I thought I remembered a while back someone posting about having scripted a SIDEKICK attribute that worked sorta like NEMESIS except the character that randomly showed up would be on your side instead of an enemy.

Did that actually happen, or was it just someone talking about the possibility?

Any reason you couldn't just give your hero the NEMESIS attribute but make the randomly appearing character a GAME_OBJ_POLICE with friendly AI (like cop or order_neutral)?

i think most people use PRIVATE ARMY to simulate sidekicks, then just change the cops into a single ally (cap/bucky etc.). that'd do the same thing you're proposing. Unless you're looking for a sidekick attribute that gives benefits to the duo while they are together (altho teamplayer and symbiosis does that too...)

I know that the script for Sidekick exists, I saw it while messing around with something in FFX3....

One of the things I was looking for was the random element in Nemesis.  Your sidekick has a chance of showing up, but isn't just there automatically every time.

There are strings for a Sidekick attribute in FFX for compatibility with Taskmaster X's hero files, but it's just a rename of Private Army, I believe.

If you use Private Army, don't you risk ending up with multiple sidekicks?  An army of Buckys is just too ghastly to ponder....

nah private army has a limit on the cost of your private army. if you make a hero file that is close to the limit of the cost then you only get one sidekick.

The Sidekick attrib is from an idea I got from JKCarrier. It's just a dummy Attribute meant to increase the cost of the character so the Private Army will only spawn one instance of that character.

I believe the sidekick attribute was my idea, although Taskmaster's handling of it is more or less the same  approach. My Sidekick Attribute is a 5000 cost attribute that doesn't give the sidekick character anything except the high cost. The Senior Hero then just uses Private Army and it's configured to use the Sidekick character with the high cost preventing multiple instances of the character.

I have Crimson Avenger configured to automatically summon Wing and it works great. Even if I just turn on the AI and watch and play an EZscript scenario. I also set up a Captain America and Bucky the same way.

OK, since the version discussed here is much simpler than the one I had in mind, let's call this an official request for FFX 3.3. Hopefully, it won't take as long as 3.2. :)

And, we could have the PRIVATE ARMY code check for a SIDEKICK attribute and only spawn one of that character, skirting the need to try and balance the CP costs. E.g., SIDEKICK could cost 0 CP and PA would still just spawn one of a character with it. That way, you know what Bucky really costs and you could even play him (without the senior partner) in the RR and use him in missions and RR sessions with random spawns without his artificially high cost messing anything up.

Which would be a sweeter way to handle it.

Hmmm. Not bad, but this means you need two attributes: Private Army for your main hero, and Sidekick for the err, sidekick. It would be extremely simple to implement, true enough, but the alternative (a PA variant where only one soldier is created and his probability of actually appearing is based on his character cost) doesn't sound too hard either (PA + some Upgradable code).

Quote from: Renegade on February 21, 2007, 03:07:35 PM
I believe the sidekick attribute was my idea, although Taskmaster's handling of it is more or less the same  approach. My Sidekick Attribute is a 5000 cost attribute that doesn't give the sidekick character anything except the high cost. The Senior Hero then just uses Private Army and it's configured to use the Sidekick character with the high cost preventing multiple instances of the character.

No disrespect meant, Ren. While you were the first to mention it, the first time I saw it mentioned was by JKCarrier in another thread which I had made a link to in my FFvTTR Hero File Pack (although that link is in limbo at the moment).

Quote from: TaskMasterX on February 22, 2007, 04:11:19 AM
While you were the first to mention it, the first time I saw it mentioned was by JKCarrier in another thread which I had made a link to in my FFvTTR Hero File Pack (although that link is in limbo at the moment).

I think I first heard the idea from Dr. Mike, although he might've gotten it from Ren (or they may have both come up with it independently). In any event, it's a clever way around the limitations of Private Army, although an actual coded attribute would be very cool.