Craft limit, Starship limit, Starfighter limit, Object limit

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Craft limit, Starship limit, Starfighter limit, Object limit

MrBlackPoplar
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Post by MrBlackPoplar » Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:47 pm

Hi all,

Can somebody please summarise the craft limit in XWA? I understand there is a 96 craft limit, however I have just created a battle with a lot of starships, but still within the 96 craft limit, and many of the starfighters (all of the imperial ones, in fact) will not appear.

A link to another thread or anything to that effect would be very helpful.


Thank you in advance!


Best,
BP

MrBlackPoplar
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Post by MrBlackPoplar » Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:55 pm

By the way - another problem I notice is some of the colours / textures keep suffering glitches - gray laserfire from the imperial starships, and the hangar looks too gray.

bone_naga
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Post by bone_naga » Tue Jul 30, 2013 2:53 am

I believe there is a texture limit. I've noticed that glitch when I use several ships that all have a lot of textures, even if I am way below the ship limit. Using more of the same ship or just using ships with fewer textures seems to solve the issue.

bone_naga
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Post by bone_naga » Sat Aug 10, 2013 3:39 am

On the note of limits, does anyone know if there is a built in mission limit? I'm planning a pretty massive campaign.

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WildstarBlue9
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Post by WildstarBlue9 » Sat Aug 10, 2013 3:30 pm

bone, there can be four regions of 96 ships each in an XWA mission; I'm not sure if the 96 counts ships that jump into a region from another region. As far as the number of missions in a campaign, I'm not sure which file lists the missions in a campaign.
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Bman
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Post by Bman » Sun Oct 27, 2013 2:57 am

I forgot about the 96 ship limit, but I believe the 96 ships is how many opt files can be used concurrently in any given region where the player (you) is at. Or there maybe a lower number, someone correct me.

MrBlackPopular reminds me of what I've discovered while mission writing lately. I've discovered, that you can only have around 22 to maybe 25... "Different" opt files (regardless of FG size and # of waves) in any given mission before the in-game textures get screwed up. You'll notice this immediately while sitting in the hangar before you launch your craft. So in summary, it's the total number of "different" opt files you use, not the number of waves or FG sizes for each of those opt files. The other theory is there would be a limited number of texture bitmaps from all opt files that can be utilized by the game engine in any given region.

My original thought was that all of these custom made opt files were textured and tweaked using different 8-bit/256 color pallets from different paint programs and xwa game engine couldn't handle them concurrently. I don't believe that is the case anymore. JM Dare I think wrote about these problems on his site to some degree.
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MrBlackPoplar
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Post by MrBlackPoplar » Sun Oct 27, 2013 10:51 am

Bman - many thanks! I create missions for myself which use as much as the game will handle with tolerable glitches. So a couple of ships showing up all grey, I'll sometimes just let it go.

One one mission in particular, I replaced an SSD with an ISD, and that reduced the glitches, so clearly there is a texture limit as well.

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Mon Feb 09, 2015 11:11 pm

Hello,

The maximum flight groups count in a mission is 192. This limit can't be removed.

The game has an hard-coded limit of 96 crafts per region.

To modify the crafts count limit of 96 with 192:

Code: Select all

At offset 14C2E, replace 60000000C1E305 with C0000000C1E306
Here is sample:
CraftsPerRegion-192.tie.zip
This mission has 1 A-Wing and 191 Tie Fighters.
CraftsPerRegion-192.png
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Rasalas
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Post by Rasalas » Tue Feb 10, 2015 2:10 am

Awesome work! :2thumbs:
How long did it take to figure that out? You really must know XWA's exe inside out by now.

Bman
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Post by Bman » Tue Feb 10, 2015 4:07 am

Woo-hoo! Thank you Jeremey. So the Battle of Endor for example can now be made more realistic. Only CPU and memory constraints. :-)

So regardless of FG sizes and waves, 192 FG's have to be allocated among Region1, or more Regions of any *.tie mission file.
I assume that includes backdrops (non .opt) FG's... ?
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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Thu Feb 12, 2015 11:34 pm

Regardless of the count of regions, waves, or FGs, the maximum count of crafts will be 192. I don't think that this count includes backdrops.
I have tried to create a mission with more than 192 crafts, but the game has crashed.

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Mon Feb 20, 2017 3:29 pm

Hello,

I've found how to increase the max number of simultaneous weapons.
This was discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11076&start=50#p148248

Code: Select all

# lasers count: Replace the laser count from 64 to 256.
At offset 14C68, replace 750BBA10000000 with 05C0000000EB06.

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Darksaber
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Post by Darksaber » Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:53 pm

JeremyaFr wrote:Hello,

I've found how to increase the max number of simultaneous weapons.
This was discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11076&start=50#p148248

Code: Select all

# lasers count: Replace the laser count from 64 to 256.
At offset 14C68, replace 750BBA10000000 with 05C0000000EB06.
Ah is this new?
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Rasalas
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Post by Rasalas » Mon Feb 20, 2017 11:17 pm

JeremyaFr wrote:I've found how to increase the max number of simultaneous weapons.
Thank you Jeremya! It works like a charm. You are really doing a fantastic work with those hacks and hooks for XWA.
I played a few custom missions and I noticed that they play a little bit different then before. Sadly I can't test vanilla missions (like the Batte of Endor missions) at the moment to see if there are any problems with them. Perhaps you should better add an warning about game balance in missions with huge battles when you add this to XwaExePatcher.
Anyway, keep up the good work. :)

Bman
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Post by Bman » Tue Feb 21, 2017 5:26 am

Awesome Jeremy! This means more ships can fire concurrently while other ships are firing at same time in a given region. Thanks.
Last edited by Bman on Sun Feb 26, 2017 5:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Tue Feb 21, 2017 8:57 am

Darksaber wrote:Ah is this new?
Yes it is.

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AngeI
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Post by AngeI » Mon May 18, 2020 4:31 pm

JeremyaFr wrote:
Mon Feb 20, 2017 3:29 pm
Hello,

I've found how to increase the max number of simultaneous weapons.
This was discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=11076&start=50#p148248

Code: Select all

# lasers count: Replace the laser count from 64 to 256.
At offset 14C68, replace 750BBA10000000 with 05C0000000EB06.
Out of curiosity, is this the max upper limit for lasers like 192 ships before a crash or could you increase this further to say 512?

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JeremyaFr
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Post by JeremyaFr » Tue May 19, 2020 1:39 pm

The 192 ships limit can not be increased.
I think that the laser limit can be increased but it has an impact on the game behavior.

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AngeI
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Post by AngeI » Tue May 19, 2020 1:52 pm

JeremyaFr wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 1:39 pm
The 192 ships limit can not be increased.
I think that the laser limit can be increased but it has an impact on the game behavior.
That's fine as I'm working on the TIE Fighter missions and taking into account things like this :)

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Trevor
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Post by Trevor » Tue May 19, 2020 6:03 pm

At what point does the engine give up with lasers? I use the 256 patch, but would like to see it higher - theoretically there would be a cap based on ship fire rates so having more capacity allows more ships to fire without clipping their rates.

Trev

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AngeI
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Post by AngeI » Tue May 19, 2020 6:19 pm

Trevor wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 6:03 pm
At what point does the engine give up with lasers? I use the 256 patch, but would like to see it higher - theoretically there would be a cap based on ship fire rates so having more capacity allows more ships to fire without clipping their rates.

Trev
This was why I'm interested too as I'm creating larger scale fights to take advantage of the 192 craft limit that the old TF limit could never accomplish.

Bman
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Post by Bman » Wed May 20, 2020 5:26 am

So to recap, the 256 laser patch allows more models to fire concurrently, including fighter craft. It doesn't mean that a single model i.e. an ISD is going to fire 256 laser hardpoints. I believe starship and station models can only have a maximum of 118 hardpoints that also mirror virtually on other side of the model, and that's without the RotartyGunTurret meshes activated for each craft slot.

When a craft's offset is activated to use RotaryGunTurret meshes the maximum allowed is 16 with a pair of laser hardpoints added to each mesh. So the total laser hardpoints available drop from 118 to 32 by using this offset. I'd really wish this setting could be expanded beyond 32 for sure.
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keiranhalcyon7
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Wed May 20, 2020 6:26 am

JeremyaFr wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 1:39 pm
The 192 ships limit can not be increased.
I think that the laser limit can be increased but it has an impact on the game behavior.
ORLY? I guess this never got posted here: https://youtu.be/aLxtPTO5bfk (Although, to quote 3PO, it's not entirely stable.)
Bman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 5:26 am
So to recap, the 256 laser patch allows more models to fire concurrently, including fighter craft. It doesn't mean that a single model i.e. an ISD is going to fire 256 laser hardpoints.
The main balance issue introduced is that, at the base 64 projectiles, high-firepower craft like the ISDII saturate the projectile buffer all by themselves, limiting their own firepower. With the cap removed, missions involving such ships generally become unbalanced.
When a craft's offset is activated to use RotaryGunTurret meshes the maximum allowed is 16 with a pair of laser hardpoints added to each mesh. So the total laser hardpoints available drop from 118 to 32 by using this offset. I'd really wish this setting could be expanded beyond 32 for sure.
Or merge them somehow, so you could have up to 16 rotary turrets alongside up to 118 non-rotary hardpoints.

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Post by Phoenix Leader » Wed May 20, 2020 7:48 am

keiranhalcyon7 wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:26 am
JeremyaFr wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 1:39 pm
The 192 ships limit can not be increased.
I think that the laser limit can be increased but it has an impact on the game behavior.
ORLY? I guess this never got posted here: https://youtu.be/aLxtPTO5bfk (Although, to quote 3PO, it's not entirely stable.)
:megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek: :megaeek:

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keiranhalcyon7
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Wed May 20, 2020 7:53 am

Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction when I first saw it, too.

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