[TEC] Add a new nation

[Kapitain Oliver Leinkraunt]

Hi my dear friends, sorry for the bother, and my bad english, but I would make a mod, but I don't know how can I do it
How can I add a new nation such as Italy or Siam in SH4 and spawn them in the game ?

[propbeanie]

The main steps would be to add the Country to the DefSide.cfg file in the Data / Roster folder. You need an entry for each "side" the country was on, such as most countries are neutral at the beginning, and then are either Axis or Ally. You could copy an entry from another country. All of the entries are numerically ordered, such as there are 33 entries in the Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate mod that we're working on. If we added Siam, we would do like:

[SideEntry 34]
Country=Siam
Side=0
StartDate=19380101
EndDate=19411207

[SideEntry 35]
Country=Siam
Side=2
StartDate=19411208
EndDate=19450818

[SideEntry 36]
Country=Siam
Side=0
StartDate=19450819
EndDate=19451231

I have not researched the dates, and it could be argued that Siam was part of the Axis agreement prior to the start of Japanese hostilities, and that they were part of the Ally team by January of 1945, when there were internal factions strong enough to begin to attempt an ouster of the Japanese overseers. It is up to the mod builder for due diligence...

You will also need a new folder for the country in the Roster folder. If you copy one of the other countries that are similar, using India as an example, you will find folders for "Air", "Land", "Ordnance", "Sea", and "Submarine" under the "Roster / India /" folder structure. However, the "Land", "Ordnance" and the "Submarine" folders are empty. They had no assets for those folders. There is one airplane listed in the "Air" folder, and some ships in the "Sea" folder. Study and copy some of those for your Italy and Siam folders. Which ever ships you decide your country has, there has to be a corresponding ship in the "Sea" folder, so it's usually easiest just to use the ships already in a mod.

You will want a "Flag" for your ships also, which the Italians are already in both the "Data / Library / Flag.dat" file (for the flags on the ships) and the "Data / Menu / Gui / RecManual" folder (for the Recognition Manual cover), but neither Siam nor Thailand have a listing.

Last, but not least, in order to "see" the ships in the game, you need to add them to the Campaign layers. You could mix them in with the regular Axis files (generally Japanese layers), such as "Data / Campaigns / Campaign / 41a_Jap_Convoys.mis" if playing the FleetBoat side, or "Data / Campaigns / CampaignGE / CampaignData / Axis_Convoys_41a.mis", and all of the others of that type, or make a separate file with just that country's traffic in it. Your choice... Maybe you could add them into SingleMission files, or Patrols, etc. All you have to do is copy a listing from one of the files, change the numbers to be in sequence with the listing, and they'll eventually be encountered...

[RndGroup 23]
GroupName=41a_Siam_Merchants_001
Category=0
CommandEntry=0
Long=16773900.000000
Lat=4233700.000000
Height=0.000000
DelayMin=1
DelayMinInterv=9420
SpawnProbability=35
RandStartRadius=0.000000
ReportPosMin=3000
ReportPosProbability=15
Heading=186.339996
Speed=5.000000
ColumnsNo=1
Spacing=500
DeleteOnLastWaypoint=true
CurrentInstanceID=0
GameEntryDate=19411201
GameEntryTime=0
GameExitDate=19420228
GameExitTime=0
MaxInst=50
MaxUnitsCreated=4
DockedShip=false
NextWP=0

[RndGroup 23.RndUnit 1]
Class=KLCSNagara
Type=102
Origin=Siam
Side=0
CargoExt=1
CargoInt=0
CfgDate=19411201
No=1
Escort=false
SpawnProbability=100
CrewRating=2

[RndGroup 23.RndUnit 2]
Class=KMCSHeito
Type=102
Origin=Siam
Side=0
CargoExt=4
CargoInt=0
CfgDate=19411201
No=3
Escort=false
SpawnProbability=10
CrewRating=2

[RndGroup 23.RndUnit 3]
Class=OLNippon
Type=101
Origin=Siam
Side=0
CargoExt=-1
CargoInt=0
CfgDate=19411201
No=1
Escort=false
SpawnProbability=5
CrewRating=1

[RndGroup 23.Waypoint 1]
Speed=17.000000
Radius=0.000000
Loop=-1
LoopProbability=100
Long=16772700.000000
Lat=4222900.000000
Height=0.000000

[RndGroup 23.Waypoint 2]
Speed=16.000000
Radius=0.000000
Loop=-1
LoopProbability=100
Long=16748700.000000
Lat=4176500.000000
Height=0.000000

[RndGroup 23.Waypoint 3]
Speed=15.000000
Radius=0.000000
Loop=1512
LoopProbability=10
Long=16766450.000000
Lat=4112900.000000
Height=0.000000

[RndGroup 23.Waypoint 4]
Speed=12.000000
Radius=0.000000
Loop=813
LoopProbability=50
Long=16783800.000000
Lat=4049700.000000
Height=0.000000

All of the above examples are just that, "Examples", and may or may not work if directly copied. Also, tread carefully, since I may have forgotten a few points... - Surely, someone will correct my mistakes.