Moving special encounters around

[+Zeke+]

The mod I'm playing has limited the special encounter locations to a few higher percentage locations.

I want to relocate those locations out of what are high travel routes so I can avoid the crash bug that happens when you have visited all the special encounters. Frankly, if I never had a special encounter I'd be happy enough. Anything positive you can get from them can be added elsewhere by the editor.

I tried the campaign editor and couldn't figure how to lower the % of special encounter in those spots.

Both in random and special encounters all I can see to manipulate is increase the chance of a particular encounter happening more often. Reducing the general % is what I can't figure out.

 

[nadeauhugo]

Hi there! You simply press left click to add % encounter chance, and right click to lower % chance. You have 3 input on the top of the window, first one is the square width, second the square height of the encounter chances, last one is the increment or decrement chance in %. For random encounter chances, I usually put 1 1 1 to edit, trying to keep to a big big maximum of 5-10 % chance in total for a square. More than that, you spend your whole game avoiding random encounters and it's hell of a problem. Even at 1 % chance, you get random encounter pretty often in my opinion. Something might be a bit broken there in the code. Finally, when you want to remove all random encounters of the same name in the whole map, you can create a "brush" that is 1000 1000 1000 and right click the map. Zap, everything is gone.

 

[+Zeke+]

Ugh, I finally though my game fixed. First I zeroed every special encounter. Then I carefully placed the few trading encounters in useful areas. Then I put all of the undesired encounters on the top row so I did not ever need to cross them because with the scout perk you see one extra square. I could just bypass them when I chose to clear the map. I had not even visited near the top row yet in the game. But while investigating the few trader squares the game started spamming other special encounters in those trader squares. Zero percent chances and they still popped up like weeds. WTF?

 

[nadeauhugo]

This seems very strange, but weird behaviour can be the norm with Tactics engine. When they released it, many many functions where broken and many still are today. I didn’t experience what you did here, but I know there is still a bug with the RO, it makes your game crash when you revealed all encounters on the same quare at the same time (as I heard).

I also chose to have many squares with only 1% chance encounter, and for some reasons the cows in my mod go out like crazy, you always find SO much of them, but almost none of the other that are also at 1%. And with encounter rates maybe related to your processor or something (I heard that explaination once), I’ll say it is a total mess there...

 

[+Zeke+]

It's just my opinion that the SE system is almost worthless in this game by now. Most are just oddball and very dated cultural novelties that have become old. The rest are either a minor combat challenge or trading opportunity.

Better for a mod maker to dump them all on the furthermost NW map square at 100% and 0% in every other square. Either that or put them all on a lake square the player can't reach. Tell the downloaders to stay away from the one square completely. Then make a series of fixed location normal encounters on the map that offer similar opportunities. Leave the surprise factor to the RE system.

 

[nadeauhugo]

I understand your point, but I still kind of like them, and they present some advantages in comparaison to RE. First, what you setup as SE will only appear once, and better, it will appear as a circle too. Can be great if you want to setup something at random that include buildings, ambush, environment danger, etc. etc. I made 50 special encounters for my mod, most of them being unique buildings and places that you can explore, with easter egg items sometimes. I think it is also a nice type of encounter for quests, as you can roughly give the player a kind of area on the worldmap to search for, and then the location will appear at random. Finally, it gives more interest in exploring the map. Just random encouters is a bit boring in my idea.

But if you want to remove it completely and focus your energy on RE, I understand completely, I am sure you can remove the SE entirely. You just need to import an empty SE list in Campaign editor, and I think it will work.