Customizing the unit manager

[Yosharian]

Hello, long time SupCom/TA player here, before I start just wanna say how grateful I am for what you guys are doing with FAF, it's really something to see people trying to keep this game alive.

So to explain my problem, in TA you could set up custom matches against the AI where they couldn't build specific units, for example you could make all the AIs Core and turn off Intimidators, while you (Arm) could build Big Berthas.

In SupCom you can't do that because the unit manager only allows you to turn off unit types, so for example you can only turn off ALL large artillery pieces or ALL experimentals.

This limits the scope of custom games, for example if I want a relaxing game where I just wanna build a huge base, I can't do that without turning off all MY toys as well as theirs.

So my question is, is there a way to modify the unit manager such that specific units can be removed from the builders, for example: UEF can no longer build Fatboys.

Thanks again.

[Vicarian]

It's possible though it'll have to be done in some convoluted way. Note the Army IDs in the menu TA uses to spawn units: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MEkpBBClGg. I'm not sure if the IDs are assigned before the game is launched, or after. If it's after, then it would be impossible to set without using console commands.

[Yosharian]

It's possible though it'll have to be done in some convoluted way. Note the Army IDs in the menu TA uses to spawn units: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MEkpBBClGg. I'm not sure if the IDs are assigned before the game is launched, or after. If it's after, then it would be impossible to set without using console commands.

I don't mind if its convoluted... I don't really understand what you wrote there though =p

[Yosharian]

Ok so I found a way of doing it apparently, but it doesn't seem to work:

If you would like to try it you must do the following.

First backup the lua.scd file located in your gamedata directory. (Doing this prevents patching problems).

Open the new lua.scd file and navigate to "lua/ui/lobby/" in there you should find two files with the word restrictions in them. One says data the other says just restricted units. open the data lua file and look at the bottem of the lua file. you must first add your new restriction to the bottem and then load up a skirmish game with cheating and press alt+F2 find the units you would like to disable and write down there code IE ual0301 is the Aeon Subcommander. this code putting this code in your new restriction will disable sub commanders for the aeon do this untill you have restricted all the units you want.

Found that on another forum, it seems to work all the way up to actually selecting the new restriction in-lobby, whereupon the restriction is nowhere to be found.. for some reason its not showing up, trying to troubleshoot it now. Considering modifying an existing one instead.

edit: it seems that the changes that I'm making to lua.scd, despite persisting after I've done them, are not affecting the actual game at all. Not sure why. Bit stuck now. Even tried completely removing one of the existing restrictions, it still showed up in the lobby UI and still worked in-game...

edit2: ok i tried editing the actual unit restrictions of the existing restrictions, and those changes seem to be showing up.

Ok so confirmed that creating new restrictions does not work, but modifying the existing ones does. You can't change anything about the way the restriction displays in the lobby UI, but changes to the units that it restricts do work, tested this by making the TECH2 restriction actually restrict TECH1, etc.

[Vicarian]

When you use FAF to launch a game, you'll have your changes overwritten. Additionally, to have changes to FAForever's LUA files be reflected in launching the game manually, you'll need to set FAs icon target to C:\ProgramData\FAForever\bin\ForgedAlliance.exe. To prevent FAF overwriting your files, you must open FAForever.faf in C:\ProgramData\FAForever\gamedata\ and keep it open. Use 7zip to open the .faf file.