How to; allow officers to keep weapons on precursor units

[Red Spot]

Guess we all know the Romans and their precursor-infantry, so guess I dont have to tell anyone that if a precursor-unit runs out of "primairy weapons" (the pilum) than the officer stops showing its weapon and seems to be able to kill enemies with "tick air" ....

Being pretty annoyed by it I've in the past set generals/officers to have a secondary weapon and some other mostly copy-and-paste kind of stuff without any success...

Now that I've grown a wee bit of experiance using 3D-Max, at least know more a bit more than how to move a vertex I just wanted to try and solve the "weaponless officer" issue ..
[edit]Also make sure to read this, its a bit easier method. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...15&postcount=6[/edit]

Wich is actually pretty easy so this hardly is a true guide or "how to", but I figured as I so far havent seen anyone do a similair thing that its not the best of known things that can be done ...


Anyway the simple little trick I pull is that I hide a small "primairy weapon" inside a dummy weapon that will stay no matter if units run out of ammo.

the swords I used;


when you zoom in so closelly that you are inside the units sword you can, if paying close attention, see the real sword hidden inside the dummy sword;


from a little distance;


All I did was use the actual sword (the big one), flatened it, removed every vertex except for the basic few to make a crude sword-shaped object than made sure it has almost the same length as the original (not sure and I doubt it but just incase "weapon-objects" are taken into battle-calculations) however made it flat enough to be hardly visible and alligned it with the big sword than linked both as ussual to the right hand bone


Not much of a find, but something that solves something thats been bugging me since I first played this game ...


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[Aradan]

Nice one, Red Spot! It seems you just can't stop tinkering. :)

[Red Spot]

Someday I will, when my eyes close and at the same time my breething stops, thats probably the first day of retirement ....


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[Captn. James Crunch]

Genius! I never thought about it like that until now. Thanks

[Monkwarrior]

I solved it by simply cloning the weapon twice and renaming them as secondary weapon and fakeweapon. I hope nobody will look so closely to my models.

[reahad]

I solved it by renaming the primary weapon to weapon so the engine won't recognise it as a weapon and just as another part of the model

[Red Spot]

I doubt that that 'solves' it as the game somehow uses the primairy weapon to determine when a units strikes an other other unit .. at least something like that has to be in the game as when you increase the size of say a spear the units can do damage from a greater distance ...

There is good chance your officers now no longer actually damage anything but their own pride :D

[reahad]

The primary/secondary weapon labels are only used by the game to decide which weapon is being shown.
Hit and miss/damage is calculated using the stats from all the txt files, so it doesn't really matter what you name the weapon (if the model only has one weapon). The spear thing is because of collision detection, units with short spears will even back up if they bump into another unit when they aren't attacking it. Try changing the soldier model for a unit with one that doesn't have primary/secondary weapon labeled and you'll see what I mean.

[Red Spot]

So the title of the topic should be changed to "how to do it a little bit harder: ... " :D

Well, it was a nice find for as long as it lasted :) (havent tested what you said, but assume you are correct)

[wlesmana]

I solved it by simply cloning the weapon twice and renaming them as secondary weapon and fakeweapon. I hope nobody will look so closely to my models.

Actually, just clone the weapon, call one "primary weapon" and the other "secondary weapon". All this does is make the file slightly larger by a few bytes. In-game the model will only show either primary or secondary weapon. Of course, you also have the option of not labelling the weapon either primary or secondary weapon. The downside to this is the weapon stays with the model even when the soldier/officer dies.

[Red Spot]

Actually, just clone the weapon, call one "primary weapon" and the other "secondary weapon". All this does is make the file slightly larger by a few bytes. In-game the model will only show either primary or secondary weapon. Of course, you also have the option of not labelling the weapon either primary or secondary weapon. The downside to this is the weapon stays with the model even when the soldier/officer dies.

Iirc, that doesnt work. The game removes the primairy weapon from officers when pilum trowing units run out of ammo, but doesnt swap it to a secondairy weapon .... iirc .. (I remember I tried that and it didnt work, but it has been some time that I messed around with this ...)

[wlesmana]

I've never tested it on pilum units so I can't say. I tested it on bow units and the officers keep their weapons (more like, they swapped one for another but they look the same). I personally never bothered with it and labeled officer's weapons as "weapon" so they are never swapped.