Number of ships in a group :?

[Hernandez]

Hey

One thing that already annoyed me the first time i played botf
is that you can only put 9 ships into a group.
Instead of clicking 5 times for setting a new route for some 40 ships, it would be very nice to be able to put them all together in a single group.

Is there still a solution for this problem, or does anyone know how it can be solved?
I'm sorry if there's already a question like this, but I didn't find it yet.

thx

[thunderchero]

there is no fix for this

thunderchero

[RSE_Dissy]

heh computer says no huh thunderchero?

I agree, would be lovely to be able to assign your 9x9 heavy cruisers into a "Fleet" and give it a title, like 7th Fleet etc.

[Peter1981]

I took a quick look into increasing taskforce size as a project about a year ago, and didn't get very far...

sadly i can't find my notes!...

what i remember is not only would the affected .wdf files need modification, and how trek.exe deals with them (this is still unresolved see energy screen project). You also need to setup the .sav files generated by trek.exe and therefore how trek.exe saves and loads this dynamic data.

further while I was able to click to add a tenth ship to a taskforce, it didn't join the taskforce, i.e. it webt through the add sounds but didn't appear in the taskforce pane just was left out.

Getting that far ment testing several 0x0A and 0x09 and resulted in many a CTD.

what I couldn't resolve myself was how trek.exe handled the data of each ship as i added into a taskforce.

my approach was a very naive blunt force approach. So the list of things to identify is:

1. How does trek.exe handle ship data in a taskforce?
2. How does trek.exe store and retrieve this infomation?
3. How is the infomation encode and retrieved by tre.exe from and to a .sav file?
4. Does trek exe. contain any check or limits that can be altered? (my own research suggested this is a 'yes' btw.)
5. Does this work for the AI, does it affect combat calculations/ ground assaults. AI stratergy????

so there you have it. -- good luck!!

EDIT: Alternative approach

Could taskforces be nested within one another?

so 9x9 i.e. 81 ships per nested task force. This I would surgest would need as much understanding and work (if not more) as the above but in a standard taskforce pane individual taskforces could be assigned in to it and these inturn could be manipulated independantly?

E.G.
Fleet consists of
Taskforce 1 -- 5 x Galaxy, 3 x Galaxy-X, 1 x Oberth
Taskforce 2 -- 3 x Reliant, 3 x Constellation, 3 x Defiant
Taskforce 3 -- 4 x Ambassador & 5 x Soverign

so the Main Fleet in this example consists of 27 ships subdevded into 3 groups of nine?

[DCER]

You should take a look at GWTForce and GTForceList

Slots are 4 bytes in size. You could try reducing the size to 2 bytes and get 18 slots. This would mean rewriting any code that accesses the slots.

Nesting taskforces would be even harder. If the code could be somehow manipulated to do this you'd need a way to tell whether an ID is a ship or a taskforce ID.

[Peter1981]

The reason I suggested taskforce nesting (single layer only) was it could use much of the existing gui -- however most of the behind the scenes programming will need to be changed.

Has anyone actually looked at the program code for this or knows where it is located with out my original notes I'm left scratching my head!!

[Hernandez]

a friend of mine is actually trying to reduce the slots size - and as he told me, he was succesfull in getting 18 slots, but somehow the game crashes while cloak- and decloak, scrap order and outpost building orders.

i will keep you up to date

[Peter1981]

interesting -- if he wanted some more help he'd need to post what hes done so everyone can take a look.

Did he alter the GUI files? -- this I would dearly love to see!! as its one of the trick that has eluded this community see the energy screen project.

[Spocks-cuddly-tribble]

Has anyone actually looked at the program code for this or knows where it is located with out my original notes I'm left scratching my head!!

Here are some old notes wrt:

Extending the TASKFORCE size


First of all, GUI files(+ exe handling of them) is the main work. Without this issue solved, the project is just a silly nerd timewaster.



=> Max number of ships: (maybe more values to find)

Code: Select all

4492AB                 cmp     eax, 9
4492C4                 cmp     eax, 9

4492F8                 cmp     edx, 9

=> Decreasing the slot size (senseless task -> hundreds of values to find/change for a max size of only 18 ships)

Some of them:

Code: Select all

scrap order
46943D                 add     ebx, 4

Train_ships
46916B                 add     ecx, 4

Raid_order
4697B7                 add     esi, 4

Build_Space_Station
468C92                 add     ecx, 4

=> Increasing the blocksize of GWTForce & GTForceList (senseless task due to file structure!)

Most but not all are related to the subject, on the other hand maybe some needed values are calculated !

Code: Select all

447BBE                 mov     ecx, 6Ch
447BE8                 add     ebp, 6Ch
448F2B                 mov     ecx, 6Ch

4494C5                 sub     esp, 6Ch
4495A2                 add     esp, 6Ch

449822                 sub     esp, 6Ch
449862                 add     esp, 6Ch

449895                 mov     ebx, 6Ch

449FB3                 mov     ecx, 6Ch

45713F                 mov     eax, 6Ch
457144                 mov     ecx, 6Ch

4575D0                 mov     eax, 6Ch

457D01                 mov     eax, 6Ch
457D0E                 mov     ecx, 6Ch

4668EC                 mov     edx, 6Ch
4669CB                 mov     edx, 6Ch

4668EC                 mov     edx, 6Ch
4669CB                 mov     edx, 6Ch

466B14                 mov     edx, 6Ch
466B25                 mov     edx, 6Ch
466B46                 mov     edx, 6Ch

466CB4                 mov     edx, 6Ch

46C350                 push    6Ch
46C37B                 push    6Ch
46C39F                 push    6Ch
46C3E7                 push    6Ch
46C46C                 push    6Ch
46C498                 push    6Ch
46C4BD                 push    6Ch
46C505                 push    6Ch

48284C                 mov     ecx, 6Ch

48EE08                 mov     eax, 6Ch
48F058                 mov     eax, 6Ch

4FEEA5                 sub     esp, 6Ch
4FEF67                 add     esp, 6Ch

55371F                 add     eax, 6Ch

55B4BB                 add     eax, 6Ch

[Peter1981]

thanks for the info SCT.