Ive owned this game for years (still have the original CD from when it first came out) and occasionally go back to it from time to time. Personally Ive always longed for a "sandbox" mode where i could build my criminal empire free of those pesky mob wars. several times now i have tried to edit the game files for it but never was able to find anything that would let this happen.

ways this could be done

1. edit the game files so that all win conditions are turned off. kill all rival bosses and than play from that point.

2. deactivate the planing AI. so wile other gangs would be on the map, they would never do anything and could safely be ignored.

3. reduce the AI hostility to prevent provoking the automatic 4 sided mob war that always starts around week 14-16. every time i play right about that time the city goes insane with killings and raids on every scrap of territory around that time.

i ether cant find the files that would allow me to modify these values. or i cant figure out a way to open them in a way i can read.

anyone ever had any luck with this? Ive checked forums and other sights for years and aside from modding the Reg Files (they don't affect these kinds of values ... i tried) i haven't had any luck

The data is stored in files called xtx files in the data directory.

The issue is i have no idea how to open these files. Its possible they are encoded with hothouse creations own format.

Without being able to open these files, it will be impossible. Short of some hex editing.

just found this thread on another forum
(cant post links so i took screenshots of the forum included in this post)
(for those who want to see the original forum topic here is the link)
www.neoseeker(dot)com/forums/3269/t2097474-gangsters-organized-crime-modding-xtx-files/
replace the (dot ) with .

it gives some very solid details on how to mod .xtx files.

only problem is, i have no experience whatsoever with C# and therefore have no idea how this process works.

tried to fake it a bit (and failed badly) if anyone out there could perhaps produce a small tutorial on how this is supposed to work i would appreciate it

I figured it out. In a day or so, ill post what i have found along with a tutorial on how to do it.

not sure hot to list this thread as "solved" but it may as well be listed as over with.

Did you figure anything out in the past month? I too have always wanted a sandbox mode.

yes actually.

The method indicated in the above link does in fact work. The indicated program (CSC.exe) is a standard program that most windows operating systems will come with as part of the NET framework

a large number of things can be modified and changed. i have not however found any way to set up a "sandbox" mode (one of the first things i tried)

i did manage to sort of "fake" a sandbox by using the following steps

use the above method to adjust the "Constants.xtx" file to ...
1. reduce police value of 400 (i use 75)
2. reduce FBI value of 100 (i used 25)
3. change the "free of suspicioncy" value so you or AI won't get arrested

after this start a game at random, changing city's until you find one you like.

once you do kill 2 of your opponents as fast as you can (this can very easily be done by week 6 or even sooner)

once that is done, kill every hood the last boss has. (while leaving the last boss alive)
now this can take a while. For me that wound up being a 4 week ordeal with a body count in the hundreds.

After you manage to succeed killing all the enemy hoods the last boss should be alone (and if you adjusted the suspicioncy value he should also remain un arrested. HOWEVER there is some kind of hard coded minimum number of hoods that each gang will have. every turn they always had a least 1 hood to send out. no matter how many i had killed before. this is of course easy to deal with so long as you keep up on it and don't let him recruit at all.

now ... enjoy. enjoy the city (relatively) hassle free.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/25251780/Gangsters+TXT+Replacements+v2.zip

the download above includes all of the xtx files converted into txt format.
you can replace any xtx file out of hand with its txt equivalent and the game will read them just fine.

enjoy

@TrueSilver
Unfortunately there is no "constants.txt".
It would be awesome to fix the automatic full war timer and remove the winning conditions.

sorry about that guys ... my bad
I've changed the link above to a new zip file with an actual Constants file. (designated by the V2 at the end)
it is not an original but rather, early modded version i had archived. Until i get around to making a new copy of the core file, it should be usable for your needs.

Still not sandbox, but another interesting twist can be achieved by playing around with Economics.txt (the unencrypted file kindly provided by TrueSilver)

I've set Gym's and Pool Hall's to 0. So when a new city is generated there will be only the labour exchange and the docks to recruit hoods. This dramatically slows down the growth of rival gangs (and some of yours too).



Changes in Economics.txt
-------------------------------------


...
Gym 10 32 32 32 ...
...
Pool hall 11 32 32 32 ...
...

This part might not be necessary, if Organized Crime has the same bug as A Piece of the Action.

You know how you can click on your business, and see who's running it? And it shows a list of buttons, such as "sack hood" or whatever button recalls the hood who's running the business? Those buttons are still there when you look at the enemy bosses -- they just don't have the graphics in place. In A Piece of the Action you could "recall" all the enemy bosses and instantly take them out of the game. I haven't tried it with Organized Crime yet, but I did see the pop-ups for the invisible buttons, so it might work.

If you ever wanted an easy way to make a two-player game...assuming it works...

as truesilver has posted lowering the police and FBI levels will open the city up to you always remember to keep your aggression levels in the orders area at peace it's truly a shame that this could not have been set for each individual lieutenants group. allowing your gards to be aggressive and you collectors and recruiters to be passive or flee at the site of the enemy.
about modding I only have the constants.txt I found on the net, I've tried to crack the others but don't know how to
to get rid of the running for mayor option increase the number of block needed to 400 or more it is set at 100

as true silver has done in his post I changed the police and FBI to 75 and 25 this allows enough feds to bust illegal businesses but never really do much else. after 16 weeks I've never been raided I have enemies that have been at 230- 260 suspicion that have never been raided using ideal fronts and high stealth hoods in my illegal business'.

I haven't test it yet but I believe the city size can be changed by increasing the blocks.in the city likewise lowering may make the city smaller.

increasing the amount of people in the city would make it harder to spot gangsters roaming around
unfortunately their is no fog of war so finding the enemy hq's is rather easy after a few weeks as a guard will be posted outside the office. another addition that would have been nice is paying off owners to increase the amount of snitches that the game would reveal showing recruiters and extortionist's or thieves, but not patrol's for the most part. not that it matters much
anouther thing that I wish the game could have done was allow each group to set it's own aggression levels keeping everthing at peace all the time just allows the enemy the first shot.

The link is dead, any chance of a repost?

TrueSilver, would you be interested in converting these three Gangsters 2 .xtx file to .txt?
Just curious to see what's in them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ih70ntqoavm7jij/xtxfiles.zip?dl=0