While some people might say, "What fun is it if you can't choose your own weapons?" This tip is essential for all LIB and mission makers to know. It requires; however, the knowledge of the hardpoints of the aircraft you are editing and the filenames of the weapons. Now you still may be asking what use this has but let me tell you. Let's say you build a LIB and plan to make missions. Unfortunately your LIB is large and in the custom load-out screens, external fuel tanks and ECM pods vanish. Well this is how you keep them. Let's take, for example, the F-15C of my Game Remod LIB. Here is the standard reading of the aircraft just as I placed it in the mission. The default armament for our F-15C is four AIM-9M, four AIM-120A and 940 20mm rounds. On the centerline and wing pylons are 600 gallon fuel tanks. Now, if you were to open this in the custom loadout screen all you'd see are the AIM-9Ms, AIM-120As and M61. Where'd the fuel go?!?! Well It's gone.
obj
type F15.PT
pos 498375 10000 1207106
angle 0 0 0
nationality3 0
flags $4017
speed 940
alias -77
skill 3
react $c000 $3fff $0
searchDist 0
wing 2 0
wng 1 1 2048 0
.
Let's say I wanted to change
the loadout on everything; give it 512 20mm rounds, four AIM-9Js, four AIM-7Ms,
and 350 gallon fuel tanks.
For Example let's just say the below are the file names for the weapons:
20mm = M61.JT
AIM-9J = AIM9J.JT
AIM-7M = AIM7.JT
350 gft = F350.GAS
Now the tag for hardpoints consists of four parts: the hardpoint word, the number of the hardpoint, weapon quanitity and filename for the weapon. **Remember, the first hardpoint on any aircraft is #0 NOT #1**
So here is the tag without
anything added to it:
hardpoint N Q JTName
hardpoint is always required
N stands for the hardpoint #
Q stands for the quantity
JTName stands for the weapon file name
You must enter one line (like above) for each hardpoint you want to edit. So if you want to change 6 hardpoints, you need to enter six of the above. You need to enter the lines after the TYPE line and before the period at the ends of the entry (yellow highlights.) They can go virtually anywhere in this space though I like to place them after all data, at the bottom, just before the period. Below is the completed entry with the changed parameters.
obj
type F15.PT
pos 498375 10000 1207106
angle 0 0 0
nationality3 0
flags $4017
speed 940
alias -77
skill 3
react $c000 $3fff $0
searchDist 0
wing 2 0
wng 1 1 2048 0
hardpoint 3 512 M61.JT
This
is the internal gun
hardpoint 4 4 AIM7.JT
Fuselage
hardpoints
hardpoint 5 4 AIM9J.JT
Wing-on-wing
for AIM-9s
hardpoint 6 2 F350.GAS
Wing
pylons
hardpoint 7 1 F350.GAS
Centerline
pylon
.
Now you are done but wait, there is one more thing. Let's say you want to change the amount of internal fuel the aircraft has. That's much easier. You'd simply insert the below tag (using the same parameters are the hardpoint tag.)
fuel PerNum
The fuel is the set variable that always must be there and PerNum is the variable that is to be changed. Here's how it'd look in the F-15C entry if you wanted to give the aircraft 78% of its internal fuel. **Note this tag uses percentage!**
obj
type F15.PT
pos 498375 10000 1207106
angle 0 0 0
nationality3 0
flags $4017
speed 940
alias -77
skill 3
react $c000 $3fff $0
searchDist 0
wing 2 0
wng 1 1 2048 0
fuel 78
.
Using the name tag as discussed earlier, you can also name your F-15C. So let's say you wanted to have this F-15C carry 512 20mm rounds, 4 AIM-9J's, 4 AIM-7M's, 3 350 gallon fuel tanks, have an internal fuel level of 78% and wanted to name it "Charlie 666." It'd look like the below.
obj
type F15.PT
pos 498375 10000 1207106
angle 0 0 0
nationality3 0
flags $4017
speed 940
alias -77
name Charlie 666
skill 3
react $c000 $3fff $0
searchDist 0
wing 2 0
wng 1 1 2048 0
hardpoint 3 512 M61.JT
hardpoint 4 4 AIM7.JT
hardpoint 5 4 AIM9J.JT
hardpoint 6 2 F350.GAS
hardpoint 7 1 F350.GAS
fuel 78
.
There you go, good killing but I must say this one thing. If you are losing ECM and fuel tanks in your custom loadouts then you cannot have select loadout screen checked in the PRO MISSION CREATOR. You're customization will be in the loadout screen (minus the fuel tanks.) So basically you'd just be canceling yourself out which would be a waste of time.
Centurian