This mod removes every instance of Miles showing up on th screen when you research new weapon/armor/tank part etc. in R&D.

Screw Miles. Why did they bring that back of all things...

Research becomes almost instant, the only small downside is you won't get the "negative"-sounding bleep if you're clicking on something you can't research yet. But it's still obvious why you can't research it, so whatever.


Changelog:
2023-12-14: fixed bugged dialog choices with wrong voice lines playing in pre-8 R&D when entering HQ.

Unfortunately, installation of, well, anything for VC4 will require a little bit of effort.

1) Download the mod itself:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BtUXY2Nld0MvKBbSBxA0i0H7-9rBS_Xg/view?usp=sharing

There should be a single file called town0003.lua (md5 B28A172F19CB8A3EB207AD040D22D4D6), a compiled lua 5.2 x64 script.


2) Download CPK editing tools. CPK is an archive format VC4 uses.
2.1) Download CPK Browser from here:
https://videogamemods.com/xenoverse/mods/cpk-browser-view-and-extract-files/

2.2) Alternatively, you may choose to use tools described in this guide:
https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1605279891


Option 1 (CPK Browser) is much more simple and intuitive for non-tech people, so I'll stick with that.

Other tools may or may not work, not all CPKs have the exact same format. I've listed only ones I know can produce a loadable game. If your game crashes immediately before main menu - your tool of choice probably doesn't work correctly with specifics of VC4's version of CPK format.

Find your VC4 installation, usually under "<path-to-steam>\steamapps\common\VC4" or wherever you have it in your library.

In there, find and make a backup of ~22.1 GB file named BASE.CPK.

1) Open CPK Browser, click Open CPK and navigate to your original BASE.CPK in game folder.
It will take a few seconds to open, don't panic, just wait a bit.


2) Double click on BASE in the left panel. Wait even more, even if it says "not responding". A list of files will open on the right.



3) Go to Search bar, type in "town0003.lua" and click Search (enter won't work, actually click it).



4) Now in context menu select "Mark For Replace" and select the replacement script you downloaded in step 0. It should result in a small message box saying "file marked for replace successfully".



5) Now select File->Save (rebuild CPK). This process will take a few minutes, again just let it work. If everything goes well, CPK Browser will give you a message box that it saved and close automatically.




6) You're done, fire up the game, go to R&D and enjoy lightning fast upgrade research.

If you're interested in messing with the script yourself (maybe you really want to try and get the "can't research" sound back, I dunno), you'll need:
1) luadec: https://github.com/viruscamp/luadec - specifically, you'll have to build x64 decompiler for lua 5.2

2) luac: https://www.lua.org/versions.html#5.2 - to compile the script back. Again, get the same version - x64 lua 5.2 binary.

Other than that - enjoy Miles-less VC4. I sure do.