Modding WL - Q & A

Hi guys

It's time for me to start building some OOBs for the Peninsular campaign. I can see what's changed in the OOB layout and I have a question about unit IDs. Do these have to be unique? I can see from your KS OOBs Kevin that you give IDs relevant to each year and theatre so we get POL07_, WL15_, IT09_ and so on. If we were to include (say) the Prussian and Austrian allied corps in a Russian 1812 OOB would we need to name their units uniquely as well, so we'd have to have them start at RUS12_FR_1173 as the next unit in the French OOB?

I assume this is all linked to getting MyGUI and the names.xml to display the unit/general name correctly.

In my case I have a large set of separate OOBs for the Peninsular campaign and since every OOB must retain the army-corps-division-brigade-regt hierarchy I have a Napoleon at the top of every one, or a King Ferdinand VII, this 'unit' being used many times over in the different OOBs.

Do I need to stop doing that and have just one entry for every unit from now on?

What do I do with alternate commanders? For example in many of my OOBs a division is on detached duty and fights a battle so I 'promote' the division commander to corps level and then promote a brigadier to division, etc. Thus I have many instances like this:

CORPS CO
ACTING CORPS CO
DIVISION CO
ACTING DIVISION CO
1st BRIGADE CO
ACTING 1st BRIGADE CO_1
2nd BRIGADE CO
3rd BRIGADE CO

etc

With duplicated number codes... I just use the one I need when I create a scenario from that master OOB.

Must I also now have just one single huge OOB with every French corps and Allied army in it, giving every single unit a unique ID?

What happens to the ID sequence when I need to move units around or bring in new raised ones?

Thanks.

Ideally you'd have one master OOB with all the units of the campaign in it. That way every unit would have a unique ID number. You would then take these units and mix and match to create all the "sub-OOBs" that you use for the battles. You'd have Boney at the top of each one, but he'd have the same ID # in all of them.

The problem is that MyGui requires there be a name associated with each unit in an xml file. It also requires the 2nd name, (corps, division, brigadename), be associated with the ID number. Compliments of NSD.

So I cannot shift units between brigades or brigades between divisions? Or can I - even though this will jumble up the IDs?

Can the IDs run out of sequence?

Yes you can move brigades to any sub-OOB(s) you like. The ID numbers can be out of sequence. They are only used to correlate a unit to a name.

Thanks for your answers, that helps a lot.

I'm nearly done rebuilding the OOB for part of the Peninsular campaign. I have an OOB for an upcoming battle that has multiple corps in it on both sides. I see from Gettysburg and Waterloo stock OOBs that you only ever need 1 courier per side with a headcount of 10 and that unit forms a separate corps on its own.

I know we tried all kinds of permutations with the KS Mod but can we still get by with just this 1 courier per side, as long as it is placed at the highest level the OOB uses?

I usually have 4 per side in my scenarios. They can all have the same index number.

I remember you saying you use a lot, but are we sure they are necessary when the stock OOBs have only one? What has changed that affects this from Gettysburg to now when one was always enough in that game?

I'm creating master OOBs for the campaign and don't want to be adding extra lines that are not needed - which seems to be the case if you add an extra couple of "courier divisions" and "courier corps" to every corps (the campaign OOBs function differently from the way Stefan's scenario generator works so I can't throw extra lines in when it pleases me).

I suggest trying it with one and see what happens.

Can we try a game Wednesday without the extra courier entries?

On another subject - where does the game store this infamous xml names file? I can't find any of them in the stock scenarios or your ones.

Yes, we can easily try it out.

The xml files are in the KS mod \layout\media\language folder.

So... I have to add to that file with my scenario unit lists? The names can't go anywhere else? Why can't the names.xml go in the scenario folder?

We have to edit the mod itself to play a scenario that uses new units?

*facepalm*

We have to edit the mod itself to play a scenario that uses new units?

Yup.  Compliments of MyGui.

Or I could make up my own Peninsular OOB Mod with just that nest of folders in it... but either way every player in the campaign gets to see every unit in the enemy army.

This gets better and better.

The xml file has to go in that location? It won't work anywhere else? Can just the host have it or does every player need it?

If you have a commander in an OOB and due to the exigencies of war he moves to command a different formation, do I need to give that newly filled post a different unit ID and names xml entry or can the game understand a duplicated entry (him in his old position and the same officer in a new one?)

A commander can be listed twice, but will need two different IDs. As an example, I have Wellington commanding the British army in the 1815 OOB and also have him in command of the reserve corps. Same name but different IDs.

I have a French cavalry division commander and he's just been moved to command a provisional cavalry division made up of one of his brigades and one of someone else's. So he's exactly the same person and may well go back to his original command. Obviously a scenario picked from that OOB will only ever use one instance of him so I am hoping he can use the same ID in both slots?

If he is present in different OOBs then he can have the same ID.

I guess that is what is happening. He's in the Master OOB twice but I pull him out only once to make a battle OOB.