Random Encounters Overload

MazeMouse

MazeMouse

First time out of the vault
I share your pain in the "massive amounts of encounters"
I even tried BOSCHE with a "superchar" to see if I could stop it but it didn't do anything... just moving one square can give anywhere from 3 to 20 encounters (sometimes without even moving)

Using the latest patch.
System specs:
ASUS K8N AI Series NForce
AMD Athlon64
1GB DDR PC3200
ATI Radeon X800 All-In-Wonder 256MB

Isn't there a possibility to lower some % in a dat/txt file like could be done in FO2 with worldmap.txt?
 
Not really, all the worldmap data is stored in the bos.cam file. It's not a text file, but the actual world map image with the appropriate data appended for each square of the map. The make-up of each encounter, is determined in a text file and then imported into the cam file, but placement and % chance is determined in the campaign editor.

Reducing the number of encounters in the campaign file would mean having to edit every square of the map for every type of encounter.
 
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Not really, all the worldmap data is stored in the bos.cam file. It's not a text file, but the actual world map image with the appropriate data appended for each square of the map. The make-up of each encounter, is determined in a text file and then imported into the cam file, but placement and % chance is determined in the campaign editor.

Reducing the number of encounters in the campaign file would mean having to edit every square of the map for every type of encounter.
Click to expand...
So I'm stuck clicking my ass off to decline any and all encounters... (I just wish they'd keep esc as keyboard key to do so... right now all it seems to do is accept the encounter)
 
Ah don't worry my friend. I never actually chose to go to any random encounters as it was just a pain in the arse. I never liked the random encounters in Tactics, as much as FO1&2.

But yeah, a very muchly pain in the arse.
 
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Not really, all the worldmap data is stored in the bos.cam file. It's not a text file, but the actual world map image with the appropriate data appended for each square of the map. The make-up of each encounter, is determined in a text file and then imported into the cam file, but placement and % chance is determined in the campaign editor.
Click to expand...

You can set the frequency for random encounters in the world editor. It would be a royal pain in the ass, though, since you'd have to go and fuck with the setting of all of the encounters, or at least the most common ones.

Of course, deleting encounters would be an option as well. However, this would probably either not affect a game in progress, or it might do bad things to it, since random encounters are unlocked with triggers.

OTB
 
OnTheBounce said:
You can set the frequency for random encounters in the world editor. It would be a royal pain in the ass, though, since you'd have to go and fuck with the setting of all of the encounters, or at least the most common ones.
Click to expand...
Isn't that basically what I just said?

requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Reducing the number of encounters in the campaign file would mean having to edit every square of the map for every type of encounter.
Click to expand...
The not really bit of my post was in reply to MazeMouse's question about whether it could be done like in FO2 by just altering a text file.

OnTheBounce said:
Of course, deleting encounters would be an option as well. However, this would probably either not affect a game in progress, or it might do bad things to it, since random encounters are unlocked with triggers.

OTB
Click to expand...
Or you could just add triggers to unvisited maps to turn off various random encounter types. As they did with the reaver encounters after Newton.
 
So all in all it's a pain in the arse, and a significant one to reduce these encounters in the forementioned ways? I'd find myself probably just completely rooting the game files and having to reinstall :wink:
 
requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Isn't that basically what I just said?
Click to expand...

Yep, sure was. (Sorry, bleary-eyes completely garbled what you were saying.) :oops:

requiem_for_a_starfury said:
Or you could just add triggers to unvisited maps to turn off various random encounter types. As they did with the reaver encounters after Newton.
Click to expand...

They did that, didn't they? Hmmm...

I suppose that's one solution. Another thing I thought of -- pertaining more to a mod than duckman's problem -- is that you could simply rely more on randomization of encounters than on shitloads of different encounter types. That is, provided that you can set the numbers of opponents to randomize, which IIRC you can.

Speaking of random encounters, I really have to say that in most games they are very poorly designed. Random encounters shouldn't be more challenging than so-called "boss-fights". FO2 was pretty bad about this, with it's encounters designed with killing the PC in mind. Basically, they should be designed to let the player know that he/she is heading into a new area, and I'd also be very leary of using REs to introduce new opponents. I think it takes something away from the story since you can't script events like cut-scenes or dialogues along with REs.

Also, is there any way to set up special random encounters like those in FO2 where you encountered first one Morton Brother, then another, and so forth? I don't think so, since you would have to set up a campaign variable. While this might be do-able with a trigger set exported all all random encounter maps it might be more of a pain in the ass/buggy than it's worth, but still worth considering.

OTB
 
Unless you want each opponent different and unique then you wouldn't need a campaign variable in the RE maps, just a trigger to turn the encounters on/off in a bunker. Even if you did want different entities then you'd only need to load the triggers into the landscape maps local to a certain area not the whole world map.

I'll split this off to the modding forum tomorrow.
 
Well, different and unique opponents would be what I'm after.

Using the example of the Morton Brothers, each of the three that could be encountered randomly had his own name (Newt, Toad and one other) and was encountered only once.

This is an interesting idea that I will have to explore once I get back to Germany and assuming that we don't deploy, which is looking less-and-less likely since I was informed that we're looking at "boots on the ground in August." Might have to wait until I get back.

Oh well. Still interesting.

OTB
 
Well unique RE's wouldn't be that difficult. IIRC the Morton brothers only appeared around Redding, so doing something like that would only need editing landscape maps around a particular town.

Let's say you wanted the encounters around Newton, there's only about 8-9 landscape maps used in that area. So once you'd done the triggers for one map you'd just need to save them and load them into the others. Even if you wanted the encounters to stretch across the whole world map it wouldn't be that time consuming to load the triggers into all the landscape maps.

Triggers themselves are simple enough, a campaign variable to turn on all the encounters in a bunker or mission map. Then one trigger for each encounter in the landscape maps.

Campaign variable is true, entity tagged A has more than 0 deaths. Turn off random encounters tagged A.

And so forth for B, C & D etc.
 
Your solution would seem to work and is in the vein of what I was thinking about doing.

I failed to take into account that you control which types of maps are in what areas. That makes it a whole lot easier.

I'll definitely make a note of this in case I ever have the chance to get back to FoT editing.

Cheers,

OTB

PS I didn't realize how rusty I was at FoT editing until this thread. It seems 18 months is quite a long time to remember the minutiae of an editor... :lol:
 
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