For the purposes of this tutorial I will be using Corsix's Mod Studio (mainly because I can't get the Relic Attribute Editor working at all).
Say you want to replace an honour guard squad in a certain territory with something else.
I will use Chaos as an example, using the Janus Savannah territory.
Open up Corsix's Mod Studio and load up your mod.
In this tutorial I am creating a new honour guard unit for Dark Crusade but for Soulstorm the same process applies.
The squads that you can requisition once you have conquered a territory are located in *.ter files in the data/scenarios/sp folder. I want to extract the janus_savannah.ter file found in the DXP2Data.sga file located in the DXP2 folder.
In the left pane, expand the data folder, then the scenarios folder and then the sp folder. Scroll down the file list and you can see janus_savannah.ter. Right click on it and extract it.
Now if you navigate to your mod folder to the data/scenarios/sp folder you should see this file. Open it using a text editor and scroll down. You should see
VictoryBonusSquads =
{
Inside this bit you can see all the honour squads for each particular race. I am going to replace the boring old aspiring champion (you get three of them) to a super duper horror squad.
Changing
Race = "chaos_marine_race",
Blueprint = "chaos_squad_aspiring_champion_advance_sp",
to
Race = "chaos_marine_race",
Blueprint = "chaos_squad_horror_advance_sp",
Save it and return to the Mod Studio.
Expand the data/attrib/ebps/races/chaos/troops folder, right-click on chaos_horror.rgd and make a copy of it. I called it chaos_horror_advance_sp because that is how the other honour guard ones are named.
I opened it and made a few changes to some of the attributes, like the health and the tooltips so that it will be differentiated from the normal squad. I also made it use a new more powerful version of its daemon fire.
Now honour squads usually have some kind of aura around the selection circles. Open up chaos_aspiring_champion_advance_sp.rgd and go to the event_manager_ext attribute. Click on event_24 and you can see that it has and entry for
ability_bonus_unit.
Expand event_24 and for event_entry_01 you can see it has an entry
bonus_unit\chaos
Right-click on event_24 and select copy and paste it to the event_24 for the new horror squad. Now your new horror squad has the aura.
Now you need to make the aura appear. Reopen chaos_aspiring_champion_advance_sp.rgd and expand the abilitites list. You should see a line that says abilities\sp_dxp_unit_glow.lua. This enables the event aura previously mentioned. Copy the line into your new unit if it has an ability list or copy the ability list itself clearing all lines apart from the line mentioned.
Save the file.
Now go to sbps/races/chaos/ and right-click on chaos_squad_horror.rgd and make a copy of it. I called it chaos_squad_horror_advance_sp. This is what was in the janus_savannah.ter file. Now click on squad_loadout_ext and change the entry for trooper_base from
ebps\races\chaos\troops\chaos_horror.lua
to
ebps\races\chaos\troops\chaos_horror_advance_sp.lua
Now you have a squad of uber horrors. You can change the reinforce attributes so that the max squad size is smaller (like all the other honour guard squads).
You might also want to change the tooltips for squad_ui_ext as well.
Save the file.
Now if you start the campaign and click on the Janus Savanah territory you'll notice that the new squad is in place of the old aspiring champion BUT there's no picture!
In order to fix this you need a picture of the unit in the data/art/ui/swf/icons folder, One normal one for the territory and smaller pictures but also one large one for when you mouse over the picture in your honour guard once you have it.
Using Mod Studio expand the data/art/ui/swf/icons folder and you can see icons for a lot of stuff. Scroll down until you can see chaos_squad_horror.dds and chaos_squad_horror_large.dds.
Luckily enough there is a large version already in the folder so you don't have to create one yourself.
Copy them both and rename them to chaos_squad_horror_advance_sp.dds and chaos_squad_horror_advance_sp_large.dds respectivly.
Job done. Now the pictures will work.
The very last thing you need to do is to make sure the new honour guard unit has a planetary requisition cost when you select them.
Extract the data/scenarios/sp/races/chaos_marine_race.race file and open it with Notepad.
Look for
BonusSquadCosts =
{
You should see a list of honour guard squads and the costs.
Add chaos_squad_horror_advance_sp to this list along with a number to match the other lines, maybe something like 250-300 and now the honour guard horrors will now have a cost.
Save it and when you next play the campaign, the new honour guard unit you created will have a planetary requisition cost when you purchase it.
That's all.
:
Thanks, corncob!
