changing the starbase upgrade limits

there should be a line in the entity folder that says

maxnumberupgrades 8 just up this to 15-20 depending on the base and it should work

shmily123 is correct regarding the line in the starbaseRACE.entity file having the total limit of upgrades, this is from the StarBaseTech.entity file line 172

maxUpgradeLevelCount 8
UpgradeTypeCount 8
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechWeapons"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechToughness"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechHangar"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechTradePort"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechBlockColonize"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechFactory"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechResupply"
UpgradeType "StarBaseUpgradeTechSelfDestruct"

the levels for EACH of the starbase upgrades is held in the particular starbaseupgrade, and EACH upgrade CAN have a MAX of 9 upgrades eg weapons level 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7, & 8 with level zero being the weapon strength from the StarBaseRACE.entity and the extra strenghth defined in the starbaseupgradeweaponsRACE.entity.

I had played with the extra levels & strengths in my personal megasb mod, and these are the results ie 9 upgrades possible, EACH with up to 9 upgrade levels totaling a max upgrading of 81 upgrades.

harpo

Thank you both for your very fast replies -- I think that I should be able to get it to work now, provided I don't run into any other issues.

I do have another question though -- harpo, you said that there are a possibility of 9 upgrades with up to 9 levels each; would it be possible to make more than 1 tier of the same upgrade type? This is what I mean:

ex:

A starbase already has 9 different upgrade types, but you want another type. From what you said, the game has hardcode limits that would normally make this impossible. Would it be possible to do something like this to get around that limit:

upgrade 1/9 -- 4/9 levels

upgrade 2/9 -- 3/9 levels

upgrade 3/9 -- 2/9 levels

upgrade 4/9 -- 3/9 levels

upgrade 5/9 -- 1/9 levels

upgrade 6/9 -- 1/9 levels

upgrade 7/9 -- 1/9 levels

upgrade 8/9 -- 2/9 levels

upgrade 9/9 -- 2/9 levels

your custom added upgrade - upgrade 10/9 -- 3/9 levels

Instead of trying to find that hardcode limit and change it, could you just make some of the upgrades part of the same categories -- with earlier levels as their prereqs -- to make 'room' for another upgrade type?

ex:

Combine upgrades 1, 2, and 3, because 4+3+2 = 9, which then means that there are actually only 7 different unique upgrades that don't depend on each other, as opposed to 9. You could make it go 1,2,3 / 1,3,2 / 2,1,3 etc. And that would allow you to add another 2 custom upgrades -- that way, you could have additional upgrades that didn't require messing around with the game's limits. Could something like this work?

--cittran

citran, there are nine upgrade slots in the UI and each slot is for ONE upgrade entity, but it is possible for a single upgrade to effect two or more different upgrade areas as most of the upgrades are just alterations on number of banks or range or strength of weapons/hull/shields/repair rate/buildrate of frigates, and each of the upgrade entity files actually have up to nine steps in it and in each of the steps you specify the alterations for the step, BUT for simpler testing it is better to focus EACH of the upgrade entities on one area, and the hardcodes ARE in the exe's so NOT changeable by us modders.

in your examples upgrade 1 had four levels, I bumped it to 9, the second had four, I bumped it to 9, the third had 3, I bumped it to 6, the fourth had two, I bumped it to 3 the fifth had 1, I left it at 1, the sixth had two, I bumped it to three, the seventh had 2 left at two, the eighth had two left at two for the tec starbase, and made similar differences to the other two starbases.

harpo

However, you could, say, combine the Weapons and Armor upgrades into one upgrade slot, so that each upgrade improves both weapon banks and hull points, or first Hull, then weapons at later upgrades, or whatever. That would free up the second (armor) slot for your own upgrade. Similar with say, the TEC's Trade Post, and Frigate Bay upgrades... Put them in their own Building Tier. That would free up another slot for custom upgrades.

Firstly, thank you harpo -- what you told me worked, and I think I finally figured out the problem: I was doing what you said, but I was also trying to change the details in the buff and ability files for directional shield, vacuum debris, meteor swarm, etc.

To make a long story short, the game didn't like it when I tried to do that. It died. Each time. I tried to change the different levels in the buffs and abilities for the starbases, and I could change the files from BIN to TXT, but once I changed the content, I couldn't change it back to BIN, so there must be something I'm missing in there.

Thankfully, only doing what you said did work, so the changes are in place for my mod.

As to what jozan said:

That idea is EXACTLY what I was talking about -- same concept, but I meant not just for weapons and armor. I didn't think about combining them that way, but now that you mention it, it seems like a much easier, and better, idea. I'll try it out when I get a chance.

My ultimate goal is to build a REALLY extensive mod, with as many models as I can make... Once I figure out how to make them that is.

You will hit the 2 gig limit. I would start with TSOP and build off of that. It takes a lot of the load off an already overloaded game.

Lots of tutorials at http://soase.weebly.com/modeling.html