I am releasing the weapon spreadsheet for anyone who wants to scrutinize/analyze the data. I think this will help establish a baseline for communication, as well as avoid unnecessary duplicated work. There’s information in there about projectile damage, volley damage, firing intervals, time-to-overheat, DPS, and destruction-until-overheat.
Starting with v.51, weapon data can now be overridden by an external Excel file. This capability is aimed at advanced players who want to experiment with different weapon characteristics in a sandbox environment. It is not meant for casual users. I will provide limited support in cases there are problems, but only to people who seem to know what they’re doing.
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Place the Excel file in your
C:\ProgramData\InterAction\CIU\<version>
folder. Each Excel file is tagged with the version it corresponds to, and they’re generally not compatible between versions. -
The file must be in
.xls
format (sorry, no.xlsx
). If you use some other format for editing, you’ll need to convert it. -
If the file is still open in Excel, the game won’t be able to read it. Close Excel before running the game.
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Changes to the file while the game is running will not take effect until the next run.
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The server will not accept any missions flown while using an external
.xls
– you’ll be kicked out at the end of the mission (even if you cancel it).
When it comes to actual editing of the file:
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Edit carefully. Entering text, 0 or an out-of-range value will most likely crash the game.
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Do not rename the worksheets.
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Charts embedded in the sheets will not work. You’ll need move all charts to separate sheets, and keep them at the end, after the data sheets.
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Grayed-out text in a cell means that the cell is ignored by the game.
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Only these sheets matter to the game:
- Bullets: This is where you enter damage-per-projectile (use the Volley sheet for continuously-firing weapons).
- FiringInterval: This is where you set firing rates (grayed-out lines means that the weapon has a constant firing rate, which you can set in the far right cell)
- OverheatTime: This is where you set time-until-overheat (again, grayed-out lines means that time is constant, only edit the far right cell)
- Volley: This sheet functions similarly to Bullets, but for continuously-firing weapons (Lightning/Plasma/Positron) and Absolver.
The Excel file can be found here: http://universe.chickeninvaders.com/files/CIU-WeaponData-v131.override.xls