While the official modding guide is pretty good, it’s kind of confusing in my opinion. I took some bits from it and combined it with what I’ve learned from inspecting the game files, and I’m in the process of compiling that information in one big modding guide.
I’d love some feedback and suggestions. Perhaps I could create a wiki or something similar to Bohemia Interactive’s wiki, where people can submit their own information about modding the game.
it would be helpful to have a list of all the targets (motorist has motorist, motorist_freq, motorist_income, which equates to happiness of the group, population of the group, and wealth of the group). this would let people know how they can change the game, and what are the limits at a glance. doing so will help people take grander mods as they won’t have to experiment to learn basic lists just to know how to create a mod, and simply focus on bending the game rules to work around limitations or making an atmospheric mod within the game’s limitations.
EDIT:
having a chart that shows what the targets are plus what affects it and what it affects is helpful. in the code this isn’t so obvious (health for example has no input values, but if you check all other things you’ll find: Health inputs= Pollution, Alcoholism, DrugAddiction, DoctorsStrike, Obesity, WorkingWeek, PrivateHealthcare, TobaccoUse, AlcoholConsumption, LegalDrugConsumption, AgricultureSubsidies, FreeEyeTests, FreeSchoolMeals, OrganDonation, OrganicSubsidy, SpeedCameras, StateHealthService, StemCells, WinterFuelSubsidy, WorkSafetyLaw, JunkFoodTax, HealthFoodSubsidies, FoodStamps, FoodStandards). so if you want to change health significantly you probably need to take into account 27 entries, only 3 of which are in the health entry itself.
After thicking about it for a while …
… a list being a highly time consuming task
… and will require maintenance on a regular basis
… which is both not good for the much-appreciated doer
Then, I came to this idea. Please have a look: