The Blue Sun Mod

[Headshot]

Thank you for the quick reply.
The storage is only a pain because I am a pack rat and as part of the fun I have been collecting at least one of every item and its variation that I come across in the game. I don't go out to buy them when they pop up but only when found from combat etc. That of course and the hundreds of grenades and thousands of boxes and mags of ammo of all types. I could outfit the entire country with medical supplies and supply a small army of soldiers with battle gear. I will never use all this stuff but I hate selling items if I don't need the money. As it stands I am in about 30 days, at player lvl 11 / cgl 7, with about 400k in the bank, and about 100k in cash. The base has around 18-20 soldiers the Mechanic, Stephen Urbi, the logistics weapons supplier, etc.

Oh and if possible can you detail somehow the actual game mechanics of how stat and skill progression is calculated within the game.

I seem to see that weapons skills seem to get better when you miss rather than when you actually hit an enemy. Which seems backwards but when my sniping skill goes up it happens right after I miss a shot, not after one hits.

Strength is gained by being overloaded and moving about and stance does make a difference. The same as agility gained by moving in a crouch or prone and being overloaded also helps gain faster. But I have never seen Dex go up by doing anything nor stealth, nor camouflage, nor Health, nor energy. Yet the manual claims many of these can increase.

So what are the actual formulas if you know?

And what are the set limits, it says in the manual that Strength can be increased 30 points above the base ( your starting point ) but it seems you can only gain 1 point max in a 24 hour period on stats, where as skills can gain more.

Headshot

[Kyle]

Wow! That would be neat if one could learn from making mistakes in a game. I've never heard of that for any role playing system, but it makes sense on a lot of levels. If such is the case for 7.62, then it's an even better simulator than I thought.

I've never paid that much attention in regards to how gains points in skills and stats. I only know of the most basic ones, such as deliberately firing a new weapon 100 times to become familiar with it, overburdening oneself and then go running back and forth a bunch of times, staying crouched and sticking to shadows boosting stealth. I didn't realize that it could be as fine-tuned as what you're asking. It would be nice to know with more specificity of how attributes and skills can be increased with greater certainty.

The flip side of knowing that, though, is the temptation to "game" the system. Having them fire off a hundred rounds with a new weapon doesn't feel like "gaming" the system to me, because it makes sense to target practice and extensively handle a weapon that's new to you. A player could call it "physical conditioning" to load up their squad with maximum weight, and then have them run back and forth till they're exhausted, but, for some reason, that feels "gamey" to me, even though it's a perfectly logical thing to do in the real world.

In some ways, I'd rather just handle my squadmates in a certain tactical fashion, and have them "naturally" evolve from the testing of their bodies/skills/minds to certain situations as they're exposed to/learn from them. If the development team created an engine that does a good job of doing this, then my admiration of them is only going to grow even more.

Thank you for the "heads up" on the prospective timeline of the releases R@S. It'll be helpful in regards to reserving time with my increasingly hectic schedule.

[Headshot]

@Kyle

I consider it training, as you are a Merc, and should know how and what to train in order to get the best from your men. You also have to invest a great deal of actual game time commanding your guys to do whatever training is required.

Example - When your agility is around 80 or so it takes over 1.5 hours ( game time not real time ) to get your soldier to gain 1 point which can only be done once in a 24 hour period. That is about 12 -15 minutes sitting at your keyboard dedicated to training your merc or mercs in one stat ever game day. I dont think that would be considered gaming the system. If you want to gain the max of 15 Agility points you will spend about 4 hours of real time over a period of 15 game days just to raise that single stat. Also with all the game crashes I get I have to save about ever 5 minutes while training so I dont loose more than that when it happens.

I have found that training agility is fastest gained by overloading your guys so your net energy output is at about 150% and going prone and just going back and forth along a long street. Doing it crouched adds about 2 to 5 minutes of game time to this.

After you gain the 15 points in agility you can't train it any further, you must either cheat or use the skill progression by level, if activated in 1.9 at the beginning of the game.

I figure yea I can shoot off 100 rounds to be familiar with a weapon, and wouldn't you as a real Merc or soldier get used to your weapon and train with it BEFORE you went into combat with it?

I see these as great things that are built into the mechanics of the game and where there to be used by those who want to spend the time to do them and get the most out of their team.

But everyone plays differently and that is why the game is so good. I play JA2 and all its incarnations and love that game as well. This is a different animal and factors in alot of things no other game company put the effort into when they created a squad based war game. I just wish it was a lot easier to mod and that the source code could get released as well as a good editor.

Headshot

[Badbru]

Originally Posted by Headshot

I am a pack rat and I could outfit the entire country with battle gear. I will never use all this stuff

Throw any un needed to replenish base load grenades after a battle: see Dex gain response

Originally Posted by Headshot

I seem to see that weapons skills seem to get better when you miss rather than when you actually hit an enemy. Which seems backwards but when my sniping skill goes up it happens right after I miss a shot, not after one hits.

This is one of the bonuses to using shotguns in the early part of the game as even when you hit, with buckshot, some of your round/s miss. Shotguns tend to increase shooting skill very effectively.

Originally Posted by Headshot

But I have never seen Dex go up by doing anything

Throw any grenades you don't need after a battle. The throwing action will increase both your thowing skill and eventually your DEX. I've even heard of some people throwing spent smoke grenades over and over again.

[R@S]

Originally Posted by Headshot

Oh and if possible can you detail somehow the actual game mechanics of how stat and skill progression is calculated within the game.

I think there is a thread from a long time ago on this board that tells you exactly what you need to do to "train" your attributes and skills. As for the game formula I have no idea, only notions. I haven't had much time lately to play the game the way I used to where I also spent a lot of time ingame running around, throwing nades and firing machine guns. Nowadays I have limited time and find the BSM class system a blessing, I can still update the stats I want without the hassle of wasting precious game time.

Originally Posted by Headshot

I seem to see that weapons skills seem to get better when you miss rather than when you actually hit an enemy. Which seems backwards but when my sniping skill goes up it happens right after I miss a shot, not after one hits.

You can still get a skill increase when you hit, but as you have noticed it happens more often when you miss. But I think that it makes sense the way it works now, IRL you actually learn more when you fail than when you succeed. Those Apeiron guys had a thing for realism, and in this case I agree with them

When I added the Mechanic skill I used a similar calculation where the counter to the next skill point got a bigger boost when you failed to repair a weapon than you'd get when you succeeded.

Originally Posted by Headshot

But I have never seen Dex go up by doing anything nor stealth, nor camouflage, nor Health, nor energy. Yet the manual claims many of these can increase.

Health can go up, or so I've heard. If a merc gets injured and healed several times, the chances are that this attribute will get a point. I have never had this happen to me, I try not to get hit

Originally Posted by Headshot

And what are the set limits, it says in the manual that Strength can be increased 30 points above the base ( your starting point ) but it seems you can only gain 1 point max in a 24 hour period on stats, where as skills can gain more.

1 attribute and 5 skill points every 24 hours, not sure where the limit in the vanilla game is regarding an overall cap.

[IceShade]

I made such a thread, but not many were willing to contribute.

And I've seen health go up, which happens when you get badly injured. I tend not to reload when I get really badly shot up (as long as I don't die!) And wounds are part of the deal when you're 4 guys against 50 enemies (Cali Cantinos last mission anyone?) without the advanced medikits option.

[Headshot]

Ok a problem I just encountered has me a bit worried.

I am doing the blue sun missions for Tang and have gotten to the point where I have finished killing the guy in Olvega ( however its spelled ). On my way back to report in I stop in Campecina and when I am entereing the town the game crashes and go to the desktop. At first I thought maybe just a normal glitch I get sometimes so I loaded a previous save ( not the autosave one created just before the crash ) and again went back to Campecina with the same results crash to desktop upon entering the town.

I decided to bypass the town and finish the mission but now whenever I enter Campecina it does the same crash. Ok so I figure maybe it has somehow corrupted the Campecina data files etc. so to test it out I go back to a point before I kill the guy in Olvega but have taken the mission and enter Campecina before going to kill the guy and guess what no crash.

So I figure I will go do the mission and try again. I do the job as well as doing a battle along the way back towards my base and Campecina. I dont stop at my base and have taken no additional jobs etc but when I enter Campecina BANG crash to desktop again.

I tried resetting the random missions with a barkeep and that didn't help. I even tried not taking any equipment from the dead guys in Olvega but that did no good either.

Again as I have stated if I go back to an earlier save and redo the missions I get the same failure if not it works fine.

Any suggestions ... other than dont go to Campecina anymore?

[R@S]

Without the crash info from the log file it's very difficult to pinpoint the reason for the CtD, but I'll try to help you with some speculations anyways.

It might be an item on the ground left by dead enemies, the smoke grenade is notorious for causing similar issues.

It might also be one of those weird issues you get when you play the game for too long in one session that has caused some of the quest files or characters to get mixed up.

As for solutions, try speeding up time and skip forward 2 or 3 weeks of game time, then try to enter the city again. If you enter the map without a CtD, the problem was caused by an item on the ground. If not, then it might be the memory leak issue and you might never be able to enter that town again, unless something changes in the quest or character code.

If you are familiar with editing the save game files, you could try to swap the map files in the corrupt save archive with one from a working one.

Well, that's what I can do to help with the information you have shared, hope you'll be able to continue playing, with Campecino fixed.

[Headshot]

R@S

You are uncanny ... I somehow got a cooked off smoke grenade in my vehicle inventory and if I enter Campecino or try and get rid of it in any random sector the game crashes.

So now the question becomes ... HOW the hell do I get rid of it from Urals inventory without causing a game crash.

Perhaps go to a different town and remove everything from the Ural except the grenade and then getting the barkeep to take care of the truck and blow it up?

Any thoughts?

I tried putting the spent grenade in the trunk of the Ural and then sold everything to trader in another town but when I go back to Campecino I still get the crash.

Headshot

[safoolfool]

Originally Posted by Headshot

R@S

You are uncanny ... I somehow got a cooked off smoke grenade in my vehicle inventory and if I enter Campecino or try and get rid of it in any random sector the game crashes.

So now the question becomes ... HOW the hell do I get rid of it from Urals inventory without causing a game crash.

Perhaps go to a different town and remove everything from the Ural except the grenade and then getting the barkeep to take care of the truck and blow it up?

Any thoughts?

I tried putting the spent grenade in the trunk of the Ural and then sold everything to trader in another town but when I go back to Campecino I still get the crash.

Headshot

As I remember it editing inventory in your save files is pretty easy. You have to unzip (with the azp utility) your save file, open the .sav up in a text editor, change the inventory, save the file, and add it back into your .sav, again with the azp utility. It's a few steps long, but takes about a minute, once you figure the inventory part out.