Improved unit editor

[dkraver]

I would like to see the unit editor improved so you would have less units showing and also give a better deployment of troops. Here are some ideas i think could be great.

1.
The abillity to chose weapons , ammo and equipment for the unit in the editor by adding the fields for each weapon/equipment slot.
Effect
+Smaller unit list since you wont have the same soldier 10 times with different weapons.
+Wont have to add/remove weapons in inet field if you wanna use other weapons.
+Smaller unit list since people making weapon addons alone wont have to add it to a man.
+Wont have strange unit names saying which weapon it holds, like:
Soldier (M4M203) or Soldier (RPK) and so on.
But should still keep classes like machine gunner and AT soldier.

2.
Instead of east, west and resistance folder, there should be and the ability to make country folders. Under these folder one should then chose which side/force you want the unit should be. And idea could be something like blue force, red force, green force and Yellow force. I would say there should be 4 sides. 1 for a attacking part, 1 for a defending part, 1 for a resistance part and last one for a neutral part like peace keepers. Civilians should still have a folder for them selfs . There should still be the menu showing side friendly towards but it should have it for all sides instead of only resistance in OFP. Civilians should also be in that selection since they also can have aggression vs a military force. This could and should be include in ofp2 in a way like gimbals tossers that where throwing rocks and bottles. Then the aggression could be controlled by the alertness selection under a waypoints. So they would go from making hand signals to throwing things at you depending on alert level. At the same time if you come as a friendly force they would wave at you and not get scared like now.
Effect
+ Smaller unit list since you wont have unit from 10 countires under one side.
+ Make units work together since you could configure which side they are on, which you cant in OFP. Example would be us and russians troops fight together against another enemy.
- You would have more side folders.

3.
As another post said in this subject forum, the abillity to change uniform/camo in the editor. This could be activated in the cpp file for those who make multiple camo's. and if not the selection would just be non selectable.
Effect.
+ Smaller unit list since 3 or more soldiers (example. soldier, winter soldier and desert soldier) could be under 1.
+ Wont have all those strange names like as a example dkm's tunguske which have these names.
2S6M Fall, 2S6M Sand and 2S6M Green
or the BAS rangers which have these two name types.
Ranger and DES Ranger.

[Hellfish6]

I fully agree with all of these points.

I'd love to see a simplified system. something where weapons are not bound to soldier/soldier classes. So that you can pick a generic soldier, and another drop down menu will let you equip him.

For example, you select "'85 US Soldier 82Abn". Boom. You've got a standard unarmed US soldier, circa 1985 with an 82nd Airborne patch on his left shoulder. Or select "'03 US Ranger Dress Uniform" and boom - you've got a soldier model, unarmed, but with a pretty sand-colored beret and a uniform full of medals and ribbons.With appropriate shoulder patch(es). Same for something else like "'82 Sov Spetznaz Afghan" and boom - you'll have an unarmed Soviet Spetznaz that looks like he just stepped out of the Afghan War.

Then once you've selected your base soldier model, click on the "Gear" drop down menu and you could select a pre-determined load out (much like GR - though I think there should be a way to customize these loadouts and save them for the drop down menu and also don't use GR's class restrictions, where only support troops can carry MGs or AT weapons, or where only snipers can have sniper rifles).

Some example load outs:
US Rifleman '03 (1xM16A2, 7x30 round 5.56mags, 2 hand grenades)
US Grenadier '03 (1xM203, 7x30 round 5.56N mags, 12 40mm HEDP, 2 40mm Smoke, 2 40mm Buckshot, 2 40mm GFlare)
US Machinegunner '03 (1xM240B, 1 M9, 3x100rd 7.62N belts, 3 15rd 9mm)
US Rifleman '67 (1xM16A1, 9x20 round 5.56N mags, 4 hand grenades, 1 Claymore, 1 LAW)
US Combat Vehicle Crew '85 (1xM3A1, 5x30 round .45N mags, 2 hand grenades)
Sov Motor Rifleman '87 (1xAK74, 6x30 round 5.45W mags, 2 hand grenades, 1 RPG18)
Sov Aircrew '90 (1xPM, 3x12 round 9mmW mags, 1 rescue beacon)

and so on... possibly to include things like rucksacks, choice of headgear, etc.

Basically, the Unit menu will let you pick your unit's appearance and the Gear menu will let you pick your unit's loadout. Addons and mods can add to both Unit and Gear menus. And all units can be given all gear loadouts - so you could theoretically have a Soviet motorized rifleman with an ushanka and greatcoat armed with a German MG3. Or a Swedish naval officer in foul weather gear armed with a Chinese infantryman's weaponry.

Maybe we could also see a "weight" carrying capacity instead of the current "slot" carry capacity. You soldier can carry X number of kilograms, and X+Y kilograms with a rucksack. However, the number of kilos over X+Z would affect your soldier's performance. An overloaded soldier can't run fast or far and becomes fatigued quickly (like current system of fatigue). An action menu command to drop the rucksack will solve this problem in combat situations. This lets us, should we chose as players and mission designers, to give our machinegunners lots and lots of ammo, but we just shouldn't expect these guys to be very mobile on the battlefield. Same with a soldier we choose to load up with LAWs or AT4s - they carry a lot of firepower, but they're not very effective in a fluid battlefield situation.

[ran]

0--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Hellfish6 @ April 25 2003,030)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I fully agree with all of these points.

I&#39;d love to see a simplified system. something where weapons are not bound to soldier/soldier classes. So that you can pick a generic soldier, and another drop down menu will let you equip him.

For example, you select a US soldier. Boom. You&#39;ve got a standard unarmed US soldier. Then click on the "Gear" drop down menu and you could select a pre-determined load out (much like GR - though I think there should be a way to customize these loadouts and save them for the drop down menu and also don&#39;t use GR&#39;s class restrictions, where only support troops can carry MGs or AT weapons, or where only snipers can have sniper rifles).

Some example load outs:
US Rifleman &#39;03 (1xM16A2, 7x30 round 5.56mags, 2 hand grenades)
US Grenadier &#39;03 (1xM203, 7x30 round 5.56N mags, 12 40mm HEDP, 2 40mm Smoke, 2 40mm Buckshot, 2 40mm GFlare)
US Machinegunner &#39;03 (1xM240B, 1 M9, 3x100rd 7.62N belts, 3 15rd 9mm)
US Rifleman &#39;67 (1xM16A1, 9x20 round 5.56N mags, 4 hand grenades, 1 Claymore, 1 LAW)
US Combat Vehicle Crew &#39;85 (1xM3A1, 5x30 round .45N mags, 2 hand grenades)

and so on... possibly to include things like rucksacks, choice of headgear, etc.

Basically, the Unit menu will let you pick your unit&#39;s appearance and the Gear menu will let you pick your unit&#39;s loadout. Addons and mods can add to both Unit and Gear menus.

Maybe we could also see a "weight" carrying capacity instead of the current "slot" carry capacity. You soldier can carry X number of kilograms, and X+Y kilograms with a rucksack. However, the number of kilos over X+Z would affect your soldier&#39;s performance. An overloaded soldier can&#39;t run fast or far and becomes fatigued quickly (like current system of fatigue). An action menu command to drop the rucksack will solve this problem in combat situations. This lets us, should we chose as players and mission designers, to give our machinegunners lots and lots of ammo, but we just shouldn&#39;t expect these guys to be very mobile on the battlefield. Same with a soldier we choose to load up with LAWs or AT4s - they carry a lot of firepower, but they&#39;re not very effective in a fluid battlefield situation.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
about the player Unit appearance , i&#39;d like , just like how you select your face , to select more parameters like for exemple ,the sex (male or female) , ***a determined type of face (asian , caucasian , european , african and so ...) , choice for things like moustaches or beards independant of the face&#39;s skin , the type of headgear you wear when not wearing a helmet

offtopic : but i&#39;d also like some randomness in the unit&#39;s morphology , the people&#39;s height should vary from one to another for exemple


the loadout idea is really nice , and i already see a few utilities allowing us to make our own loadouts

[Hellfish6]

Good points - I thought of something along those lines as well, but I just kind of assumed that OFP2 would automatically assign random faces to soldier models like it does now. Or allow you to set your unit&#39;s face in the init line.

I&#39;m personally not terribly interested in random morphology or facial features, but I know that a lof of people are. Good idea&#33; Maybe I didn&#39;t think of it cos I&#39;m average height and weight with white skin and no facial hair - my personal soldier model is pretty much default in the game already. In fact, one of the default faces DOES look exactly like me.

[ran]

and , about the Camo choice ...... what about a model choice at the same time ?
just like you idea about the the weapon Loadouts we could have something like :


Desert &#39;91
Desert &#39;93
Desert &#39;03
Marpat
Marpat Desert
Olive drab WW2
Olive drab Vietnam
Tiger Stripes
Woodland







so it could be for exemple :


Player Class :
Basic Soldier <
Crew
Pilot
Heavy Weapons
Medic

Skin :
Desert &#39;91<
Desert &#39;93
Desert &#39;03
Marpat
Marpat Desert
Olive drab WW2
Olive drab Vietnam
Tiger Stripes
Woodland

Weapon Loadout :
US Rifleman &#39;92
US SF Rifleman &#39;92
US Grenadier &#39;92
US RTO &#39;92
and so .......


the choice of the unit class and model/skin will affect the choice of weapon loadouts
the mission editing , if puttuing the soldiers 1 after one could be more than tedious though , but this kind of thing could be available in Advanced mode in the editor
we could also keep the old system when you don&#39;t want to bother about the loadouts and skins , it&#39;s in this category we could find OFP1 infantry addons

[Hellfish6]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (ran @ April 24 2003,20:46)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">the choice of the unit class and model/skin will affect the choice of weapon loadouts
the mission editing , if puttuing the soldiers 1 after one could be more than tedious though , but this kind of thing could be available in Advanced mode in the editor
we could also keep the old system when you don&#39;t want to bother about the loadouts and skins , it&#39;s in this category we could find OFP1 infantry addons[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
I&#39;d have to disagree with this part - I don&#39;t think that your unit class should affect what your choice of weapon loadouts should be. If I&#39;m a medic, I want to be able to use heavy weapons like M-60 MGs, FN-MAGs, etc. I don&#39;t want to be restricted. I only want my choice of unit class to affect my appearance. The more freedom you give people, the more chances you give them to make the game their own, the more people will buy and play it.

However, I do like your idea regarding skins. Simple textures that could replace default textures would be great. I&#39;d suggest coloring only the personal gear and equipment on models (ammo pouches, webbing, map cases, etc.) on the models, but let the actual uniforms be totally customizable.

Or, as I suggest earlier, just give us templates to work with.

Like "&#39;96 US Soldier 82Abn DCU" and you&#39;d have a pre-made soldier model all set to go wearing the proper uniform and equipment. In this case, a US Army soldier, with proper webbing for 1996, in a desert combat uniform with an 82nd Airborne patch.

Or "&#39;85 FR 2e REP Desert" and you&#39;ll have a pre-made French Foreign Legionnaire with the green beret of a 2 REP trooper in a proper uniform and webbing according to what would be seen in Tchad or Djibouti in 1985 - probably a head scarf with an olive drab uniform.

Once you select one of these pre-made units, all you have to do is select what you want to equip them with. That&#39;s it&#33; A two step process.

If you wanted to add another soldier to the group, you&#39;d go through the same procedures, and the default would be exactly the last unit you made.

Thus, if unit #1 is "&#39;03 US SEAL Wetsuit" for soldier model, and "&#39;03 SEAL MP5SD" gear package, when you go to create unit #2, it will default to "&#39;03 US SEAL Wetsuit" for the soldier model and "&#39;03 SEAL MP5SD" for the gear package. If you wanted to change it, you&#39;d just click the drop-down menu and scroll until you saw a soldier model or gear package that you wanted. Like maybe you want the soldier model to be the same, a Navy SEAL in a wetsuit, but you want to equip him with a sniper&#39;s kit, you&#39;d select the default "&#39;03 US SEAL Wetsuit" and scroll around the gear menu until you find "&#39;03 SEAL M82A1".

This would work just like the drop down menus on the unit screen in the mission editor work now. It would be the same as we now have the option to select Side > West > BAS Soldiers > Ranger Team Leader.

This system would just change it to Side > Red > Men (or SEALS, or whatever other custom subdirectory we chose to use) > "&#39;03 US SEAL Wetsuit" and > "&#39;03 SEAL M82A1"

So like we have a BAS Soldier subdirectory now, we could have a SEAL one with the following options, listed alphabetically:

"&#39;03 US SEAL BDU"
"&#39;03 US SEAL Black"
"&#39;03 US SEAL DCU"
"&#39;03 US SEAL Dress Uniform NCO"
"&#39;03 US SEAL Dress Uniform Officer"
"&#39;03 US SEAL HALO"
"&#39;03 US SEAL OD Green"
"&#39;03 US SEAL Wetsuit"

However, the gear subdirectory will be universial. So while you CAN have

Side > Red > Men (or SEALS, or whatever other custom subdirectory we chose to use) > "&#39;03 US SEAL Wetsuit" > "&#39;03 SEAL M82A1"

You can also have

Side > Blue > Men (or WW2 German, or whatever other custom subdirectory we chose to use) > "&#39;42 SS Soldat" > "&#39;03 SEAL M82A1"

This gives everyone a kind of maximum flexibility. If you want to look like a &#39;42 German SS soldier in your MP games, but still use a modern US SEAL sniper kit, you can.

[dkraver]

Your surgestions about having fixed weapons kits/loadout would eliminate the idea about making your own personal loadout. And then again would do that weapon makers would have to make kits for there weapons. This is how selection is today.

Side
west
east
resistance
civilian
***
rank
private
corporal
sergeant

Class
men
car
Armored
Air
***
Unit
soldier
sniper
Grenadier
Machine Gunner

under these you have some other info.
Control, Special, Info age, Name, Vehicle lock, Skill, Init field, Health, Fuel, Anno, Direction, Presence, Condition and Placement.

They way i thought about it, it should be something like this.

Country
USA
Russian
Germany
France
UK
Have the posibility to make your own country folder, since i dont see BIS adding all countries in the world and also there&#39;s would be a way to make resistance forces and imaginary countries.

Side
Red Force/Side 1
Blue Force/Side 2
Green Force/Side 3
Yellow Force/Side 4

Class
Men
Car
Armored
Air
There should still be the possibility to add own folders so addon makers can show that it is there work without having a tag in front of the ingame name

Unit
Soldier
Sniper
Grenadier
Machine Gunner

Camo
Summer
Winter
Desert
Or which come type you chose to make unit in

Rank
private
corporal
sergeant

Then there should be a weapon selection showing like the equipment page in the book when you look at map ingame.

Main Weapon ***Support Weapon
Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot
Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot
Side Weapon *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot *** ***Ammo Slot
Equipment Equipment
Should automaticly remove ammo slot if you choose a ammo type that takes more than one slot.

And then the rest of the selections
Control, Special, Info age, Name, Vehicle lock, Skill, Init field, Health, Fuel, Anno, Direction, Presence, Condition and Placement.

You would have to do more selection to get your soldier, but you would be sure to have the soldier you want without having to type a weapon selection in the init field or it having funny ingame names. And also would have a much better overview of your selection since you wont have 10 countries or more under one side, where you side bar is this size - .

[Jinef]

Don&#39;t make soldiers shorter, they don&#39;t get pulled down becasue of their gear, they get bigger. The civvies all look very large and like 7ft.

[Hellfish6]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Then once you&#39;ve selected your base soldier model, click on the "Gear" drop down menu and you could select a pre-determined load out (much like GR - though I think there should be a way to customize these loadouts and save them for the drop down menu and also don&#39;t use GR&#39;s class restrictions, where only support troops can carry MGs or AT weapons, or where only snipers can have sniper rifles). [/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

I never said the gear selection menu should be fixed. I&#39;m actually very much against that. I think it ought to be something more like how flight sims work - specifically how in Jane&#39;s F/A-18 you can select from a default loadout for your aircraft, OR customize your own loadout, give it a custom name and save it to be pulled up later.

I also don&#39;t like the idea of having slots. I think we&#39;ve all been frustrated by the current system, where you can&#39;t assign a soldier a correct peacetime, let alone wartime loadout. As I know some of you guys have been in combat units before, you must remember that there was virtually no limit to the amout of stuff we had to carry into the field. I myself routinely had 13 magazines for my M-16, plus a 100-round belt of 7.62mm and, on occasion, an AT weapon as well. And that&#39;s not including the additional stuff I had in my rucksack or stowed on the Humvee.

I think a weight-based system, like you may see in some RPG-type games would be better.

[Hellfish6]

Hmm... no one has anything else to say about this? I&#39;d really like to see ideas thrown out for how to handle equipping soldiers with custom weaponry and otherwise improving the unit editor.