Ray instead of arrow
 

Is it possible to replace Repair Droid's ranged attack of arrow with Beholder-like ranged attack of ray?

I think it can. Everything should be in the .atom files.

Open data.kfs with winzip and find:

army_droideka.atom

that should be the repair droid. Then find:

army_beholder2.atom

Open both. There is a line:
attack=droideka_attack_uni.bsa/fr:25:50/r:0:20

while corresponds to this one:
attack=beholder_attack.bsa/fr:25:50/r:0:22

In theory, replacing one with the other should give the droid ray-like attack. However, back up the data.kfs file in advance. In addition to that, I think there may be a problem with the animation, since the ray attack from the Beholder comes from a higher altitude point (due to the fact that the Beholder is taller than the droid).

I, for one, would love to see droids fire lazers as well :) I'll try to make the alteration as well and see what happens.

EDIT: Hmmm, theory went wrong :) I'll check something else. In the army of the light mod there was such ray implemented on a mage.

Let me know, it would be interesting to know if it is a complete replacement and how it would be positioned since Beholders are higher than droids. It would be really nice if developers made this adjustment like they did the gift bag, too bad none of them ever read forums.

If it doesn't work because of positioning, could you use Archmages ranged attack instead, droids have shock attack anyway so it would be more consistent..

A mighty fail. Maybe someone better versed in the modding of KBAP should check it out. I'm still concerned about the animation, though. The droid is pretty short and seeing a ray come out of nowhere above it will not be a pretty sight :)

I think that line of code u are talking about is just the animation itself, not the shot effect. I am trying to change , on the army of dark mod, the lightning attack of the medium for the original evil beholder one. No results for now. I managed to change the initial effect of the shot (the aura around the evil beholder when its going to shot) but the lightning is still there.
And i really dont like a lightning effect on a beholder.

EDIT: After a terrible headache, i managed to finally change the medium shot effects to the evil beholder original one. Done with a bit texture change too. I suposse if u want to change the repair droid proyectil for the lightning for the archmage, u should change the line "attacks=moveattack,repair,throw" for "attacks=moveattack,repair,archmage_lightning" and below, in change the header "throw" for "archmage_lightning". That should work.

If I understand this whole thing correctly this line is the movement of the troop (e.g swinging a sword) and not the effect of the attack...

Changes in droideka.atom

replace throw with droideka_ray
attacks=moveattack,repair,droideka_ray

Remove
throw {
group=1,2
showdmg=1
base_attack=1
distance=5
mindist=2
penalty=0.5
animation=cast/throw/thtarget
throw=droideka_arrow
framekey=x
damage {
physical=6,8
}
}

Insert
droideka_ray {
group=1,2
class=scripted
ad_factor=1
showdmg=1
mindist=1
base_attack=1
script_attack=beholder_ray_attack
script_calccells=calccells_all_enemy_actors_takes_ damage
distance=6
penalty=.5
ad_factor=1
damage {
fire=6,8
}
}

Basically, this is the Ray attack from the Beholder, though I replaced magic damage with fire (seems to make more sense for a laser).

This is untested, so let me know if it works...

yup, but the problem is that the beholder ray is not a laser, it is a mind beam. So its better magic damage instead of fire. But as i said on my post before, that should work.