Tiny Combat Arena – How to Change the Unit Composition

If you’ve played a bit of the game, you’ve probably figured out very quickly that it’s not randomly generated, and that the enemy is at a massive disadvantage with lower skilled AI and longer respawn times than your side. This was intentional from the dev as they just wanted to showcase how the game mode will work.

Guide to Change the Unit Composition

Please note: all credit goes to S-Array 03!

Introduction

Thankfully the missions files can be opened and edited to change the amount and type of enemies, their skill level and how often they respawn or even their behavior. Of course you can also tweak these things for your own side. This helps make a more challenging

Warning! If you modify your files and encounter bugs, please verify that the bugs are not caused by your modifications before wasting the dev’s time with bug reports that have nothing to do with the game code.

Where to Find What You Need

There are 2 places we need to go:

  • First, the mission file is located under:

[installation path]\TinyCombatArena\Arena_Data\StreamingAssets\Data\Arenas\Island.json

  • The other useful files are the faction files, these tell you what kind of vehicles are in the game and what their name is so you can add them to the mission. They are located under:

[installation path]\TinyCombatArena\Arena_Data\StreamingAssets\Data\Factions

Overview of the Files

Island.json

Before modifying this file, you should copy a backup of it somewhere in case you mess things up but don’t know how to fix it. Just don’t store that backup in the same folder as the original as it will prevent your game from loading the arena demo

The part that interests us starts at “Homebase”: “Nazrin”. Everything above that can be ignored for the purpose of this guide.

Under each base you will find its name, the owning faction at the begining of the mission. You can change that if you want to have more bases in control of you or your enemy at the start.

“RespawnTimer” governs how long until the next batch of unit spawns at that base. One batch will spawn right at the begining, after that, new formations are spawned until the max amount for that unit is reached, or to replaced destroyed formations. This amount is in seconds.

The “DefensiveFlights” section is where you will be able to modify the amount of planes spawning above a base, note that by default it is only present on the two “Airfield” bases.Right under that you have a number of attributes for your flight:

  • Faction is self explanatory
  • Aircraft is where you tell the game which type of aircraft to spawn (see the faction files)
  • Count is the amount of planes of that type that will spawn in the flight
  • I would recommend not messing with the loadouts, AIs can’t shoot missiles yet anyway
  • Skill is self explanatory, you can input Rookie, Average, Veteran, or Ace. Note that Rookies will never use flares.
  • I would also recommend not messing with the mission, planes can’t attack hround targets as of yet so there’s probably not much to tweak at this point.

Unfortunately the dev said that in the current state of things, you can’t make planes respawn, but you can absolutely add more flights.

The “Formations” section is where you can tell the game what ground units to spawn. you can see that some bases have formations from both the US and the USSR, the game will only spawn formations for that faction that currently controls the base so this is not an issue.

  • Much like aircrafts you have a faction setting.
  • Type works like the aircraft setting except you put the ground unit’s name (see the faction files)
  • Role dictates the behavior of the formation. Hunt will make them seek and destroy other formations. Capture will make them go to the nearest enemy base to capture it
  • Max dictates how many of that type of unit can be alive at the same time from that base. Having a value above 1 will not spawn multiple units at once. It will spawn formations one by one until the cap is reached. The cap is independent for each base and each individual formation type.

If you add more formations, remember the coma at the end of the line except for the last line for that base, if you forget the comas, the game will not load the arena demo.

Faction Files

In these files you will find a list of formations available for the faction:

  • Name is the most important one, this is what you want to use in the mission files if you want that unit to spawn.
  • Shortname is the name of the unit on your hud while in the mission.
  • Groups dictates the composition of the formation, I would advise not modifying it but you could theoretically add more variation within the formation such as an SPAA or more tanks or whatever you fancy.

Concrete Example

Say you want to add enemy anti air to your mission. What you would do is go to Island.json, scroll all the way down to Toramaru, and under formations, you would add the following (with a coma at the end if there are more formations under it:

  • {“Name”: “”, “Faction”: “USSR”, “Type”: “Shilka”, “Role”: “Capture”, “Max”: 1}

This Shilka formation will behave like the BTRs and attempt to capture the nearest enemy base. Because Max is set to 1, the next formation will not spawn until the first one is destroyed.

Personal Recommendations

  • Replacing a fair amount of the BTR formation by Shilka formations. If you look at the faction file for the USSR you will notice the shilka formation actually only had 2 shilkas in it, the rest of the vehicles are BTRs. So replacing a lot of the actual BTR formation won’t change much on the ground, but you will have more of a challenge in the air having to evade the ground fire.
  • I would also recommend adding one or two SAM formations but according to the trello, SAMs aren’t functional yet
  • Adjusting the max amount of formations for tank units to 2 or 3 to have a more target rich environment, but leaving it on 1 for units that capture bases.
  • I have T-80s spawning at the base right after the enemy homebase while most of the tanks on the US side remain M60s. But I also have a unit of abrams spawning from my homebase on a long respawn timer. Both the T-80s and the Abrams are set to Max 1 formation each so that most of the tanks on the battlefield remains M60s and T-62s.
  • Shorten the respawn timer on the enemy bases and put a longer timer on yours to have more of a challenge.
  • If you put in a lot of enemy planes, you probably want to add a friendly SPAA formation, I have mine spawn with the Abrams at homebase on the long respawn timer but just like the Shilkas, you could replace a fair amount of the mechanized units by them if you want.

Have fun exploring the files

I only covered the settings most relevant to the topic of this guide but there’s plenty of stuff to mess with and tweak your experience. Again though, don’t report bugs that occur while you’re running a modified version of the game. TCA is worked on by a single dev so let’s not waste their time with useless bug reports.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8075 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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