SALVATION IS AT HAND!!!!

**Khan7** · 08-31-2001, 05:34

Awww.. CA screwed up morale.. MP isn't worth it anymore.. ppl get mad.. ppl don wanna buy the game.. ppl wanna burn down Redwood City..

BUT WAIT! GIVEN TO US BY THE HEAVENLY HANDS OF THE CA DEITY ITSELF IS OUR SALVATION!! Perhaps an inadvertent salvation.. BUT A SALVATION NONE THE LESS!!!!!

In the expansion pack, WE HAVE FULL CONTROL OVER THE MORALE ISSUE!! Through the wonder of troopstats.txt, WE ARE SAVED!!

So everyone, chin up, stop grumbling, stop growling, WE'RE GONNA MAKE IT! RIGHT here, RIGHT now, we are going to END this crisis.

**Khan7** · 08-31-2001, 05:50

How this will be done: in troopstats.txt, in the main directory, there are alterable stats for the various units. One of these is morale. Thanks to the indispensable work of Puzz-san, our methodical game scientist and thinker, we know that the underlying morale mechanics of the game are exactly the same as before, the difference is that in MP and Custom the morale of all units has been severely bumped.

But this is not any obstacle to good online play! We can and will create a standard modification of troopstats.txt so that the vast majority who want old rules.. GET OLD RULES!

As long as the troopstats of all people in a game match, any modifications whatsoever can be made, so this will really work people! All that's left is to do it!

Here's how it will work:

In the troopstats.txt file, you will see a number of stats for each unit. Find the spot for "honor level", which = morale. Now, take the number that is currently there, and reduce it. Reduce it by the same amount for all of the units. This is the basic procedure for what we will be doing here, and believe me it WILL bring back old STW, or perhaps something even better.

According to Puzz-san's work, a reduction of 12 will bring things back to exactly the way they were. This may be what most people want. Alternatives would be reducing by, say, 10 or 8.

I personally would want a compromise between hard-core old-system lovers and those who want a median, at a reduction of 10. But this is all open to debate.

At any rate, what we will do now is get people to sign on to the project and give their input. We will compile a list of people who are using the newly modified system once this is all done.

In the past I have posted on projects like this, and offered for some vet to come into it and assume leadership, but no one has ever stepped up. Therefore, I am now officially offering my services as an organizer for this mission, and will until further notice take responsibility for all organizational issues involved here. My e-mail is gengiskan0@cs.com and my ICQ is 57947664.

So there will be no more whining, no waiting for CA to patch it! There will be NO EXCUSES! The time for the project is NOW. The time to fix things is NOW. The time to get back our beloved MultiPlay is N O W.

Feel free of course to gripe about CA's lack of support or general stupidity, and hold out hopes for a patch, as I personally plan on doing these three things myself :-) But it has no place in this discussion, and if you don't want to be a part of the project just don't involve yourself.

------------------
Khan7

**Khan7** · 08-31-2001, 05:54

BTW Admins: This topic is fully in compliance with the purpose of this forum. Though it is REMOTELY related to modding, it belongs here, not in the modding underground. You allowed discussions on morale to stay, you allowed rants on morale to stay, you allowed CA-bashing and vows to leave the game stay, you logically HAVE to let the SOLUTION to all of this stay.

Just because it is modding-RELATED doesn't mean it is strictly or exclusively about modding. I must agree that I have misposted several times in the past-- this is NOT one of those times.

No disrespect intended, I love you guys, just launching a preemptive strike. :-)

------------------
Khan7

**solypsist** · 08-31-2001, 06:03

nice argument. i could almolst see the sweat and blood on your keyboard

08-31-2001, 06:19

Puzz3d is already working on it and found that if you lower the morale of units to something like -12 you will get the old STW morale!

We can make an unofficial patch out of this.

------------------
Honour to Clan No Fear.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us...

[This message has been edited by Terazawa Tokugawa (edited 08-31-2001).]

**JAG** · 08-31-2001, 06:22

and we all cling to this hope i think as none of us r truelly confident in CA to patch the morale situation. . . only prob would be all the ppl having the same. . . ppl who r new would have to change it. .and they would have to be explained to etc! don't c a way to get round this easily!

------------------

Watch out for that. . . . . Dam too late!. . . the story of my life!

WarlordWarrior

**Khan7** · 08-31-2001, 06:48

Well, it's the only forseeable way. And yes Tera, I mentioned that Puzz's great work had arrived at the conclusion that -12 would bring things full circle, so now we must decide whether to do that or something else. We must decide this in an efficient manner, and then go straight on to compiling a list of people that are "in", for all the obvious purposes. So games between people who are with the program could be just like old STW, but if someone wanted to play an SP Campaign or was having trouble finding a match, they could just change out the files for a while.

The editing and file management involved here is VERY simple, and I don't think anyone can BOTH be big enough of a moron to not be able to learn how to do it somewhat easily AND be even interested in this game!

So now we are in phase one, deciding exactly what the modification will be. Once in phase two, implementation, people will post in the forum to indicate their status as part of the project, and in order to post they must have previously altered their files. That way this can be implemented in an efficient manner, combining relative speed with prudence.

Glad to see all of you interested! Things are looking up!

------------------
Khan7

**MagyarKhans Cham** · 08-31-2001, 06:57

there will be a patch and i will be suprised if the morale thing isnt changed

**Khan7** · 08-31-2001, 07:38

But WHEN, Magy, WHEN? You are one of the most virulent critics of CA's problems with delivery, and now you come in here and try to use this excuse to prevent the implementation of the solution that is right in front of us? With all the respect that is due to a person of your standing and contribution, I would submit that you are quite self-contradictory here.

But if you want no part of it, that's your choice, just don't get involved with those of us who do. You see? We all get along :-)

------------------
Khan7

**jomni** · 08-31-2001, 07:48

Manually decreasing honor by -12 (or some other number)sounds good... making the troops more prone to rout. But won't it affect SP campaigns were the morale system is working just fine. I'm afraid that decreasing honor will make all of the units in the SP camapigns rout really quick. And I don't want manually switing .txt files when I want to play custom or campaign.

**Pussiecat** · 08-31-2001, 07:58

what about if two opponents have contrasting moral levels.
And wont it be easy to cheat?

**QuietWolf** · 08-31-2001, 09:40

Hi Khan,

I like ur ideas ... my vote for the time being is to lower the morale across the board by 8 points instead of 10 ... its 66% back to the old and maybe thats what we need ... 10 seems almost too much the old way ... (ya know getting one unit behind 5-6 of the other guys units and they are very prone to route in old system) ... so maybe we want the guys behaving like there lives are important but also willing to fight some even in a tough situation. This is my 2 cents.

------------------
In Reality ...

**Lord Aeon** · 08-31-2001, 09:44

Wait a minute...

Wasn't the old morale a problem as well? I thought what we wanted was some sort of happy medium... Man, you guys better be glad i can't resurrect some of those older threads!

------------------
"You have offended my family, and you have offended a Shaolin temple."

**Erado San** · 08-31-2001, 12:42

Some arguments against doing things hastily:

If EVERYBODY would change their morale values in the troopstats file, everything would be allright. But this forum does NOT reach everybody. And NOT everybody likes the old settings more than the new ones. So not everybody will change. This will lead to people having different settings online, which will lead to INSTANT time outs the moment you try to play.

The community is already divided by the separate servers for STW and WE/MI. And we can't all join the old server, as people who didn't own STW and now have WE won't be able to go into the old one.

I am in favour of changing the morale setting, but it has to be done in a patch. The EXCELLENT work Puzz has done has shown how the Morale values can be changed. Now we have to look at what we want exactly, which is not easy. Many old timers and some clever newcomers knoew that the current values don't make online battles interesting.

Many weaker oldtimers and most of the newcomers like the new values, because they can win online.

Who are WE to say who is right or wrong? Everybody has a right to enjoy the online game. There are a number of options, and somehow the best options must be implemented. But not in a rash fashion that will divide us further. There are many discussions all over the Web about this issue. CA know they have to address this, and we can only hope they will do that soon.

In the mean time I am working on an alternative that may have potential, and I will investigate that this weekend. Nothing very special really, just something incredibly simple that may just be what we want to tie us over until the next patch.

Expect news about it on monday. Or sooner if it works as conveniently as I presume.

**MagyarKhans Cham** · 08-31-2001, 15:56

i keep galloping around that the best solution is an option button or more nice a slidebar for morale

**DragonCat** · 09-01-2001, 00:08

If we could get an option button that makes it easy for everyone to change to similar settings, then I am all for it.

I believe that the optimal change is probably in the -6 to -9 zone- but that's personal opinion, course ;-)

I agree totally with Erado San that it has to come from a patch that everyone has easy access to. Otherwise, it is chaos.

I also totally agree with Erado San that everyone's opionion about what works for them is valid. Which again points to Maggy's solution as a very good one. And, of course, I will be promoting games for MY favorite settings - once I figure out what they are. And if you will play by my settings, I will always give you a return game in your settings. Only fair, after all.

------------------
DragonCat
"On the prowl . . . ."

09-01-2001, 00:23

First of all WHO ARE C-A to say that this morale will be liked by everyone? Come on.

Secondly, an unofficial patch could be just used by those who want to. If you like the new morale, than stay with it and play those who like the new morale like you do.

Tera

------------------
Honour to Clan No Fear.

Visit my resource centre here!
Evil is within us...

**Kraellin** · 09-01-2001, 02:01

erado,

if i'm thinking of the same thing as you are, it shld work. a simple sort of menu thing that 'stays on top' with a menu list of batch files that would swap different troopstat files in and out as wanted might work very well in the short run till CA puts out some sort of patch. this could substitute for magy's 'slider bar option' till something better comes along. even if you had to alt-tab out to use it would still be a decent means of swapping out various .txt files for use. wouldnt be too hard to make, could prolly be done with VB6 or even a simple scripting program.

what i see as a solution here is not that we are going to permanently patch the game with a mod; the mod is ONLY for testing things among various players, and hopefully a lot of them, so that we can give CA a definitive 'here's what we've found out and tested and approve of' sort of thing. THEN CA can patch the game and it would be done per what we've recommended as the 'beta testers'.

one other thing i'll reiterate here is that most of this is being based on games of 'totomi, last man standing, japanese vs japanese' games. and there's more to WE/MI than that. yuuki and i played a few games last night with morale reduced across the boards by -8. it played pretty well in last man standing, but changed king of the hill fairly remarkably. since units come in from all over the map and basically vector straight to the central circle (honjin), you have to be a LOT more careful about morale and routing. i found that a LOT more fighting was done away from the honjin to prevent massive routings from a bunch of bunched-up units all flanking and circling and rearing other units in the furball that tends to happen in that game style. we also ONLY tested that game style in 1 v 1, and i can only imagine what would occur at 3 v 3 or 4 v 4. and that was lowering stats by -8, not the full -12. this would also apply to maps that force reinforcements in any game style. so i also would encourage plenty of testing here before we hastily 'encourage' (and boy do i use that word guardedly here) CA to make a patch.

K.

------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

**Khan7** · 09-01-2001, 04:46

GOOD! People are in here talking about it, looks like something will get done. Hope Puzz3d's thing works out.. but honestly people, how hard can it be to open up Windows Explorer or My Computer every once in a while, and change the name of 1 file? All you'd need to do is have a troopstats_MP.txt and a troopstats_Campaign.txt, and copy and rename whichever one you want when you want to switch! I don't find this to be any sort of hassle even worth thinking about, but I can't speak for everyone.

And about what Kraellin suggested-- it won't work. NOTHING will work if it operates at the same time as the game. When the game is running ALL of the files in those folders are counted as "in use", so unless someone knows a safe way to bypass this, no such thing is going to work.

And having not everyone hear about it or follow it is not an insurmountable obstacle, for several reasons: (1) we will have a list of people who have it modded, (2) people can "preach" the mod in the foyer etc., (3) you can always change out the files if you have trouble getting a match.

But anyway, the main thing is to get a sizeable number of people on the bandwagon for playtesting, so we can come up with a standard value (which may have to be a compromise, but will be better than having 3 or 4 or more different versions floating around, which would be utter chaos-- two is chaos enough). It is for the mentioned reasons imperative that the playtesters decide as a group on the setting.

So if anyone wants to contact me to do some playtesting online, or wants to try and coordinate a big playtest-fest, by all means do so. And I don't personally think we are doing anything hastily-- this is long overdue, something just needed to get people moving.

------------------
Khan7

**TosaInu** · 09-01-2001, 07:42

Konnichiwa,

I just posted a bat file which makes selecting stats easy. It can be used on the fly, that means that if you are running the game, but not when you are playing a battle, you can press ALT & TAB to leave Shogun, run the batfile and choose a stats you want. By pressing ALT & TAB again you'll return to Shogun and you can use the new stats.

Included with the 'Tool' are the original stats and YuukiStatsv10.

------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

**Algesan** · 09-01-2001, 10:44

The "fix" for king of the hill is simply to check the no morale button. That is a fun game that cries for no morale anyway.

**Kraellin** · 09-01-2001, 21:59

khan7,

this statement is incorrect: "And about what Kraellin suggested-- it won't work. NOTHING will work if it operates at the same time as the game. When the game is running ALL of the files in those folders are counted as "in use", so unless someone knows a safe way to bypass this, no such thing is going to work.......Khan7"

you can easily modify ANY of the text files we've been modifying while in the foyer, even if you've already joined a game, but not started it yet. and they will work once the game is started. you can alter the stats of an existing file, swap the files out with another, delete them, add in new and copy over an existing one and they will all work.

the simple proof is in doing it.

now, if you meant that while a tactical battle is going on, then ok, that might be true, for i've never tested that. but 'while the game is running...' also includes being in the foyer. you did have to start the game to get there, so the game is running and that's where you would use a .bat file...in the foyer, not during a battle.

K.

------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

**Khan7** · 09-01-2001, 22:21

Well, I'm gonna guess that probably moving and copying files is different from editing and saving them. Cuz I know for sure that I HAVE tried to edit and save Campaign templates while quit out of all campaigns and just in the main menu, and there have been access issues. I'm pretty sure I've also experienced this for other .txt files.

Anyway, I was obviously wrong. Whoever's idea it was to use batch files, it's just obvious enough to be brilliant! Can't believe I didn't think of it before, will start using them for all of my purposes now too. Thanx guys!

------------------
Khan7

**Khan7** · 09-02-2001, 10:40

Alright, I have made a statselector just like TosaInu's (but I *did* code from scratch), only more extensive. Now you can switch between -12 morale, -10 morale, -8 morale, and Yuuki's stats options. I believe this will allow people to do more scientific tests, as Yuuki's options change more than just morale, and are only ONE option. Also I myself would seriously question at least a couple of the other changes he made there..

Anyway, I'm going to see what luck I have with uploading this to the Org, so check there first, but if you can't find it feel free to e-mail me and I'll send it myself.

------------------
Khan7

**Khan7** · 09-02-2001, 10:46

Alright, I uploaded it, it's called statselector.zip.. and I can't figure out how to download it. DAMN! :-P

Okay, please people you give it a try, but if you are like me and can't find it, then just mail me and you'll get it.

This is, no offense, a wholly superior program to the one currently available for download, so it is definitely worth the trouble.

------------------
Khan7

**Kraellin** · 09-02-2001, 23:08

khan7,

tosa added a 2nd upload tool to the .org's site a while back. one puts maps/files up so that only the admins can retrieve them, view them, check them and the other puts files to a downloadable list that is NOT checked, scanned, etc, but is instantly available for others to download. this instant download list is on yet another page and looks like a fairly standard unix/linux file tree list.

so, depending on what you want, you can either upload files/mods/maps to an instant list for others to retrieve quickly for testing/use or you can upload them for a more permanent listing on the .org after they are checked for bugs and viruses and whatever else they check for before posting.

the download list for the instant thing is on another page, so, after you upload whatever it is, just look around a bit and you'll find the download pages for the test stuff.

K.

------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

**Kraellin** · 09-03-2001, 23:31

khan7,

you hardwired your statselector to drive c:
i dont use drive c: for games...ever. i'm thinking maybe others dont either.

K.

------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

**Khan7** · 09-04-2001, 08:33

I very much doubt I hardwired it do drive c. I believe u just need to extract it into the STW directory. I will go check tho.. sorry, I didn't include a Readme, which I should've, perhaps then this wouldnt've happened.

Matt

**Khan7** · 09-04-2001, 08:37

Yeah, it works fine for me.. and I've got the standard c:\Program Files\Total War\STW.\ setup.. so perhaps u didn't install it as intended, again, I should've put it a ReadMe..

But I'm really done with work for the STW community for those of you who didn't know.. certain unmentioned people can jump in a lake.. anyway..

Matt

**Kraellin** · 09-04-2001, 21:29

khan7,

is there a way to change the path on your statselector? all i meant by 'hardwired it to c:' is that some of us dont put shogun on the c: drive. thus, we cant use it unless there is some way to change the path.

K.

------------------
I'm sorry, but i never apologize.

Thread: SALVATION IS AT HAND!!!!

Thread Tools

Display

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions