Secrets of the TacticsTypes.ini Thread - The Nexii

Hi folks,

I was going to type this in from a paper version I made some time ago, but Sargoth got a back up server running for the official forum, so I've decided to cheat and cut and paste it in instead. As and when we figure out some of the blanks, we'll update them. So check back every now and then.

This is a guide i wrote from my notes on what the different variables in tacticstypes.ini mean, and how they can be changed. By no means is this complete, so feel free to add anything you can that i miss. When i don't know what something is i say so and offer my best guess as to what it may be.

important info before starting:

The tacticstypes.ini references the Universe\engine\efx.ini file for all graphical effects, so when i say efx.ini that's the file I'm referring too.

Also, navigating tacticstypes.ini is confusing, as nothing has the same name as it does ingame, so go to the Universe\texts\texts folder and there are several files with which you can reference the ingame name to the game engine name. All the files are named dev_something_something.ini

Tacticsbase.ini is also home to a lot of good info, so be sure to have a look in there as well.

Yellow- I know what it does but not how.

Orange- I know parts of what it does, other parts unknown

Red- Smack me on the head, and call me an idiot. No clue on these

SHIPCLASSES

Absorb- Absorbs damage from normal weapons rather than taking damage. Effectively makes ships invulnerable.

Armor- Hull damage mitigation. This value is subtracted from the hull damage a weapon does. So if you have an armor of ten and a weapon that does 25 hull damage that weapon would only inflict 15 damage. If the armor is higher than the weapons hull damage the weapon will do no damage.

Available- Whether or not this ship is available in multi-player.

Behavior- The rules that an object abides by. Most will have a value of '0' as they are active ships and stations. Wrecks are set at '2' while asteroids are '4'. Exactly how these rules operate or where they're stored, I've no idea.

ChannelEfx- Graphic for the energy beam when transferring energy to siege cannon. first number references efx.ini for effect, second number adjusts the scale(1 = 100%, 0=0%)

Carrier- the amount of space in your hangar bay.

Civilization- changes the race of the ship. References the Universe\tactics\races.ini file. changing it presumably changes the governing ai of the ship(i cant tell a difference, but i'm not very observant). Also changes the general ships colors like engine exhaust, explosions, impacts, shield color.

CollapseTo- found on mecha's. points between the active and asleep modes of the mecha.

DefDevices- allows you to define the devices on strike craft(fighters etc.). place the devicetype number for the type of device you want here. devices are listed in order from the first weapon to the last weapon generator. if the device is a weapon, the amount of ammo can be defined by first putting the devicetype number, then a / and the ammo amount. I.e. 33/1000 means devicetype 33 is used, and it has 1000 shots. used only on small craft, like fighters, bombers, missiles, pods, and boarding craft. as well as on mecha's and angels mecha.

DetectBase- the base sensor strength of the ship. This value is replaced by that of a ships sensor arrays.

DevArmor- device damage mitigation. Works the same as "Armor"

DeviceRepairHP- The total amount of repair potential on your ship. A devices RepairHP variable determines how fast a device repairs, but if more than one device is disabled and repairing, the total amount of repairs wont exceed this value. I.e. if DeviceRepairHP was 40 and you had 6 devices damaged with a RepairHP of 8, only 5 of the devices would be able to repair.

Efx- changes the sound effect of the ship, followed by two numbers. The first number picks the sound from the file "universe\engine\efx.ini" the second i believe regulates the intensity(placing a 0.5 instead of 1 makes the ship quieter).

FinalEfx- ship blowing up graphic. again two numbers. first references efx.ini, second determines the scale.

FinalTime- Amount of time the ship spends spinning around with little hull explosions before it finally explodes. Interestingly, all
ships head away from a ship blowing up and WILL NOT go within a certain distance of it, regardless of the control method used. they will keep on the outside of an imaginary sphere and not go inside at all.

GUIIcon- determines which gui icon is used for the ship. if you change a destroyer to have the battleship mesh, you should change the GUIIcon to the battleship GUIIcon.

HPmax- Easy. how many hitpoints your hull has.

HPregen- regenerates the hull hitpoints. Only the angelwing has this in the sp campaign, but can be added to other ships. Unfortunately doesnt seem to work on strike craft.

ImpactEfx- picks the effect for when the ship is hit on the hull from Efx.ini. the second number regulates the size of the effect. 1 is 100%, 0.6 is 60% etc.

MaxCarried- The maximum size of strike craft you can carry. a setting of 4 means that any fighter/gunboat/bomber with a volume of 5 or greater wont fit in the hold.

Mesh- determines what the object looks like. Pretty much you can assign any ship or weapon the appearance of another ship/weapon, but meshes only have a certain amount of hardpoints, so if you assign say the "earth\main\corvett" mesh to a battleship, many of the weapons will appear to fire from the center of the ship(presumably the 0,0,0, point of the mesh).

Name- obvious enough. .the game uses this name to reference the different ships/weapons. Dont change it.

NoCrew- ship has no crew on board, so no escape pods, and no abandoning ship when at 40% hull. found primarily on unmanned stuff, and the locust queen.

Organic- Toggle that replaces the impact explosion with a "bleeding" animation on a ship. The three numbers following it are the RGB colors.

RangeBehav- Controls the closing distance of a ship. Capships are set to '2' and will keep there distance whereas strike craft are set to '1' and will get in close and personal. You can swap these values around, but I can't se much point as the game wouldn't look right with either fighters giving their targets a wide berth or capships ramming each other.

RotVelFact- unsure how exactly it works, but higher number means you turn faster.

Security- the effectiveness of the ships
onboard security force/equipment at repeling boarders. Higher value
means marines/cyborgs are less effective.

Serial- displays a serial number with a random letter in it on the side of the ship. only human ships have this. you dont have to use the serial number given though.. you can replace it with anything you like(there might be a limit on characters.. haven't tested it though. Most likely its 11 characters, including spaces)

Shadow- not tested. i assume it casts a shadow on ships behind the object, as its only on static objects('roids, space junk, stations)

ShortRange- No idea. Perhaps a toggle for the ai that says this ship gets up close.

Slots- Determines the slot loadout of the ship. 5 possible entries. slots can be multipurpose by using the format ##/##/## as many times as needed. slots can only be multipurpose within one general area. you cant have a weapon/support slot. slots can be added to ships, but not to angelwing for some reason in the sp campaign(slots can be changed on angelwing though).

Slots- weapons. 31 is normal weapons, 32 heavy weapons,33 is siege weapons, 34 special weapons, 35 datascanner, 39 flak weapons, and 38 a special slot for angels special mechanoid.

Slots- Shields. 41 is small shields, 42 is large shields, 43 is fort shields.

Slots- Engines. 51 small engines, 52 large, 53 backup engines, 54 combat engines, 55 tactical drives.

Slots- supports. 61 is base supports, 64 is support generator or backup weapon generator. 66 is energy cell. 67 is for cloaking devices. 81 is the IP drive.

Slots- Weapon generator. 71 small, 72 medium, 73 big.

SupportOutput- How much power the ships built in support generator produces. Setting this to a high value(500) allows you to run every system at 200% without worry.

SupportIn- the amount of power your ships base systems consume. presumably to mimic lifesupport and other ship critical systems.

TargetType- affects the base chance to hit the ship you are in. Look at HitChanceCat for more info.

TechCat- No idea

Transparent- No idea. possibly light from a lightsource goes through?

Ufo- Unknown. only angels mecha and the mechanoids have this.

Velocity- base velocity of the ship. different engines have different velocity multipliers. a ship with a base speed of 100 and an engine with a VelocityFactor of 100 would go 100.

WeapCntFact- a multiplier for ammunition based weapons systems(missiles/torps). If a torp launcher has 20 torps, a value of 2 would double that to 40. a value of 0.5 would halve it to 10. For that ship alone.

Ugh. Too much typing. Someone please shoot me...

Weapons

Automatic- Toggle which makes devices operate automatically, like flak cannons and generators.. sadly even after i figured this one out i STILL cant get my fighters' shields to activate

AutoDistance- Makes the weapon automatically fire at any targets within range. The number gives the range at which the weapon starts firing, in meters. required for weapons on strike fighters and flak turrets, or they wont fire. you cant increase the max range of the gun, but you can reduce it with this. Fighter turrets all have a range of 5k(standard close combat range) if you raise the autodistance to 5000.

BatValue- How tough your marines/cyborgs are. Closely tied to "Security" in the the shipclass section

Blinder- Makes a target blind, which reduces the Scanner and Detector values of ships, regardless of their sensor strength. The number is probably the duration. Look in tacticsbase.ini for more info on blinding.

CannonMaxFireAng- limits the firing arc of weapons. can make it so you can't hit anything if set on normal weapons. only really works on strikecraft and siege lasers.

Carried- sets the size of the strikecraft. Setting this larger than the "MaxCarried" of a shipclass will make it so these craft wont fit
inside that ship's hangar.

Category- 1 is for weapons, 2 shields, 3 engines, 4 supports. Possibly determines where the power for the device
comes from. on the list for testing

Charge- How much energy the weapon draws. this amount is consumed every 0.1 seconds.

CountDec- how much ammunition this devices uses per shot.

Crisis- No idea. Perhaps how much of a threat a weapon is? angel mecha has a very high crisis..

CrisisOut- No idea. Found on eskeeter.

DamageShield- shield damage

DamageHull- Hull damage

DamageDevice- device damage

DamageEnergy- Energy damage. this is how much the shield bar is drained if it is charging but not yet active.

Detected- how much detection is required to detect this device(and thereby your ship) when a distance away or cloaked. Higher means harder to detect.

DeviceHitChance- % chance that this will hit a device and not the hull. set to 100 for a weapon that never misses devices.

EnergyIn- how much energy the weapon needs to fire. use in conjunction with Charge to alter the rate of fire. a weapon with Charge 1 and EnergyIn 2 will fire every 0.2 seconds. Charge 20 and EnergyIn 12000 will fire every minute. Also used in other devices(shields, ecm, sensors etc) to determine the systems energy drain on the system.

GroupFire- Sets the amount of strikecraft per wing. set to 5 for 5 craft instead of 3. Can also be used on other weapons. Putting
"GroupFire 3" on a laser will make that laser shoot 3 beams. Each beam will do the full damage listed in the tacticstypes. looks kind of silly though... shotguns in space.

HitChanceCat- Rainman did a good job of explaining HitChanceCat here: Nexusthegame.com
Also, remember that targettype, ecm, and combat/tactical drives all play a big role in weapon accuracy.

HPmax- how many hitpoints this device has

InstallRP- the RP cost of the device in the ship configuration screen.

IonizeDevice- This ones a toughie. I put it on a laser and figured out that IonizeDevice 25 means that when a device is hit its health drops 25%, regardless of its hitpoints. 200 hp, or 20000, it doesnt matter, it drops to 75%. the odd thing though is that if you keep firing eventually the device will go dead, but it takes 6-8 more shots, and no further damage will register. it just goes from 75% to dead.

MaxCount- the base number of ammunition in the device. Modified by the "WeapCntFact" of a shipclass.

MaxHullDam- this limits the hull damage to a certain maximum, but i wonder why theres a separate toggle for it.. wouldnt it be easier to simply lower the DamageHull of a weapon? theres got to be something here i'm missing

NoTarget- sets a device to be untargettable. wont show up in the devices info on the ship.

PenetrateShield- affects how well the weapon penetrates a shield. works closely with the shield variable "Defense". The higher the number, the less the damage is reduced when passing through a shield. From my tests its not a linear relationship though. Here's a little chart:

Defense---PenetrateShield-------Dmgreduction

3000---------------3000--------------------0%
3000---------------2500--------------------0%
3000---------------2000--------------------5%
3000---------------1500--------------------29%
3000---------------1000--------------------54%
3000----------------500---------------------75%
3000-------------------0--------------------100%

This holds true for all ratios, i.e. a shield with a defense of 300would reduce the damage of weapon with PenetrateShield of 100 by 50%.

Purpose- This tells the game what weapongroup this weaon belongs to. 1 is a shield buster, 2 is a hull weapon, 3 is antidevice, 4 is
artillery. If you put purpose 1 on an anti hull weapon that weapon will activate when you select destroy shields on the UI. You can set a weapon to have multiple purposes, like "Purpose 1 2 3 4 ;"

RepairHP- How many hitpoints the device is repaired by. Refer to DeviceRepairHP in the shipclass section for more details.

ReserveCons- This makes things cost reserve power to activate, like the angel mecha.

ReserveConsOut- Draws energy from the reserve power of the target. Found on Eskeeter.

Scanned- how hard it is to scan for this device in order to target it. Higher numbers make it harder to scan.

Sets- Largely a mystery. The only thing i know about this is that the second to last number(last for devices on strike craft) determines which slot the item fits into on the ships. look up at Slots in the shipclass section for more info on this. Beyond
that, i have no idea what anyof those numbers do.

Substance- No difference that i can see by switching this. 1 is for energy weapons, 2 is for physical weapons, 3
is for strike craft weapons.

Start- The beginning, or firing, animation of the device. the first number is unknown(always 2) the second number i believe is a speed modifier(always 0) the third number references efx.ini to determine the firing effect, the fourth number is scale of the effect(1=100%, 0=0%)

Travel- Determines the travel animation of the device. First number is an unknown effect, 2 for almost all weapons, 3 for strike
craft launchers, 1 for certain strike craft weapons, 4 for boarding craft and lifepods. second number is the speed of the graphic in
meters/s. the third number is the efx.ini reference or the Shipclass
name launched. the fourth is scale of the effect(1=100%, 0=0%).

End- The ending graphic for a device. First number varies depending on the overall type it is.. most are 1, area weapons are 3, small ships are 4 and 5. No idea what it does though. the second number is the radius of the effect in meters, 0 for single target weapons. the third number references efx.ini for the end graphic. the fourth number is scale of the graphic. Note: Changing the
first number to 3 and adding a range in the second number can make any weapon an area weapon!

I changed my mind. Please dont shoot me...

SHIELDS

Components- no actual effect, just lists those little components underneath the shield bar on the UI. The components as the game puts it are just altered stats, and the "mask" and "integrityprotect" variables.

Defense- higher the number, the more shield piercing weapons get their damage reduced. See "PenetrateShield" in the weapons section for more info.

EnergyOutput- Energy output of generators. first number is the type of energy. 1 is for weapon gens, 2 is for shield generators, 3 is for engines, and 4 is for support generators. the second number is the amount of power generated every 0.1 seconds. Only Type 4(support) power is capable of filling up the reserve power cells.

Fort- makes the shield a fort shield. first number is the radius in meters, second number i'm unsure of.

IntegrityProtect- same thing as Armor, except for shields.

Mask- limits the amount of scanning that can be done on the ship. lower is better. Example. Ship A has an advanced sensor array, which has Scanner 180. Ship B has Jamming shield with Mask 125. When ship A activates its Advanced sensor and drops its shields, its value for Scanner on ship B will be 125, not 180.

MaxIntegrity- Amount of hitpoints the shield has when fully charged.

OffEfx- shield powering down sound.

OnEfx- shield powering up sound. first number looks inside efx.ini, second determines scale

Moving right along..

ENGINES

Dodge- How fast you go when you "dodge" incoming fire, as a percentage of base Velocity. this setting doesn't affect how much you get hit though.. the toggles "CM" on tactical drives and eccm devices do that. Only found on tactical drives.

DodgeRot- how fast your ship rotates to avoid pinpoint laser fire on devices. only combat and tactical drives have this.

Efx- the engines graphical effect. References Efx.ini

Gravity- turns off engine effects. no other noticeable change.

RotVelFact- percentage. affects how fast your ship can turn spin.

SideVelFact- percentage of the ships base Velocity you can travel sideways.

Soundefx- the engine sound effect.

VelocityFactor- percentage of the ships base Velocity this engine will allow you to travel forwards..

Not as good as Mountain Dew, but close...

SUPPORTS

CCM- first number references the devicetype, second number is how much the CM's of that device are reduced. I.E. "CCM 280 10 ;" reduces the "CM" values of devicetype 280 from "CM 2 10" and "CM 3 20" to "CM 2 0" and "CM 3 10"

CM- first number is the weapon range(2 for close combat range, 3 for artillery range). The second number is the amount the hitchance is reduced by. its a direct subtraction rather than a percentage decrease, I.e. "CM 2 30" active would reduce a 75% hitchance to 65%. CM's from tac drives, ecm, and cloaks are cumulative. Look at "HitChanceCat" for more info.

Detector- how powerful the device is at detecting ships. If the Detector value is higher than the Detected value of the ship or any of its active devices, you will be able to detect the ship, even if cloaked. Shields reduce this effect(actually they just toss out sensors and have their own, lower, Detector value that overwrites that of sensors.

Ionizer- No idea yet.. i think its the same ionizer field that the locust mother had, but i'm not sure how it works yet.

MaxReserve- How much is added to the ships reserve power. Used on batteries.

Scanner- No idea how this works yet, but i know higher is better. Also that shields have there own scanner value which supercedes that of sensors when the shield is up, thereby reducing the ships Scanner strength. "Mask" also affects this value,
but only against a ship that has a jamming shield.

Thats it for now, i'll keep researching and figuring out stuff and updating when possible. If any of you want to take a crack at the ones i havent figured out and let me know the results, feel free

Thanks to frogger1108 for your help, and rainman for your wonderfully insightful post on HitChanceCat.

Edit: Finished off the list, and updated several entries.

Edited by: Kirsah