Quote Originally Posted by Dutch_guy
Is there an advantage for the producers - read CA - to hardcode instead of putting it al into .txt files ?

From a software standpoint, putting data into text/config files allows for easier tweaking during testing, since a fresh code compile is not necessary. Downsides of text files would be having to setup the parser for the data structure in the files (not that big a deal), the added time at game start to read/parse the files, and handling multiplayer synchronization issues.

One big downside of the text files that we saw with RTW: the text files didn't seem to be controlled as well as the code, so various bugs were introduced into the text files from patch to patch. The "official" files should be placed under CM control and changes reviewed by the development and QA team, not so sure that happened.