Hero ability tactician 1 gives a decrease to enemy fleet accuracy using the descriptor HeroAbilityCommander01Battle. However, is there some kind of secret linkage between this and the descriptor HeroAbility01Commander? I have been able to modify support module characteristics such as converting per-ship damage mods into per-fleet damage mods. But, I cannot figure out how to make a support module which operates like tactician.



What is the syntax to assign modifiers to the enemy fleet?

Wonderful question,



I basically ignored this post at start just because it's something I really don't mind but..



after watching these lines I am rather puzzled:



Lets start with empire traits:

TargetProperty="Accuracy" Value="0.05" OperationType="Percent" Path="ClassEmpire//ClassFleet//WeaponModule"



that should be easy to understand or I thought so, if you take perk sniper your empires classfleets get invisible weaponmodule which increases accuracy by 5%



Then comes battle:

TargetProperty="Accuracy" Value="-0.8" OperationType="Percent" Path="ClassFleet/ClassShip/WeaponModule,Kinetic"



this should also be easy: In long range combat Kinetic weapons are 80% less accurate (quite a huge amount but hey, it seems to work) ... this is for both or so I thought until



TargetProperty="Accuracy" Value="-0.06" OperationType="Percent" Path="../ClassFleet//WeaponModule"



This is basically hero thingy.. now this is where it gets confusing. Unless that .. points to somewhere where suddenly is enemy fleet things It really doesn't make any sense.





So uhm, I am not mistaken what you need to put to your item is:

../ClassFleet//WeaponModule



problem is just that uhm, it points to somewhere and god only knows where.

Where did that 0.06 value come? A hero ability? Your english broke down there at the end lol. Ive messed around with the battle accuracy files a bit.

The line quoted with accuracy -0.06 and the // notation is taken from the hero ability tactician.

I am not able to make this work. I modified the basic power module High Energy Couplings (ModuleSupportPower1) to this:

[code]



[/code]

Hoping that somehow this undocumented // would apply to enemy weapons like tactician. Unfortunately, in the ship design screen, it shows as -90% to *my* fleet accuracy. Obviously 90% is not intended to be a useful mod for a game, I just wanted the effect to be unmistakeable in a test game.



So, can anybody suggest how to implement decreased enemy accuracy on a ship module, like tactician does for a hero?

As far as I remember, you will not be able to modifiy ennemy properties with simulation modifier. There is no link between to opponent fleet. Like there is no link between a fleet and its orbiting system.



The only way I can think of it's : "We hard coded it."



For example, the hero "tactician" ability has two part. The one added on the hero (called HeroAbilityCommander01) and the one we apply in code to the opponent fleet (called HeroAbilityCommander01Battle). In fact, there is big "nasty" switch case in code at the start of a battle which will go throught all hero abilities and when encounter "HeroAbilityCommander01 or HeroAbilityCommander02", find the AbilityName+"Battle" descriptor and apply it to the opponent fleet...



For now, there is no way to create a new hero ability which use the same idea... this is really hard coded... which is clearly bad... sorry.

Clearly one for the modding tools then

AFAIK there is no plan to release modding *tools*. They plan to open up the xml. Things which are hard-coded in the game will not be moddable.



@ thortillas, adding evasion to ships with techs is one main thing I want to experiment with. Is it possible to change the hard-coding so that it will look for some other attribute instead of the hard-coded *name*?

Some additional related things: I would like the decreased enemy accuracy to be available on a support module family called "thruster" which can only be installed on certain hulls. (a) Can we add a new support family, basically a new line to the picklist? (b) Can any module be limited to certain hulls? If either one is not possible, then I request an enhancement to add these capabilities.

@davea: I've looked into a) for a couple hours, it is not possible to add a new line simply by modifying the XML files. That would require us to modify the code. Obviously, same thing for the hard-code modification. I'm setting up a "modding improve list" and we'll decide what to prioritize.



b) Right now, prerequisites for modules only concern Resources, the hull class can't be used there. I'm adding this to the improve list too.

Hull restrictions would be high on my list. Then you can create "very big weapons" that can only go on Dreads, for instance.



Or create another hull type, "fighter" which only has 10 tons to work with, but it has a selection of miniaturized modules that take up less space (and do correspondingly less damage), but they can only be fitted to the "fighter" hull.



And so on.



(I know SE4/SE5 had things like that)