I had a thought about making flying suits/mag. ion armour more of a specialised high-investment item rather than the current standard issue.

Current build requirement: 5 alloy + 15 E115
Desired build requirement: 1 power suit + 1 navigation + 10 E115

Or maybe you could replace the nav. with a power source, although that could warrant a decent buff to its stats, and I'd be dissapointed if it didn't explode when it got shot to bits

Might make things interesting.
Stay with power suits, or upgrade to flyers which are *much* tougher and more flexible but run the risk of making a crater if they fail.

Possible?

Yes: PRODUCT.DAT.

Making a flying suit explode on kill is a binary alteration, much harder if possible at all.

If we ever find where the auto-destruct code is for the Cyberdisc, it may be possible to program exploding armor with ton of work and a complete rewrite of the executable.

- Zombie

Perhaps we'd be lucky enough that setting UnitRef[38] (corpse item) to that of a CyberDisc body is enough to trigger the blast?

Though now that I think about it, Cyberdiscs have four such items... Could well be they don't even use that offset.

Is it possible to fiddle with some of the stats in obdata.dat to give the power/flying suit corpse item the stats of an armed grenade set to go off from turn 0?

I suppose the only major downside to this would be that your unit would explode at the end of the turn even when knocked unconscious. Yes, that power unit stuck on your back is very fiddly and unstable! A good excuse to run up to the body and pick it up off the floor before that.

However, turning the corpse into an unarmed grenade (200 or possibly up to 255 HE) could simulate a self-destruct mechanism that you could activate. Not quite the same effect though.

- NKF

Tbh, I'd be quite content with just changing the build requirements =)

Had a peek in product.dat, and it doesn't seem to have a great deal in it - just 2 lines of values (100 page width)
Have I broke it? =P

What did you open it with?

Sounds like MS-Edit or something similar.

Try this: set the columns to 18, and refer to the product.dat entry on the wiki.

- NKF

Done. It makes a bit more sense now although the wiki is a bit sparse on info.
For example: Bytes 8-10 the pre-req. items have no information to refer to regarding which value correspond to which materials.

From digging around I've found the following:

88 = Alloys
60 = E115
80 = Power Source
81 = Navigation

I have no idea about anything else though as nothing else is represented in the tables.

Also, how the seven hells do you input single figure values in MSEdit? =/

It won't be an obdata.dat item index reference, since that wouldn't carry alloys, navigation and power units.

It's probably a reference to the item index used for base storage. Check base.dat.

I'm guessing that the prerequisites follow the usual convention of -1/255 to mean that it's not used. If you start with an index of 0, you should make the Stingray Launcher a prerequisite (you can't use engineers or scientists - although that might have been quiet funny). To refer to any other time, just increment it based on the item order.

---

Single digit numbers are not a strong point for MS-Edit.

There is the ctrl+p then alphabet option. Press ctrl+p then hit a to get 1, b to get 2, and so on. To get a 0, use ctrl+p then 2.

I have absolutely no idea why ctrl+p, 2 gets you a 0, but it does.

Another option lot is to just copy and paste an existing matching value.

- NKF

Well, it is done.
My Flying Suits now take 20 each alloy & E115 + a UFO power source, while having armour ratings of 135/110/100/125.
Not exactly what I was after, but close enough