Editing XWA difficulty parameters?

[Glabro]

Greetings,

 

I started the game on Hard, playing up until I was qualified pilot for the Rebels. It had been hard going (well, hard going if you´re going for any kills instead of running away as prompted, but that´s just as it should), but finally at that battle I realized how flawed the Hard Difficulty was - it made AI pilots use very high AI levels - but only for the enemies. As a result, all the friendly craft on my side keep wiping out to the Imperials simply because the enemies are much better pilots (especially the missile-using ones are deadly, and any turreted craft are simply murderous.

 

Is it possible to mod the game so that all AI pilots would use higher AI levels, not just the enemies? Of course, I might also take down the levels down by a notch also (for example, if the usual enemies on medium are Officer level, these guys are probably at least aces or top aces), since they are quite hard. Normal difficulty is, as usual, too easy by far and doesn´t seem realistic.

 

I haven´t found anything about modding game parameters such as this. Or is this a part of mission design, do all the campaign missions have separate mission files for each difficulty?

[Wildstar]

I'm not sure, but a question on the XWA Upgrade Project forums (direct your post to the "Editing" forum) might provide insight from someone with a little more experience in mission design than I have.

 

BTW, setting your difficulty on "Hard" will make your friendly flight groups weaker, not stronger, as you've noticed. My first thought was this was hardcoded in the executable, but it might be something that can be set in the mission file.

[VPR]

I've also found hard level to be unbalanced, more so in X-wing vs Tie Fighter and therefore don't use it in that game when playing or creating my own stuff.

 

XWA played much better at Hard level and I've done most of the campaign at that level bar a few missions that I've struggle on. To be honest I hate missions that see your wingmen die off quickly if it's not core to the mission's plotline. To me it's just lazy programming to rely on this method to make every mission challenging. I prefer to have wingmen around while still being able create a challenge for the player.

 

Missions have to be optimised by the designer for each difficulty level unless you choose to use just one set skill level all the time. The only control you have outside of this is by setting the AI skill per flight group and their loadout, flightgroup size and replacement waves. I'd guess the underlying parameters for each difficulty level are most likely stored in the game's .exe file.