Fighter Shielding

Fair warning, I'm talking out of my ass and it's 4 in the morning so whatever I say could be relevant or complete garbage, please take it with a grain of salt.

Ahem. With the mini-dump it could be a pretty big range of things like no shield mesh or whatever it's called, we'll refer to it as shiny bubble for I'm simplistic purposes. the game reads a shield, the fighter has a shield, but it's not displayign a shield so that might be where it breaks.

There could also be something not edited that needed editing, it could be reading"oh this unit has a shield" then while looking into another file for like the damage or something to be applied to such and such unit "wait, ashield NEVER" break.......again it's 4am

Then again it could be a Technology issue with upgrades in sec shields, did you research any upgrades? and if so what kind of tech was involved before/during the break. Also, my own opinion, if you do get this working, do you think you could make it a tech allong the shielding branch to add shields to the fighters? Be it late, early , or mid game is up to you but I think about mid would make things interesting without making it too late to be o any real use.

Or, now here's what i believe, your computer feels violated for you touching it's "hidden files" without asking and is rejecting you because it refuses anymore shame....or something *sips coffee* anyway, SHAMELESS BUMP

Maybe someone with real experience and with a heightened sense of cognitive awareness will be allong some time soon since this is at the top of the list now, cause I'm kinda hopping you get my swarms of fighters polished and shiny in their own little bubbles, Keep at it, I look forward to it.

I didn't research any technology when I was testing it. The whole thing works by putting an ability on the host ship which works on linked squadrons that gives shield points and a shield restore rate. See here. The third paragraph of your post is what I believe is causing the minidumps; though hell if I know for sure.

As for tech research; that is easily possible, just give the ability a research prereq.

Is this ability tied to a capital ship?

In what I specifically tested, no, was to a cruiser. Edit: Though, if it's worth mentioning at all, ability was edited from a capital ship's ability.

Noticed that. Set it for running a cruiser and see if that helps.

I don't know what you mean by setting it to run on a cruiser or whatnot... The ability it was edited from works fine on cruisers.

Regardless, I tried it out on a capital ship, getting the same minidump on damage taken.

For future reference you change this

1. maxNumLevels 3
2. levelSourceType "Intrinsic"
3. minExperienceLevelRequired
4.         Level:0 0.000000
5.         Level:1 1.000000
6.         Level:2 2.000000

 to this

1. maxNumLevels 1
2. levelSourceType "FixedLevel0"

I'm getting some similar effects with mines and I think it's how the game treats them.  In most ways mines seem to be treated as "squads" but then it seems some things weren't meant for them and they minidump if some parameters get changed.  Mines are obviously a mutation of squads/and or frigates but its really hard to tell exactly what they are.

Why doesn't Ironclad provide us with a REAL modding guide?  I have never understood this.

Eh. I'll do that for the future; but it doesn't break the ability, so to speak.

See this, plus Ryat's comment, is why I believe it may be due to the fact that fighters aren't meant to have shields. I'll try messing with the squadron file.

Edit: Adding the ability to the squad file does nothing to solve the minidump; as does getting rid of the LinkedSquad constraint.

A specific example is I added some  bomber level acceleration/velocity values to the homing mines where some values were "0" before the changes. Crashed or minidumped whenever the mine tried to move.

*back from a game crash,own fault* anyway, any progress on beefing up my fighters and bombers? =3

Had a thought about adding the adaptive shield to the squads as a passive you could research. Instead of reduceing damage you could set it to add a shield life value. that would be TEC's anyway, maybe Psionic Shield and Phasic shield for Ad an Va. Maybe lessen the points for Advent, increase mitigation and ....something for vasari that fits. Actually instead of shielding for vasari, since with the carrier's "fix everything" cloud, you could add something that increases the hull or adds a regen rate to the squadrons, like, whole blasted through a wing, nanites make it "grow closed" ;

While I didn't intend to use this for any of the stock factions, Sins just isn't accepting this change for some reason. Something tells me the fact that fighters do not normally have shielding and that ingame even with this ability shielded fighters do not have shields showing up in their health/antimatter bar has something to do with it. Unfortunately, I believe that this is something only IC can change; another hardcoded limit has been confirmed.

Gah, hopes dashed for superior squadrons. Oh well, enough numbers of the buggers and anything's swatted down anyway.

Darn hard code >.> need some code softener for this game so we can do some more interesting things ;O

I just had a thought and hadn't seen it suggested...have you considered modifying the "GiveModulesShields" ability added the carrier/hangar and making the target  your fighters/bombers?

That's exactly how he did it originally, and hence the minidump problem. The problem is no longer not being able to give fighters shields, we can do that. Its that the game crashes when they have them.

Indeed, GoaFan77 is correct. The game does not recognize fighters as an entity that can have shields, and thus it crashes when they are damaged, or so I believe. By "giving" fighters shields the game is forced to take damage in a field that should not exist.

Ah--my bad.  Ironically, I can give mines shields--but it doesn't matter because contact is what causes them to detonate self and that includes contact with shots--shields or not.

I'm by far not a modder, but have you looked at the attacker's end of things to see if it was in the damage given that causes the mini-dump?  What was firing at the fighters when the game crashed? (Not sure if this is relevant at all, but it hadn't been mentioned yet.)

Alternatively, was the shielding distributed to each fighter in the squad or linked to all of them at once?  Try putting just one fighter in a squad and work from there.  Maybe the game was trying to link all the squads to one shield and running into issues there.

IDK, again, I've never modded anything, just thought I'd offer a new viewpoint.

-Twilight Storm

-EDIT:  If it turns out it simply isn't possible to have shields, try just making an upgrade that boosts their health/armor to simulate the extra protection.  Not what you originally had in mind, but better than a kick in the arse I'd say.

EDIT AGAIN:  Would it be possible to remove the current squads altogether, and re-intigrate them to be recognized as frigates that are owned by the host?  (Basically making the game think they're free units linked to one owned unit, wityh all the perks of being a frigate and a fighter all in one)

Downside being that Flak would need to be modified to some degree, as well as the fighter's actual damage type I think, even if it is possible.  Though if it is, It's gonna be a lot of work I think

I already looked at the second paragraph, and as for the first paragraph, I know for a fact it was the fighters being fired upon that crashed it and that the attacks that hit it are fine otherwise.

You can't spawn frigates in the manner that you do fighters/squads. Maybe IC will include this in Rebellion.