CIS Remnant

[ganoesparan06]

Hi folks.

 

I am just wondering. I downloaded the Corporate Addon mod; which im actually considering uninstalling tbh; for the CIS Remnant.

 

I thought the idea of playing a surviving CIS leadership was appealling but have been really dissapointed with the experience that the mod has given me.

 

Playing as the CIS is exceedingly difficult. Making money is damn near impossible, therefore its extremely hard to build ships/replace losses.

The CIS Remnant only has one pretty crap hero who dies really easily. As the CIS I am unable to build mines without first building a near useless Geonosian Hive building that doesnt appear to do anything except let you build hordes of Geonosians that arent really that great of a unit, thus I am out something like 2000 odd credits ON EACH PLANET for a SINGLE mine before I can even begin earning any sort of decent amount of money.

There doesnt appear to be any way to root out corruption wrought on my worlds by the Zann Consortium (and I presume the Hutt League as well) which again seriously hurts you without any way to fight back.

When you compare the CIS/Hutt starting grounds with the CSA and to a lesser extent the Empire, Rebellion, and Zann Consortium everything seems to be skewed in the favour of the wealthy meaning the CSA and ZC dominate the map.

Additionally I dont know if its possible to research or buy upgrades and the like for the custom factions CIS Remnant and the Hutts.

Finally annoyingly the game CTDs whenever the Consortium attack my planets and i Auto Resolve the ground battles.

 

Also the mod appears to kill the single player campaign as the Zann Consortium; if you try to play it on this mod Tyber Zann and Urai Fenn try to killl each other in the first mission.

 

So given these gripes I wonder if anyone knows of any other FoC (or EaW mods) that adds other factions including a CIS remnant or some other form of surviving CIS?

At least until the mod author of the Corporate Addon actually balances his mod so that playing as each faction is actually possible.

 

EDIT:

I know there are clone wars mods out there but I was thinking it be more fun to play CIS v Empire v Rebellion V Zann Consortium etc.

The fact that this game only has 2 (3 with the expansion) factions always annoyed me.

[Chandler]

Being set less than a year after RotS, we (PR) basically pick up where the Clone Wars left off, so there's plenty of CIS (and Republic) influence in the Pirate forces. However, there's no playable "CIS Remnant" faction per se, as I've assumed that survivors have either joined up with the Rebellion (if they're confederates) or CSA (if they're capitalists), or gone rogue entirely (as Pirate holdouts). Probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I can assure you it's thoroughly balanced and I'm not aware of another mod set in the Rise of the Empire era.

[ganoesparan06]

Being set less than a year after RotS, we (PR) basically pick up where the Clone Wars left off, so there's plenty of CIS (and Republic) influence in the Pirate forces. However, there's no playable "CIS Remnant" faction per se, as I've assumed that survivors have either joined up with the Rebellion (if they're confederates) or CSA (if they're capitalists), or gone rogue entirely (as Pirate holdouts). Probably not exactly what you're looking for, but I can assure you it's thoroughly balanced and I'm not aware of another mod set in the Rise of the Empire era.

 

 

PR looks really cool I admit but I kinda disagree with your statement.

 

The CIS only dissolved because Darth Vader wiped out the remains of its leadership and what was left was as you say absorbed by the CSA, Rebellion, and Black Sun Pirates/Zann Consortium.

 

The CIS however had different ideologies and goals from the Rebellion. The Rebellion was officially the Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the CIS favoured a more decentralised Confederation style system for governing the Galaxy than the Rebelllion advocates.

The CSA again is also different from the CIS, I always thought of the CIS as more a planned/protectionist economy where the CSA is more free market/cutthroat.

 

Concieveably had members of the CIS leadership such as Nute Gunray survived Mustafar they would have probably rallied the CIS on the outer rim much like the Imperials later did under the Grand Moffs/Grand Admiral Thrawn.

 

So thats kind of what I was thinking...

[Chandler]

I assume with the Rebellion it was more of a "the enemy of your enemy is your friend" sort of thing, and after fighting a losing war with the Empire for the best part of two decades, the remaining Separatists were probably demoralized and facing extinction. From the Wookieepedia article on the subject:

 

Following the signing of the Corellian Treaty in 2 BBY, most Separatists holdouts that had survived 17 years after the Clone Wars' end, were absorbed into the Rebel Alliance. The Rebels managed to get their hands on Separatist war matériel, such as Lucrehulk-class battleships, Recusant-class light destroyer, Providence-class carrier/destroyers and Munificent-class star frigates. Many surviving frigates had roamed the galaxy for decades, with their old crews serving as mercenaries or pirates.

 

The CSA history is more complex - and I'm not sure it's been adequately reconciled with the Clone Wars yet. What has been explained so far is that while most companies in the Corporate Sector supported the CIS during the CW, there was a sizeable loyalist minority as well, which, after the war, was awarded control of the CSA. At this point, the CSA became marginally allied with the Empire, but nevertheless, some Separatist remnants chose to return; notably those of the Corporate Alliance:

 

Following the deaths of Argente and his chief aide Denaria Kee during the Mission to Mustafar, as well as the assault on their headquarters at Murkhana, the Corporate Alliance faded into oblivion and its remaining assets were absorbed by the Galactic Empire. Those that remained independent of the growing Imperial military-industrial complex sought refuge with the like-minded Corporate Sector Authority in the Corporate Sector, and where eventually absorbed into the organization.

 

It's also known that the CSA acquired the rights to the Mankvim following the CW and made use of the Recusant, so it's possible they had associations with the remainder of the Techno Union and Commerce Guild as well.

 

That said, I like your concept for a what-if CIS Remnant as such, but I don't know of another mod that takes that approach. I purposely set our timeline in 18 BBY to denote the end of an era, because we're not a "Clone Wars mod" at heart.

[ganoesparan06]

Hi guys.

 

Okay so I took it upon myself to learn how to mod EaW/FoC to add a CIS Remnant Faction all by myself.

 

And its no small task let me tell you.

 

I have found some "tutorials" that frankly are not very helpful. Actually perhaps that isnt fair, they helped get me started sorta as they tell you what to do but are pretty vague on the how with quite a bit of it.

I used the Add a Faction tutorial to create/edit xml files to add the CIS Remnant.

 

Took about an hour to figure out how to even locate the games XML files (extract them to the mod folder using a MEG extractor) because the tutorial didnt tell me how/where/why to do that and then a further 3 hours following the tutorial and poking through the files myself to create the CIS faction entry.

And I even managed to do a bit of editing to create a CIS Remnant Icon.

 

Really proud of myself so far.

 

My gripe is that most of the tutorials seem to assume that you already know what your doing in respect of EaW/FoC modding and really only need some vague pointers to do what you need to do.

Which kind of defeats the point of a tutorial - arent they supposed to be there to help folks who DONT know what they are doing?

 

Ah well.

 

So I am appealing for aid.

 

I know the what of things.

 

I need to tell the game "here is the CIS Remnant" - done by editing the relevant XML file and adding some strings to the DAT file.

 

I need to tell the game "this is the units/buildings the CIS Remnant can use" - I presume i would need the models and textures of the units and buildings id like to use in the art/models and art/textures folders and then need to specify them somewhere but im not sure where?

 

I need to tell the game "the CIS Remnant buys tech like the ZC" - I think I may have done this in the faction.xml file but I am not sure, as I said the tutorials are fairly vague at points and I dont know if theres anything else I need to do to give the CIS this ability or not.

 

I need to tell the game "the CIS Remnant scavenges tech/money like the ZC" - again I think this may have been done in the faction.xml but I am not entirely sure if theres anything else I need to tinker with.

 

I need to tell the game "the CIS Remnant controls theses worlds and has this starting forces/tech/money" - I presume this is done through the map editor but I cant seem to find the galactic campaign maps to edit them.

 

As you can see I dont really know the How of things.

 

So any help would be appreciated.

 

And if anyone knows anything I am missing that be great too.

 

EDIT:

Chandler.

 

PR probably could have a CIS Remnant faction by the way. I have discovered on Wookiepedia (granted not a gospel canon source but still fairly accurate) that a Geonosian called Gizor Dellso attempted to reconstitute the CIS out of Mustafar 8 years after the clone wars in 11 BBY.

There were also some other Seperatist Holdouts that survived after the Clone Wars.

[Chandler]

I know it could go either way, but like I said, I've chosen to repatriate them into the CSA and RA. And I think perhaps you're underestimating just how much work it is to add an entirely new player faction. Obviously it's not a small task, but it's not even a big task - it's probably the single greatest task you can undertake for EaW modding.

 

When I added the CSA initially, it probably took me a month to get it to the point of being serviceable, and that was with most of the units already being done courtesy of the Empire. A quick search reveals that I've since modified 107 XML or LUA files to accommodate the CSA... although that's certainly not a bare minimum from vanilla given that I've separated each individual unit into its own file.

 

Even if you had a year of experience modding EaW, in the process of adding a new faciton, you're bound to fail, create exceptions, unbalance gameplay (although that's debatable with the ZC being as it is), and generally cause the game to suck. But in the end, if you stick with it, it'll be worth it. So I'll try to get you started.

 

Personally, if you're only doing three factions, I would strongly suggest taking the Underworld faction and making into the "CIS Remnant". Don't rename it in the XMLs, because that will cause headaches, but just consider it the new CIS. It's easier - much easier - to start with something that works opposed to creating it from scratch (as I did). Download this, import the DAT file, find the strings starting with TEXT_FACTION and start renaming. Congrats, you have a new faction.

 

So now that you have a working "CIS", start scrapping the ZC units, heroes, and anything else that you don't want your new faction to have. For units, it's better not to get rid of them entirely at first, because other parts of the game may still reference them, so just go in and slap a <Build_Initially_Locked>Yes</Build_Initially_Locked> on the company, squadron, or unit (if it already has one, just change it to Yes). For heroes, delete the spawn events from every Story_Sandbox_x_Underworld.xml file. That'll do it for GC, although at some point you'll want to cut the starting forces from the campaign files as well.

 

To remove the ZC units from Skirmish, delete their names - along with the hero names - from <Tactical_Buildable_Objects_Multiplayer> on all five Skirmish Underworld Star Bases in StarBases_Underworld.xml and from the same tags in SpecialStructures_Underworld.xml. Obviously this will leave you without the ability to build anything in GC or Skirmish, so you'll need to get adding now.

 

Since there really aren't any CIS units in EaW or FoC, you'll need to borrow them from other modders or convert your own, assuming you have access to 3ds Max r8 and know how to use it (see here and here). Once you have a new unit or hero added, basically do the process in reverse to add it into GC and Skirmish. And if you run into trouble, you'll probably find more help on FileFront than here. Good luck... you're gonna need it .