a mission
archetype = nomad_station   ;the archetype defined in SolarArch.ini
loadout = rm_nomad_station   ;the loadout in loadouts.ini
hitpoints = 32500, 35000   ;the initial and total hit points of the object
difficulty = 5.256606, 18.458324   ;I believe the range of difficulty of the mission this will be offered in
pilot_choices = 2   ;unknown

[KillableSolar]
nickname = wplatform_no_D1-D23
solar_type = Defensive_Solar
string_id = 0
faction = fc_no_grp
archetype = nomad_wplatform
loadout = nomad_weapon_platform
hitpoints = 4800, 6400
difficulty = 0.018451, 18.458324
pilot_choices = 4

Note that my Nomad faction is called fc_no_grp; change this according to your own faction name. Here’s how I’ve defined the above entries elsewhere:

SolarArch.ini (data/solar)

[Solar]
nickname = nomad_station
ids_name = 329688
ids_info = 329688
type = MISSION_SATELLITE
DA_archetype = solar\misc\dyson_platform.3db
material_library = solar\Solar_mat_dyson_city.mat
LODranges = 0, 5000
mass = 10000.000000
solar_radius = 1000
shape_name = NAV_depot
explosion_arch = explosion_dyson_city_platform
destructible = true
hit_pts = 35000
fuse = fuse_space_mining01, 0.000000, 1

[Solar]
nickname = nomad_wplatform
ids_name = 261164
ids_info = 66171
type = WEAPONS_PLATFORM
DA_archetype = solar\dockable\nomad_platform.3db
material_library = solar\nomad.mat
;nomad = true
LODranges = 0, 6000
mass = 10000.000000
loadout = nomad_weapon_platform
solar_radius = 1000
shape_name = NAV_weaponplatform
destructible = true
explosion_arch = explosion_wplatform
hit_pts = 12000
fuse = fuse_nomad_wplatform_death, 0.000000, 1

loadouts.ini (data/solar)

[Loadout]
nickname = rm_nomad_station
equip = infinite_power
equip = ge_s_scanner_02
equip = armor_scale_7
equip = sfx_rumble_trading_depot

[Loadout]
nickname = nomad_weapon_platform
archetype = nomad_wplatform
equip = infinite_power
equip = ge_s_scanner_02
equip = nomad_wplatform_turret01, HpTurret
equip = armor_scale_7

I plugged this into fuse_suprise_solar.ini (data/fx), because it was already there, but any fuse entry should work

[fuse]
name = fuse_nomad_wplatform_death
lifetime = 0.010000
death_fuse = true

[destroy_root]
at_t = 1.000000

[destroy_hp_attachment]
hardpoint = HpTurret
at_t = 0.500000
fate = disappear

And that should round out your new Nomad faction, allowing them to only appear in Kill Ship and Kill Solar missions, and also giving them the ability to appear in Kill Solar missions.

MK

Excellent stuff from both of you

Sorry to be a moaning old git here but as well written as this tutorial is, it is only good if you’re REPLACING original factions. There’s no mention of creating new factions while leaving the old ones intact. There’s no mention of the magic number 131834 which you have to add to any new faction IDS number you create in sequence after the originals, plus the four entries that are located in the offerbribes.dll that describe how the names show up in the mission descriptions,

Your IDS number + 131834 and enter “new faction”
Your IDS number + 131834 add 100 and enter “the new faction”
Your IDS number + 131834 add 100 and enter “new faction”
Your IDS number + 131834 add 100 and enter “the new faction”

Just thought i’d mention it lol

One other thing, the mission_type = unlawful, lawful line in the mission vignettes. There’s some debate as to whether these are needed as missions work just fine without them as long as you have two factions in the encounter that hate each other. The game seems to check the initialworld ini for info in that department. So you could have mission_type = none and it will still work

Agreed but they still won’t show their names in the mission descriptions unless you edit the offerbribes section.

Gibbon, those entires are already set in Vanilla FL, so there’s no need to add a new set for it to work.

MK

@mknote:

Gibbon, those entires are already set in Vanilla FL, so there’s no need to add a new set for it to work.

MK

MK, you’re right about that part bud but if you’re replacing another faction, in this case the xenos, it doesn’t matter what you call the new faction, be it Nomads or Gibbons, the offerbribes entries will still show Xenos when you take a mission. To get any faction name to show up in missions, you need to alter those four entries that i was on about so when you take the mission, you get this,

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y155/Wargibbon/Phoenix mod/nomadmissions.jpg

Nice tutorial. I like it.

@Gibbon:

MK, you’re right about that part bud but if you’re replacing another faction, in this case the xenos, it doesn’t matter what you call the new faction, be it Nomads or Gibbons, the offerbribes entries will still show Xenos when you take a mission.

Wait, who said anything about replacing the Xenos ???

MK

I’m interested in implementing this in our mod but have a concern.
It seems to me that unless the player characters were created from the beginning while running the mod, a player would not recognize the faction for what it is (hostile/friendly). Perhaps not even recognize the faction at all as it’s not in their ‘replist’ in their playerfile.

So, if that’s indeed the case, how would I go about making those ‘hard coded’ edits to make missions against the original nomads work?

@robocop:

I’m interested in implementing this in our mod but have a concern.
It seems to me that unless the player characters were created from the beginning while running the mod, a player would not recognize the faction for what it is (hostile/friendly). Perhaps not even recognize the faction at all as it’s not in their ‘replist’ in their playerfile.

So, if that’s indeed the case, how would I go about making those ‘hard coded’ edits to make missions against the original nomads work?

There is a small hex edit you need to do to make them appear on the rep screen. To make them appear in missions the npcships entries for the nomads need to be class_fighter, you also need to modify the nomad encounter ini’s to make them class_fighter. Thats pretty much it in a nutshell. After that… treat them like any other faction.

There are 3 entries in the npcships.ini file that refer to the nomads.
MSN13_Nomad_Fighter_Populator
SETSCENE_Nomad_FIghter
and fc_n_no_fighter_d19
I’ve changed all of them from FIGHTERS to class_fighter

The only one assigned in the faction_prop.ini file is the fc_n_no_fighter_d19 so I don’t think I really needed to do the first two, but I figured for now it couldn’t hurt.

the contents of the area_nomads.ini file are as follows:
[EncounterFormation]
ship_by_class = 1, 1, fighters
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, fighters
pilot_job = assault_job
make_class = wanderer
formation_by_class = fighters
behavior = wander
arrival = cruise
allow_simultaneous_creation = yes
zone_creation_distance = 0
times_to_create = infinite

[Creation]
permutation = 0, 3

That looks correct to me.
And yet, no missions.

@FuryFreelancer:

I am using an already existing encounter file, ‘area_nomads’ for this. If you feel you are up to it, you may create a new one, using a similar encounter file as a template. To be safe though, I would suggest you stick along with what I am proposing initially, until you are confortable with it, and know what everything does. Save and close this file. Remember earlier when we had to edit a line in npcships.ini? The line had ‘FIGHTER’, and we needed to alter it to ‘class_fighter’. We need to repeat this again in a similar way for our encounter. I didn’t explain why this needs to be done, so i’ll do that now. If you used the default entries of ‘FIGHTER’, our encounters would show up in space, but not in missions. There is a file named shipclasses.ini, which contains ship classifications. Basically, ‘class_fighter’ belongs to the category ‘sc_fighters’, which is recognized for missions, whereas ‘FIGHTER’ is a member of ‘fighters’ which is not recognized in this way. This is a hardcoded limitation of freelancer, and there is no way around this except by using a different class.

Are you saying here that I need to edit the area_nomads.ini file and change it thusly?

<data file=“data\missions\encounters\area_nomads.ini” method=“sectionreplace”>[EncounterFormation]
ship_by_class = 1, 1, fighters

<dest>ship_by_class = 1, 1, fighters
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, fighters
pilot_job = assault_job
make_class = wanderer
formation_by_class = fighters</dest>
<source>
ship_by_class = 1, 1, class_fighters
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, class_fighters
pilot_job = assault_job
make_class = wanderer
formation_by_class = class_fighters</data>

This change:

<data file=“data\missions\encounters\area_nomads.ini” method=“sectionreplace”>[EncounterFormation]
ship_by_class = 1, 1, fighters

<dest>ship_by_class = 1, 1, fighters
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, fighters</dest>
<source>
ship_by_class = 1, 1, class_fighters
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, class_fighters</data>

not only does not make the missions happen, they cause my regular nomad spawns to disappear.

I noticed all other formation_by_class = fighters were set to fighters so I left that at fighters, but making it class_fighters doesn’t change the end result.

In the encounter file…
ship_by_class = 1, 1, sc_fighters ;<-------------
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, sc_fighters ;<-------------
pilot_job = assault_job
make_class = wanderer
formation_by_class = fighters

In the npcships.ini…
npc_class = unlawful, class_fighter,

From my area_nomads.ini file:

[EncounterFormation]
ship_by_class = 1, 1, sc_fighters
pilot_job = assault_leader_job
make_class = wanderer
ship_by_class = 3, 3, sc_fighters
pilot_job = assault_job
make_class = wanderer
formation_by_class = fighters
behavior = wander
arrival = cruise
allow_simultaneous_creation = yes
zone_creation_distance = 0
times_to_create = infinite

[Creation]
permutation = 0, 3

From the npcships.ini file

[NPCShipArch]
nickname = fc_n_no_fighter_d19
loadout = no_fighter_loadout02
level = d19
ship_archetype = no_fighter
pilot = MSN13_Nomad_Fighter
state_graph = FIGHTER
npc_class = unlawful, class_fighter, d19

No Nomad spawns, no missions.

A Vanilla area_nomads.ini will restore the spawns. But, still no missions.
sniff

Spawns are fixed by fixing the ship class in the encounters. But, still no missions.

Has anyone tried running this mod on a server that has previously created characters? What happens when a player character that was created prior to this mod being implemented runs into the new faction? The NPC group won’t be in their initialworld stats. I’m guessing the empathy stats are server side or a combination of clientside/serverside, but if the player char doesn’t even have the faction in their player files I’m suspecting they’re going to crash when they run into these new NPCs.

Short of editing each and every existing player file, are there any other options?

Thx.

R

Guys, anyone tried to do these missions? work? Because I’ve done all that is written here and I have only npc ships in space, but no missions.