[Zarax]

Hello,

I was trying to mod the Mentu in ships.tbl to have its firepower closer to the Aelous according to its turret layout, however it seems there's something funny going on with it.
I attached two images, one representing the tables in FRED 24.2 and one the actual weapons displayed in the first turret, please note that every single turret seems to have the same issue.

No other ships in my table files are having the same issues, also including the ships.tbl file.

Do you have any idea of what could be causing the issue?

Thank you!

[Zarax]

Ok, after some digging this might be related to virtual POFs.
Guess modding FS2 got a little more complicated in the last decade...

[mjn.mixael]

What's the issue exactly?

FSU does not currently use any virtual POFs.

[Zarax]

For certain Shivan and Vasudan turrets the table files are overridden by something else.

Basically certain turrets become xxx -> vasudan turret or xxx -> shivan flak even when there is a ships.tbl (in the FSU data/tables folder) specifying something else.
It doesn't seem like species.tbl and the only place in the wiki I found where that kind of substitution happens is virtual POFs.

[mjn.mixael]

FSU uses modular tbms almost exclusively and relies on the retail tbls for most data that's not required for visual upgrades. I don't discount that FSU includes some default turret weapon settings somewhere. You'd have to check the -shp.tbms and override those.

[Zarax]

Thank you, I will check that out.
BTW, if I rename something on ships.tbl using the same pof I get the vanilla model instead of the FSU one, is that related to ships.tbm as well?

[Goober5000]

Scroll ran into this issue too.  We changed the default turret loadout on a few ships, but the MediaVPs overrode them, so we had to override them again.  FSU's original intention was to change the various Terran Turrets to Vasudan Turrets for Vasudan ship classes, but this can have unexpected side effects.

I developed a tool for Scroll to print out the weapons assigned to turrets, among other information.  This helped troubleshoot whether the loaded game data differed from what the mod expected.  If there's interest, I can add this as an FSO feature, similar to -weaponspew and other debug logging tools.

[Zarax]

It would be useful indeed but imho this might be classified as a bug.
IIRC a tbl file in the data folder should always override the same file packed contents, shouldn't it?

Unless of course the logic changed with knossos and the old ways aren't valid anymore...

[Goober5000]

The table loading logic hasn't changed, but it can be confusing.  If files have the same name, the file in the data folder will override the file in the .vp.  But modular tables in every dependency, including the MediaVPs, will still be applied.

[Zarax]

Now, finding the right modular table within the various VPs will be fun...
Still, HLP is the most successful game preservation project overall and definitely in the top 3 in terms of source code improvements.