Why does changing namelists alter the checksum!?

[WJLIII3]

Jeez you guys, I'm just tired of the United Nations naming entire ship classes after their own exploited member states, is that too much to ask? I can't even remove a name without becoming ineligible for achievements?

Why?

For reference, for me personally, this means I reroll roughly 50% of my starts because my colony ships are named after a victim of colonization, which is absolute nonsense. And also, invariably, transport ships are named after battles wherein one UN member state invaded another, at great cost of human lives. These are not reasonable names!

This is the only reason I cared when they got rid of civilian design, and it's absolutely infuriating, and the fact that I can't even adjust it is doubly so.

 

[Askorti]

Make a custom empire with different names then?

 

[WJLIII3]

But editing namelists breaks achievements, re: the thread's title.

 

[Miesha]

He didn't mean change the namelist. He meant make a custom empire (aka clone the UNE empire so you can make modifications to it) and give them a different namelist from the available options in-game. No editing of existing namelists required, you just pick one of the 50 others that exist.

 

[Kain2K]

I'm not playing Ironman, and I don't care about achievments, but I also think that this is stupid. I can understand that events, decisions, traits and so on change the checksum. But things like graphics, namelists or languagefiles, in short everything that can't ever be used for cheating shouldn't change it.

 

[Badesumofu]

It is silly if editing a namelist changes the checksum. IDK, maybe there's some reason it's hard to set it up so it doesn't. But there is a very easy solution to the OP's problem - just use a different namelist, there are dozens of them.

 

[HandicapdHippo]

For reference, for me personally, this means I reroll roughly 50% of my starts because my colony ships are named after a victim of colonization, which is absolute nonsense

Lol

And also, invariably, transport ships are named after battles wherein one UN member state invaded another, at great cost of human lives. These are not reasonable names!

So basically all of human history is off limits then?

 

[DC E1G]

It's a shame OP is making his point so poorly, because I'd love to be able to import name lists for use during multiplayer or ironman games.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

Yeah, having purely graphical or flavour text mods being achievements incompatible is somewhat annoying. I believe it has already been posted to suggestions forums, hasn't it?

 

[Jazzbanana]

It's a shame OP is making his point so poorly [...]

Right? This bugs me off so much too.

"Hey forums, I say this thing should change."
"Hey, sounds grea-"
"Because it's utter shit as of now. PDX forces me to reroll runs, and this is unacceptable because of *insert ideological stance*. I'm crazy mad, and the game is getting it absolutely wrong."
*Groan*

 

[Attitude Adjuster]

For reference, for me personally, this means I reroll roughly 50% of my starts because my colony ships are named after a victim of colonization, which is absolute nonsense. And also, invariably, transport ships are named after battles wherein one UN member state invaded another, at great cost of human lives. These are not reasonable names!.

I think we should also change a lot of the ship designs and building designs to be less phalocentric.

 

[The Boz]

I have a whole roster of races that I use in multiplayer games I host, and learning I couldn't give them my glorious namelists made me very, very sad.

 

[Sigma 582]

It is silly if editing a namelist changes the checksum. IDK, maybe there's some reason it's hard to set it up so it doesn't.

In MP game it makes sense that all players have the same namelists, otherwise using names from missing lists can cause various oddities. And the most straightforward way to ensure that is to account for namelists when calculating one's checksum.

However, I still can't justify this textual fluff disabling achievements for those who want them. It would make sense to separate MP-related checksum and achievements-related checksum with the latter being more forgiving about non-mechanical changes.

 

[AlanC9]

It's not like there's any design intent here other than making the checksum coder's day a little easier.

 

[The Boz]

In MP game it makes sense that all players have the same namelists, otherwise using names from missing lists can cause various oddities. And the most straightforward way to ensure that is to account for namelists when calculating one's checksum.

However, I still can't justify this textual fluff disabling achievements for those who want them. It would make sense to separate MP-related checksum and achievements-related checksum with the latter being more forgiving about non-mechanical changes.

No. It can't cause oddities. Not unless the person coding the naming algorithms was drunk.
When you encounter a hostile fleet, your game on your system doesn't access the fleet's namelist to pick out a name for the fleet.

 

[wundte]

It's a shame OP is making his point so poorly, because I'd love to be able to import name lists for use during multiplayer or ironman games.

Yeah, he is making some valid gameplay points but making it sound like he is deep into the politics.

 

[Ashantai]

The reason why this happens is quite clear; the checksum is the result of all of the data files, and the namelists are just another data file.

@WJLIII3 I'd suggest you create a suggestion thread saying name lists should be excluded. Leave out the political agenda though, it just muddies the waters.

 

[WJLIII3]

Its not the politics that bother me, it's the immersion. Yorktown is remembered much less fondly on this side of the pond, why would the UN pointlessly agitate America by honoring it? Same with Normandy, Bellau Wood, etc. It's unrealistic. The organization (ostensibly) fosters unity between nations in spite of their bloody history, they shouldn't be recalling its glories.

 

[FlyingPhoenix]

Didn't America win Yorktown?

Nevertheless, I agree. Non-gameplay elements should not affect the checksum

 

[Andrzej I]

Its not the politics that bother me, it's the immersion. Yorktown is remembered much less fondly on this side of the pond, why would the UN pointlessly agitate America by honoring it? Same with Normandy, Bellau Wood, etc. It's unrealistic. The organization (ostensibly) fosters unity between nations in spite of their bloody history, they shouldn't be recalling its glories.

I'm pretty sure it's safe to say most Germans are fine that they lost Normandy and (probably also) Belleau Woods. Perhaps consider also that the UN wouldn't be promoting these as glories of nation vs. nation, but perhaps ideology against ideology. In each of the cases of the battles, isn't it a (more) democratic people against a (more) authoritarian one? And the UN's set does include being a "beacon of liberty", and the flavor text for them points out this cherishing of individual freedoms.