Editing Gamestarts

[Cat_Fuzz]

Hey guys, it's been awhile since I was last here - last post I made I asked about editing the citizens of each faction of Kenshi, and I'm still be-fuddled by that issue so I've come to the conclusion that it's just not do-able right now.

But onto this topic - I"m currently editing the default Game-starts as well as the "Town Guard" squads of the existing factions and I've noticed a strange bug. If you try to replace the lead character of a scenario in the editor, it will always duplicate that member and you seem to always be that character despite who who change it too in the editor

eg. The Freedom Seekers - I'd like the initial character to be "settler w blueprints" but I still want to keep the second wanderer for the squad. In the editor, you'd think that all you do is take out the wanderer as the character and change the wanderer in the main squad to 2. Then you'd remove the the "settle w blueprints" from the squad and make them the main character.

So far so good. However if I then boot my mod into the game, I'll still be the "wanderer" character, only now there will be two other "wanderers" in the squad. If you completely remove the wanderer from the starting scenario you get the same thing the "Settler with blueprints" guy - there is two of them.

This also happens if you try and change the unit's that guard towns - for example. I'd like UC towns to have a regular Samurai leader, and be accompanied by Empire Soldiers, however when I do this and then load the game, you get a Samurai leader, you get the soldiers, and you get the OTHER samurai that you'd replaced with the soldiers - it's strange because going back into the editor after this - it's automatically added the samurai back into the game.

SO TL:DR: I've noticed some strange duplication bugs in the editor and was wondering if any fellow modders have found a solution to this at all?

Thanks in advance

[Daiyuki]

Troubleshooting:
Can you add people to the squads without a problem? Also, how are you "swapping" them; do you delete the original leader entirely or change the number to 0 and add your replacement? Are you leaving the leader, adding another and putting 1 and 2 in the values? Do you delete the first, add him to the squad, then add your replacement leader?

Theoretical Solution:
Edit the character directly rather than swapping them around. It's less convenient of course, but you can just use replacement copies for the real version.

To explain: You have a scenario leader and then followers. If you want to change the leader, edit the character, but keep a backup of the un-edited version for normal use. For example, I made Samurai leaders Daimyo characters with higher quality black armor. If I wanted to use the normal leader again, I would just use the template I kept and swap his values back to normal.

I haven't messed with AI squads for a while though, I can't say I have seen this bug. I am fairly confident my method would avoid duplications since you are not changing the squad makeup at all.

[Cat_Fuzz]

Thanks for the advice - I've found a temporary work around for the time being which is duplicating the character as using the modded duplicate instead of the base game version seems to make it work, but this is an undesirable fix.

Reading back on what I'd said I'd realised I'd not been so clear so I'll give two examples of my issue to make it clearer.

EXAMPLE 1: The Freedom Seekers

The starting group here is a "wanderer" leader, with an accompanying squad consisting of another "wanderer", an "old soldier", 3 "settlers" and a "settler w blueprints" character. My goal here is to swap out the "wanderer" leader for the "settler w blueprints" character. To do this, I remove the "wanderer" leader and the "settler w blueprints" characters entirely. Then I add the settler as the leader and change the squad "wanderer" value to two. So far so good.

When you boot up Kenshi however, there is another "settler with blueprints" character in the squad. Going back to the editor will reveal that this settler has been added back into the squad with a value of zero, which I'd removed in the first part of the process. No matter what I do (without duplicating this character and putting it back in) this always occurs.

EXAMPLE 2: Empire Gate Guard

Here the squad consists of a samurai lord leader and 6 samurai s as a squad. I want to change this so that the squad is made-up of empire soldiers and the regular samurai is the leader. I remove all the units and then add a samurai leader, and add 6 empire soldiers. When I then boot the game up, UC towns now have 7 samurais AND 6 empire soldiers outside. As before returning to the editor reaveals the samurai that I'd removed have now been added back into the squad which were definitely removed before saving the mod and testing.

It's a strange bug with editor, unless there's a problem with my process, I can't think of it being anything else.

[RighteousSinner]

The easiest work around here is probably making an entirely new start off with your selected characters based solely inside of your mod file instead of editing an existing one and combining both.

From my experience in modding this game, most problems happen when you try to cut and paste things from both a mod file and the original data file.

It's kinda like you can add things, but not outright delete them from certain parts of the original game file. So it's usually better to add things and not destroy and change them.