My First Mercenaries Mod

Cool!

Unfortunately. For no, apparent reason... If I try to select a custom merc in the bazaar menu, the game crashes. After this was working fine for hours, and with no file changes made.

Not quite certain what to do, but I guess I'll try a reinstall.

Gonna poke about it for a bit for you.

First thing, right off the bat, I see a folder called DLC.  I'd get rid of that and put everything in their normal Designs/GFX/Game/Whatever structure. I've been modding DLC content with my Generalized Tech Tree mods and I've never had to use a DLC folder inside a mod for it to modify files found from DLCs.

If not that?  Well, I'm still in the middle of downloadin GRM 3.0. Even if I don't need it, I still want to have it around before I poke about too much with your merc mod.

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Speaking of which, ultra thumbs up at attempting this! I was hoping someone would.  I took a look at the merc structure a while back and there several places where mercenary ships are defined.  I only did a cursory glace though, so I couldn't tell you for sure where they all are.

...

Course, you're a MUCH better modder than I'll ever be, so perhaps I shouldn't even be giving advice.  

Ok. So I took your recommendation and removed the DLC folders/etc. and just used Designs/Gfx. That didn't hurt anything.

When in the Bazaar menu, if your lucky and happen to start with a custom merc selected as first pick, I can hire it no problem and they appear. Upon selecting another customer Merc, insta-crash.

This was definitely not happening a few hours ago, as I had built 2 custom mercs in one game prior. I'm starting to think I might just have other bugs as others have reported and it might not have anything to do with the modding here.

At any rate, thanks for checking it out Buck, and I am not as good a modder as you might think lol. Just prolific.  

Well, that's interesting.  Installed the mod, removed the DLC file structure and put everything else in Designs and Gfx.  Started a game and had one custom merc available.  Was able to buy it.  Then went to the main menu, started a second game, and got a CTD when I attempted to talk to the mercenary guild.

Checking the debug.err file I see the following (slightly edited):

Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.

Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_BragosEmporium. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_Pansophicon. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.
Debug Message: Ship Design: Missing ship design for ship class static blueprint GRM_Ship_TheOlFortyNiner. Was this caused by pointing to a custom ship design? Blueprints must point to core or modded ships.

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Not sure of how much help this is, but I think I will boot into OSX (it's far easier for me to do deep dive on XMLs over there) and do some digging to see what, if anything, is missing.

I mean... I'm a little confused.

1) I've got custom blueprint in GRM forever without an issue. This was to rectify Stardock's accidental invalidation of huge hull carriers. (I forget the exact bug I found, I should check if its still there!)

2) Why it would it work at all the first time you loaded?

At any rate, mercenaries has 3 files needed to produce. A set of blueprints, a shipset file pointing to said blueprints, and a Mercs Defs file that points to the Blueprints.

Which was certainly confusing. One would think the Mercs Defs file would point to the Shipset entry and then that would point to the blueprint.

I think I figured it out. I moved the ship design files from the mod area into the game's directory structure itself. I've done both under the general designs folder or the DLC/Designs folder and in either case, no crashes, no issues.

Just loaded and reloaded 9 games, no issues with selection or crash on speaking with the Bazaar.

So looks like you have to trick the game into thinking these designs are "Core".

This makes sense why things were working before too, originally I had put the designs in the directory (I have to do that for preview ships with shipssets too).

See if this works for you too, and I think we can call it done! Thanks for your help man!

Just so you know, my testing was without GRM installed (I had all other mods turned off for testing purposes) as you said I shouldn't need it.  I'm away from computer at the moment, so I can't look into it any further, but I'll install the latest version of GRM and see what difference that makes, if any,

Then I'll poke about the XMLs and see if there is anything  that leaps out to me.  Sorry I can't be of more help as of this moment.

EDIT::::::   Crossposted!

I'll let you know when I get back to my computer.  About 75 minutes or so from now.

Works! 

Don't know why it won't work by putting it in the Core directory of the mod (I tried), but whatevas.  If it works, it works.

Now the fun begins. 

Excellent! Work continues tonight. Its going to be tough though, a LOT of mercs and I'm basically planning a full replacement. 

I'm open to any ideas about balance/changes/etc. 

Also, do you like the use of portraits instead of ships? It seemed a nice way to add more character, and saved me the trouble of making custom large thumbnails of spaceship. Downside of course being how the picture fits that frame.

Personally, I prefer ships if only for continuity of design.  But if it's extra hassle just go with the portraits.

Which, admittedly, does give a kinda Western "Wanted Dead or Alive" vibe.

It will be consistent when ice fully replaced them all too

I'm not very good at modding except for some very simple ones.

I was looking at files related to the Mercenaries and found one named MercenaryTierDefs.xml in the data\Game directory.  As its name indicates, it defines the number of ships you see in each tier when you go to the Bazaar.  I made a simple mod called My Mercenary Mod with a Game directory in it and copied the file into the Game directory.  I changed the default values for the number in each tier from 12/12/12 to 15/12/9, and it worked.  The default values give 3 rows of 4 ships in each tier.  With mine the first tier had 3 rows of 4 followed by a row with 3 from the first tier and one from the second tier.  The change from the second tier to the third also had a 3-and-1 split, so the non-standard values are handled without  a problem.

This means the number of Mercenary ship in each tier can be modded to whatever you want.

In today's stream, Derek said there are 72 Mercenary ships in the game, so I assumed it meant 24/24/24.  I found the file EXP1_MercenaryDefs.xml in the DLC\EXP1_Mercenaries\Game directory.  While looking through it I found that the actual number of ships is 26/24/22.  I didn't try to see what happens when the number in a tier in the MercenaryTierDefs.xml is more than is available.

I look forward to seeing and using what you much better modders come up with for the Mercenaries.

What this means, of course, is even though Gauntlet is planning a whole replace one could add all of his mercs and the base game mercs to make a super merc list.  Handy for very large maps, I would think.

What? You don't think I can replace 72 ships and then give you another 72 just to tempt you to NOT use default designs?

WE'LL SEE!

Actually. Each Merc takes more file time than I care to admit lol.

@Old-Spider this is great news, as I'm tempted to increase these to max.

Based on comments I'm seeing and my own general opinions, I'm making my mercenaries a little better by giving them all more engines so they can keep up.

T1 designs will have 2 ion engines, T2 will have 3 ion engines, and T3 will have 2 warp drives I think.

Just a question, why are you replacing the default mercs? That would put me off the mod personally, why not just make them additions?

This mod will be for use with GRM, which, slowly, is becoming a bit of a full conversion. While I don't really intend on changing gameplay mechanics, I do intend to play in my own little universe and default ship designs break that immersion because they are simply too few parts/details compared to everything I make (and SD has good reasons to do that I might add).

A few alterations, such as a extra engine or two, is just my taste (they need to be fast enough to keep up with my standard fleets).

I'll likely release two versions though, one for replacement, one for adding. No worries, its super easy to do that (literally just the file-name)

Hey guys! 

I've launched a new add-on pack specifically for Mercenaries. I consider it in Beta, but its meaty enough now that you might want to try it out!

http://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/18/?

The GRM-Mercenaries Pack:

20 Mercenaries added

Some use current designs from GRM

Some use modified designs from GRM

Some use totally new designs

Currently, the new mercs are doubly likely to show up compared to default mercs, and for the most part, they simply copy the abilities of existing mercs. Some, I have tweaked and generally added engines or components to play around. I make no pretense that anything is balanced or some such.

Suggestions are very welcome, as is reporting any typos.

OK I just downloaded it and will try it out  tomorrow and let you know.

Looking good after playing it for a while! 

My one issue (since I am one of the last people to ever comment on balance issues) is that the "LOCKED" message for some mercs can be hard to see.

Here is an example of what I am talking about:

There are others where I can barely see any letters at all.

Not sure what, if anything, you can do about it.  But I thot I should flag it for you in case you wanted to think about it.

(NOTE:  If that "LOCKED" is actually in a XML file somewhere and not hard coded, it should be possible to change its color as is done a few times in various text XMLs)

Hi Gauntlet just wanted to let you know I've played your new mod for mercenaries mod. I really like your additions every thing is working. Great work.

thanks!

The locked pictures should be grey and desaturated, maybe i missed one or two.