MOD of OOBs

[PanzerHue]

Hi,
I have been playing a little with the SM and found it very interesting to change some of the scenarios. But the SM is limited in the ways it allows to MOD the excisting unit ESTABs and build up new units with some of the Equipment ESTABs.
Maybe there is a perfectly good reason for that, but I would like to know if it would be possible in the future to MOD the ESTABs in a different way that it can be done now?

Thanx for a great game...once again.

Kind regards...

[Arjuna]

While we have a series of in-house dev tools that allow us to edit the estabs, we don't provide an Estab Editor for public release. There are a number of reasons for doing this, both commercial and development wise.
 
Our view is that releasing it would complicate and potentially compromise our future developments. I know there are arguments both ways on this. In mitigating its effects we do aim to provide a wide range of estabs for the period setting of each game. For instance in COTA Patch 3 we have just expanded the estab offerings to include a wide range of commonwealth and italian estabs that enable any of the North African battles to be simulated. They are also being used at the moment to design an Op Sealion scenario. So there is a wide scope of scenarios that can be designed with the released estabs.
 
In any event it would take considerable development effort to produce an editor suitable for a public audience. Further it would soak up a lot of our time supporting it. Of all the data components ( maps, units, scenarios, objectives etc ) estabs cause the most grief. They are highly complex and their effects can be wide ranging.
 
Just ask Richard Simovitch who is once again editing the new BFTB estabs to ensure that all Base units have their force type field set to "logistics" rather than "infantry". This oversight was resulting in many "vague" intel reports displaying Base units rather than infantry.

[PanzerHue]

Thanx for the detailed reply, Dave.
I understand fully the reasons for not makng a public release of an Estab Editor. First of all I understand the huge work it takes to develop such an editor and support it afterwards and I see that there is commercial interest in it too. But Im not so much asking for a "easy-to-useeditor" - Im willing to dig into some files and manually edit them, spend my time on this too, to be able to change some units and equipment.
I recognize the huge work You do with developing this great game, support it and expand it. Dont misunderstand me; Im a fairly new but not at least a HUGE fan of COTA - its one of my all time best games, and I know I will be spending many, many hours enjoying myself. And I know for me, if there was the possibility to MOD some units, there would be endless amount of hours of enjoyment.

Respectfully regards...