I couldn't find a way to automatically enable an upgrade. In the Factions file I tried to add a new Quest that would enable the Upgrade as a reward for a simple objective, such as building the Headquarters, but the quest wasn't being recognized on Turn 1 or Turn 2.

I assume I would have to enable upgrades the "hard" way, by knowing which units, traits and buildings xml files have the requiredUpgrade as a dependency and removing that dependency from each file, to simulate a particular upgrade that was already researched.

I'm also not able to find a schema for the game's xml files that help guide mod on all the supported xml properties and attributes. Would have been a nice time-savers if the Developers had provided it.

If you want units to have extra traits "to simulate a particular upgrade that was already researched" (in other words: at game start) you just need to add these traits. In this case upgrades are irrelevant.

Otherwise it should be possible to add new traits that unlock as a quest reward using the requiredUpgrade dependancy. You could use Astra Militarum's first quest as an example.

You can make a dummy tier 1 where it only has those upgrades. The AI will be forced to pick them, though that would take a few turns. Alternatively you can just disable the requiredUpgrade condition for whatever traits or actions you want the AI to have.

Ok, thanks for the feedback. I was hoping to unlock particular upgrades or traits for all units for a faction in just one XML file when the game starts, for the player and the AI. But it seems like it would require to have all the affected units' individual xml files modified in the mod beforehand.

For my mod I'm designing an external system would determine what upgrades were available for each faction engaged in a war, to simulate scarcity of equipment that can occur. As the system would determine what upgrades each Faction has available, it would tell the player which mod files to change.

I'll have to see if it's simpler to do the opposite: to change the base mod files so all upgrades are available, and instead have the system instruct the player which upgrades to restrict for both the player's faction and the AI files. The system would also generate the required lines to modify with the correct xml tags already provided, so it's just a copy/paste exercise in the modded files for the players.

One limitation would be the enemy AI faction could not be the same as the player, otherwise the upgrade changes would be the same.

So ultimately you'll need something to flag / unlock the available upgrades as "researched" @ game start. I don't know how to do that, or if it's possible at all.

But you can hide the unavailable upgrades in the tech tree by adding 'visible = 0' in each individual .xml. That still requires a lot of files to be modded though. Note the AI may still be able to research these upgrades (I haven't tested that).

Originally posted by Warempel:

So ultimately you'll need something to flag / unlock the available upgrades as "researched" @ game start. I don't know how to do that, or if it's possible at all.

But you can hide the unavailable upgrades in the tech tree by adding 'visible = 0' in each individual .xml. That still requires a lot of files to be modded though. Note the AI may still be able to research these upgrades (I haven't tested that).

Earlier I tested an Upgrade to have a required "Dummy" item previously researched and then the item was disable for the player in their Research screen. In this case I tested with the Level 1 FragGrenades for the Astra Militarum. I would hope that technique would also prevent the AI from researching a particular upgrade, but to your point, I would have to test further to see.