(**) Veteranship - how to promote your units during combat Options

[Bittah Commander]

Author: absturz

Veteranship - how to promote your units during combat
This Howto is about promoting your units during combat actions.
Command&Conquer enables you to promote your units. Every time a unit receives a promotion it becomes more experienced. The more experienced a unit is, the more powerful it acts.
The power and the abilities just depend on what you'd like to give them as a reward for hunting down the enemy.
Please regard: Keep an eye on your units, don't waste them as cannon fodder - they are too valuable the more experience they have...

How does the promotion work?
The promotion is based on a factor which counts the opponent's casualties and compares the sum of all Costs they have with your unit's costs.
Every unit has a parameter Cost. Hence your unit has to destroy X times the costs it has to get a promotion.
With each promotion you can assign "enhancements" of ability to your unit. There is no limit of the number of additional enhancements... An ability is for example to run faster or to have more strength during combat. Here are the details:

Common veteranship settings
We need the file RULES.INI for our changes, since it contains general settings of the veteranship:

Enabling veteranship
These are the settings in section [General] which enable the veteranship:

; Our unit must destroy at least so many enemies that
; our unit's cost times 2.0 makes up the sum of their costs:
VeteranRatio=2.0
; Don't change. How many times we are allowed to promote our units:
VeteranCap=2
; Flag whether all our starting units are veterans at the very beginning of the game, works only if the map allows it.
InitialVeteran=no

How much will the current abilities be enhanced?
The following values tell how much of the current ability may be added to the current ability as a surplus. It does not really add the value (we do this later) but it serves as a kind of multiplier to the current abilities.
Section [General] contains these parameters. Below are my recommended values:
; the numbers below are: Percentage / 100.0
VeteranCombat=1.000 ; enhance strength
VeteranSpeed=0.700 ; enhance speed
VeteranSight=1.000 ; enhance sight
VeteranArmor=1.000 ; enhance armor
VeteranROF=1.000 ; enhance rounds of fire (=shorter recharge time between shots)
An example: VeteranSpeed=0.700 means that a unit may move with the new speed:
old Speed + 0.700 * old Speed
whereas the parameter Speed is the current maximum speed as an individual property of each unit.

Assigning veteran abilities
Then we need the file RULES.INI again and - if you play the Firestorm Extension CD - the file FIRESTRM.INI

What veteran abilities does Command&Conquer have?
Command&Conquer supplies us with the following abilities (in alphabetical order):
CLOAK = unit becomes invisible to the enemy
FASTER = enhance the speed (see VeteranSpeed above)
FIREPOWER = more firepower (see VeteranCombat above)
GUARD_AREA = if unit has no orders it automatically guards the surrounding area
RADAR_INVISIBLE = unit (aircraft) may not be detected by RADAR
ROF = faster rounds of fire (see VeteranROF above)
SCATTER = unit moves away if someone fires on it
SELF_HEAL = self healing to a maximum of 50% health total
SENSORS = Unit may detect cloaked units (see CLOAK above)
SIGHT = enhanced sight (see VeteranSight above)
STRONGER = enhance armor (see VeteranArmor above)

Well, again: we can assign up to 4 abilities at once, and we have 2 occasions where we can promote units:
; First promotion. A unit becomes veteran (2 golden stripes)
VeteranAbilities=...
; Second promotion. A unit becomes elite (1 golden star) and:
; a new elite weapon replaces the primary weapon :-)
EliteAbilities=...
Elite=...

Explanation of the parameters:
Please put the parameters in the section where each unit is defined.
Example: The rifle soldier is defined in section [E1]:
; rifle soldier
[E1]
Name=Light Infantry
Category=Soldier
Primary=Minigun
.....
VeteranAbilities=SELF_HEAL
EliteAbilities=FASTER,FIREPOWER
Elite=Sniper

Assign veteran abilities to units
The first issue is: We have 3 classes of units moving on the battlefield:
* Infantry (listed in section [InfantryTypes])
* ground vehicles (listed in section [VehicleTypes])
* aircrafts (listed in section [AircraftTypes])
Of course you may assign veteran abilities individually to each and every unit which the GDI or Nod may build, but I recommend to start with assigning the same veteran abilities to all units of a specific type. Example: all aircraft get the same bonus...

As shown above edit the parameters of each unit of a specific type. Additionally you may assign elite weapons individually...
My recommendations to start with:

1. All unit types receive these veteran abilities:
VeteranAbilities=SELF_HEAL,STRONGER,SIGHT,SCATTER

2. Infantry gets the following elite abilities:
EliteAbilities=ROF,FIREPOWER,FASTER,GUARD_AREA

3. Ground vehicle get the following elite abilities:
EliteAbilities=ROF,FIREPOWER,GUARD_AREA,SENSORS

4. Aircraft get the following elite abilities:
EliteAbilities=FIREPOWER,FASTER,RADAR_INVISIBLE,CLOAK

Example: Our rifle soldier from above would look like this:
; rifle soldier
[E1]
Name=Light Infantry
Category=Soldier
Primary=Minigun
.....
VeteranAbilities=SELF_HEAL,STRONGER,SIGHT,SCATTER
EliteAbilities=ROF,FIREPOWER,FASTER,GUARD_AREA
Elite=Sniper

Well, this is a lot of hacking. But there exist tools which support you, for example SunEdit2K. There you may select a unit type (e.g. Infantry) and apply a mass change valid for all units of that type.

Happy modding and greetings,
absturz

1) I think you can assign as many improvements as possible as opposed to 4.

Well I never tried more than 4 at a time. If more than 4 is allowed, than
I should change the docs above, shouldn't I?

2) I'm pretty sure the whole points thing is either not used at all or used only for Skirmish score screen purposes. For veterancy, the game looks at the COST of objects.

Thanks for the input. I changed it in the docs above. I wonder why I put the word 'points' into the docs. - Maybe I was too busy thinking about some AI-documentation. Of course it's the costs which counts...

Addition: If the unit the uses a particle-based weapon (gas,flame or railgun), it cannot earn veterancy from killing other units with its weapon.

also
1. "VeteranSight=" CANNOT go over 1.0 otherwise the game will crash

2. You can add as many veterancy abilities to a unit as what exsist

3. Lastly, "InitialVeteran=" only works in maps, despite being in the rules.ini (much like some other tags stated in the rules)

Hi Seaman,

Addition: If the unit the uses a particle-based weapon (gas,flame or railgun), it cannot earn veterancy from killing other units with its weapon.

I am not quite sure with the railgun. The Ghoststalker uses the railgun - and I experienced an upgrade when I set his veteranship as follows:

CODE

[GHOST]
Name=Ghost Stalker
Primary=LtRail
Secondary=RedEye2
.....
Elite=MechRailgun
EliteAbilities=ROF,FIREPOWER,FASTER,GUARD_AREA
VeteranAbilities=SELF_HEAL,STRONGER,SIGHT,SCATTER

Give it a try :-)

The abilities that were forgotten are as follows:

TIBERIUM_PROOF - Unit doesn't take damage from tiberium
VEIN_PROOF - Unit doesn't take damage from tiberium veins
EXPLODES - Unit explodes violently when destroyed, damaging nearby objects
FEARLESS - Unit won't duck or run away
C4 - Gives the unit C4 charges
TIBERIUM_HEAL - Unit heals in tiberium
CRUSHER - Unit can crush objects with crushable=yes set

Just thought I'd share that.

[Roani52]

If I make more then 1 Elite or Veteran ability, it doesn't work anymore. None of them!

[Creagor]

What doesent work? Does the game crash, or do your units not get promoted, or do they get promoted but without the "veteran" bonuses, or do...?

Show us some code or somthing, maybe you did somthing slightly wrong. A single comma can mess TS up.

[Roani52]

Oh sorry, they dont get veteran bonuses. And no, i didn't spell anything wrong. The file is on my crashed PC, so i cant post the code

[Tartan Bunny]

can you change the veteranship symbol? that would be really cool.

[Creagor]

Look for pips.shp in conquer.mix - edit that to change the verteran symbols (as well as some other stuff).

[Lin Kuei Ominae]

also
1. "VeteranSight=" CANNOT go over 1.0 otherwise the game will crash

sorry for the bump, but this is false.

you CAN set VeteranSight to a higher value than 1.0
But, if the unit with the SIGHT tag gets a longer sightrange than 10, the game crashes.
e.g. unit sightrange is 4
Veteransight=1.25
the unit will get a sightrange of 9 and will work very well

unit sightrange is 5
Veteransight=1.25
the unit would get a sightrange of 11.25 and the game crashes

[Crimsonum]

Nice...umn...tutorial you've got there. I have few things to correct, however.

First: Aircraft units cannot have cloaking ability. I tested it recently, and the aircraft stays visible.

Second: You have a mistake in the VeteranCombat - part, where you say it's the unit's strength, actually, it's the firepower of the unit. Or, the damage the weapon of the unit creates to the target.

[Bittah Commander]

can you change the veteranship symbol? that would be really cool.

Every single graphic in TS can be changed, that includes the veteranship symbol.