I posted this in the main forum, but the answer I got was that it would probably need a mod, so I decided to ask here:

I've got a question about the chance of getting heroes at the start of the game.



You see, I've got the Emperor edition (or admiral, can't remember which it was) with the extra faction and the Endless hero (guy who has 20 points instead of 15 like most of the others), and I wanted to play a game where I had him at the start. Before anyone says anything, no, this is not a thread asking if he's actually in the game. I got him at the start once, so I know he's there).



My question is if it's possible to increase the chance of getting a certain hero at the start of a game (I don't care how this is done. Cheating, modding, etc. I just want to know if it's possible), because I'm getting annoyed at having to constantly exit the current game, going to start a new game and selecting the factions once more, and then starting from scratch when he once again fails to show up. After dozens of times of restarting, I finally got him. However that was also the time the games lovely map generation decided to give me the most horrible start ever. The home system sucked, the systems around sucked, and the only good systems were around several AI and pretty far away from me. I quit then, because while I had the hero I wasn't going to let the map ruin things for me.



After that, I've once again done dozens of resets trying to get him again, only to fail each and every time. Finally I downloaded the save editor so I could put him in the game under the list of admirals I had available, but you apparently can't do that with the save editor. So please, is there anything at all I can do to force him to show up? All I want to do is use the hero I paid for if only to use that part, but the constant restarts I have to do is getting on my last nerve.



Thanks for any answers.

Basically, what would I do to force a certain hero (the Endless one) to appear at the start of the game? That way I won't need to constantly restart until I have him.



Thanks.

There is no way to mod this currently. I have requested more capabilities for modding heroes, so that we can make mods where (a) everybody gets an admin hero or (b) each player gets 90% or 100% heroes of their own race. Let us see if they add that in a future version.

davea wrote:
There is no way to mod this currently. I have requested more capabilities for modding heroes, so that we can make mods where (a) everybody gets an admin hero or (b) each player gets 90% or 100% heroes of their own race. Let us see if they add that in a future version.

*Sigh*



Then I guess I'll have to wait for that or for the save editor to allow adding heroes. Oh well, I guess I just won't use him.

Actually, there is a very easy way to change your starting heros, by modding the save game without the need for the save editor. What you will need is Notepad++, with the XML Tools plugin, along with 7zip.



Firstly, browse to your save directory (usually C:\Users[Username]\Documents\Endless Space\Save), and make a backup copy of the save you want to edit. Right-click and extract the save you want to edit, and a file should appear. Open that up in Notepad++.



Next, click on the languages bar, and chose XML. Go to plugins -> XML Tools -> Pretty Print (XML only - with line breaks). This will take a few seconds to reformat the file. Once reformatted, collapse the following sections: & (click the - box symbol on the far left). You should be looking at a section - - . This is *your* Empire's data section. For ease, collapse this branch for now, and scroll down collapsing every other branch. Once done, uncollapse the branch.



Next step:



Ctrl-F and search for DepartmentofEducation - this is where your heros reside. There are four sections: ; ; ; . Ignore .



- these are the available heros to recruit

- these are the heros currently in your possession

- these are the heros which the game choses from to give you



The Endless Hero has the ID of 61, and a duplicate at 62.



In short, what we will do now is cut entry 61 from and paste it to . We will then cut a recruit entry from and paste it to taking care to slot it into its correct position (i.e. make sure its index is sequential to that before and after).



Once you have switched the two heros around, the last thing you need to do is change the following line. For hero ID 61 (which you transferred *to* ), change Status="Idle" to Status="AvailableForRecruitment". For the hero you transferred to the , change that line to read Status="Idle".



Save the file.



Open up the .bin save file in 7zip. Drag and drop the edited file into the .bin, and click "Yes" when prompted to overwrite.



Load save file in the game, and you will have the Endless hero for hire at the start.





I hope that this helps.

CCA wrote:
Load save file in the game, and you will have the Endless hero for hire at the start.

Thanks for the detailed instructions. I assumed the OP was requesting a way to have that happen automatically, rather than having to start a gave, save, quit, edit in notepad, and load.

That worked perfectly. Thank you for the help.



Sorry Davea, I guess I wasn't clear enough in my original post that I was fine with using a bit of save editing to do it.

No worries EasyCo .



I figured that even if that was the case davea, might as well provide the instructions incase EasyCo, or someone else, felt like doing a bit of file-diving.

This is basically what I was wondering. I haven't played the game very much yet. I just got it last night and I had to work today. I chose my race randomly and got Horatio. When I went to hire my first hero, they were all non-Horatio. How could the Horatio choose some ugly, inferior non-horatio to be their leader. I am very surprised not to see race specific heroes.

This keeps giving me an error message, "errors detected in content. Please correct them before applying pretty print."



CCA, do you know what might be going on?



EDIT: Nevermind, I had issues with the .bin extracting. Got it fixed now.

Where can I find a complete list of the hero IDs? Also, how do I collapse sections again?? You just said 'collapse' sections, but didn't describe how to do that.



Oh, wait, save it as an .xml file, whoops.