Understanding merging

[burnstreet]

I am trying to understand exactly how merging behaves in FA

So far I my understanding is:

• you need to set
  
  • Merge = true
  • BlueprintId="original unit"
• only the specified values will be overridden
• if you specify nil for simple data types or {} for complex ones, nothing will be overridden
• it is impossible to delete properties, you can only override the values
• in the easiest cast (just FA Forever + 1 mod) the mod bps will be merged against the bps in %ProgramData%\FAForever\faforever.nxt
• Featured mods are independent, so e.g. BlackOps does not use FAF balance but standard balance for units not modified in the mod
• BPs are read alphabetically breadth-first inside a mod / zip file, directories are sorted with files
• it does not matter wether the bp is in /units/ or /hook/units or /merge for merging to work

Now, my questions:

• is anything I wrote above incorrect or inprecise?
• in which order are mods processed by the game
  
  • I have 4 mods: 1 Featured "F" (e.g. Diamond), 3 normal "A","B", "C" (e.g. Total Mayhem, ASF Balance, 4DC)
  • all 4 mods apply changes to 1 standard FA unit
  • mods A and C use merging for that unit
  • what would be the resulting unit? (like B + C?)

[Domino]

the resulting bp would be original + A + C dependant on mod load order.

the way they are read is aplabeticly from disk folder wise BUT the mods are loaded via the uid in the mod_info file.

tables are merged, in that you can spec a nil value, you can spec any value and add values, obviously for tables inside tables,
you have to replicate exactly the structure of the table to the original to change/remove values.

remember if mod A changes a value in a bp but then mod C changes the value also and mod C is loaded after mod A then mod C value will be used else mod A's values will be used, because it loaded after C

its basicly load order + alphabeticly read from folder structured / file name.
you can look in blueprints.lua in the system folder to see the merge function.

[burnstreet]

Thank you.

I have already used that knowledge, partly at least:http://unitdb.burnstreet.bplaced.net/ (big page, ~12MB due to not having dynamic data loading yet) [edit]hoster killed my account :/[/edit]

I currently only merge against faf blueprints, but I plan to to it against whatever is selected as featured mod. I don't know if it makes sense to simulate merging with multiple mods activated. Of the 2k+ units currently in the DB, only ~10 have merge=true. May be that I am missing some, though.

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