[TEC] How does "frequency" work for ship skins in the Roster?
 

Subject says it all.

It's just a "weight" for the random roll.

You add frequencies for all skins correct for desired time period, then make a roll out of the total and the chances for each of them are proportional with their correspondent frequency.

For example a skin with frequency 3 will have 3 times more chance to come up compared to one with frequency 1.

If we have
Skin A freq: 2
Skin B freq: 3
Skin C freq: 1

Total = 2 + 3 + 1 = 6 -> results in:
Skin A chance out of 100: (2 / 6) * 100
Skin B chance out of 100: (3 / 6) * 100
Skin C chance out of 100: (1 / 6) * 100

Sorry it's kind of hard for me to explain in english.

But I don't think it works if thats what you're asking :D Can't remember might have been just wishfull thinking on my part when I wrote that. I like to write stuff for the future and my files are always full of this kind of stuff.

Dan

I've always had it set to 1, was wondering how it might be used if there were, for example, many alternate merchant skins available.

So if it worked, would it actually be possible to use a value <1?

Ie: add all the paint jobs to 100%, and set frequency such that they add to 100?

Ie:

Pre-war skin freq: 0.04
Gray skin 1 freq: 0.16
Gray skin 2 freq: 0.20
Gray skin 3 freq: 0.20
Gray skin 4 freq: 0.20
Dazzle skin 1 freq: 0.03
Dazzle skin 2 freq: 0.03
Dazzle skin 3 freq: 0.03
Dazzle skin 4 freq: 0.03
Dazzle skin 5 freq: 0.02
Dazzle skin 6 freq: 0.02
Dazzle skin 7 freq: 0.02
Dazzle skin 8 freq: 0.02

?

I guess so, or you can multiply them with 100 anyway.

The thing is you don't have to add them to 100 but of course it helps if you want to keep things perfectly in perspective.

Moot if it doesn't work though :)

PS—how're you doing?

Well, there's not much effort in writing the "frequencies" anyway. Maybe I'll bother one of the programmers to see what was done and what was not cause its all a mess in my head right now.

P.S. Recovering :)

Just curious. I could mod in a campaign with all 1 ship type, and vary the ship skins only by frequency and check I guess, but I feel lazy.

On a related note, is there a maximum number of entries we can have in each roster file elanaiba?

Skins or names?

Sorry, I wasn't clear.
Skins.

Interesting.

I just loaded a single mission with a few ships in it with new skins.

I set the unit roster files for each texture such that one was good from 1901 til 1940, then the next from 40 to 41, 41 to 42, etc.

I put 3 in the single mission, with the cfg date for each merchant set such that 1 should have had skin 1, then another skin 2, and the last skin 3.

Even though the mission date was 1944, all showed up with the pre-1940 skin.

OK, then I make all the dates 1901-1999 and try again. This time I set the frequency for skin 1 = 0.3, skin 2 = 0.3, skin 3 = 0.4

And I got 2xskin 1, and 1xskin 3!

Frequency might well work. In fact, setting frequency = 1 might FORCE using the first skin with an available date... must test. The ability to have many many skins will become important soon ;)

Did you change both Entry Date and Unit Version Date in the ME when you teated the different date versions?

No, the entry date has to be the same, otherwise I have to sit there for years (more than 20km away) and wait for them to spawn.

The unit cfg date is what I changed. Note that this works for eqp files---I have single test missions where one subchaser has radar, and the earlier cfg date version doesn't.

Which may explain why in my tests the game seemed to have a predilection for just picking the first available skin.
I had all my frequencies set to 1.

That's the default, and I've always left it as is, even with a few new skins. The stock skins are so bad that I never bothered much—one filthy, dirty skin look much like another :)

The devs should have made at least 1 "clean" O-map for every ship.

Dan, should you pop back into the thread:

is there a chance that date assignments for skins in the Roster only work in campaign mode?

Also, do ship skins need to be in a certain name format for that to work, or are arbitrary names fine as long as the path is selected properly in the unit.cfg in roster?

So I used whole numbers for frequency. No idea if it works.

I made a mission, I have one ship class with 3 units in a convoy. One has a 1938 date, another has a 1942 date, and another '44. The skins are set such that all the "new" skins start in 1941+, and all the pre-war skins END in 1941. The cfg date on the 1 ship is 1938, but it shows the same skin as the 1942 ship—and the 1944 gets an appropriate skin.

It's very confusing, the start and end dates WORK with the eqp files, I've done much testing on that. I can have one of these merchants get an EQP change that works based on the cfg date, but not the skins.