Faction slot reserved for scripts?

[Dominick]

Hi everyone,

During the long years of my reading about M2TW modding, I've read that some mods have used a seperate faction slot for scripting purposes, however, that of course uses a faction slot out of a limited number of 31 (including rebels). My question here would be: what are all the benefits of having a faction slot reserved for scripts, or rather, what does a reserved script faction slot enable?

If you have some links to previous threads, that would also be much appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time and I'm looking forward to your replies!

All the best,
Dominik

[Withwnar]

This is one: Unique Names (and avoiding labels)

[Dominick]

This is one: Unique Names (and avoiding labels)

Thank you! It's much appreciated.

[Callistonian]

The primary use of a dedicated scripts faction is the unique naming method Withwnar developed and linked you to. That is a very powerful technique that makes a lot of scripts possible.

You can also exploit the otherwise unused faction banner of the scripts faction using the set_faction_banner command. This can be useful for a kingdom unification or conversion script. You may need to set the scripts faction to undiscovered for this to work correctly (so they don't show up in the rankings scroll and etc.) using the set_faction_undiscovered command.

[bitterhowl]

Marian Reforms implementation in M2TW needs such a dummy faction too.

[Lusitanio]

You can also use it to spawn fleets, like pirates. With the slave faction we cannot spawn fleets so they could act as pirates. Of course, pirate fleets still appear in the game from time to time but it's something that we cannot control or modify.

[Jadli]

Well, you can modify pirates a lot via "pirate_spawn_value". Its dividing the "chance" value in descr_rebel_factions (where you camn also set what ships they use), so the smaler number, the more of them there is, while with the highest value (i believe its 999) there are pretty much none.

[Callistonian]

The Marian Reforms does not require a dummy faction - that was just my suggestion for automating the reforms with a script.

[bitterhowl]

But for scripted reforms it requires