Slitherine

I'm sure this has been asked and answered and I did try searching with no luck.

1. What are the permissible unit type - hero bonus combinations?

2. Which file are they maintained in?

3. Which file contains the unit info with the attacked bonus or hero linkage?

4. If I get a sucky hero, (e.g. spotting in a towed Arty unit) can I zero him out and try for another draw later?

You are right since I remember a post where most of your questions are explained/anwsered, can't find it either.

Doing this from memory, so might be wrong on some specifics.

You can have the following bonus for a hero +1, +2 and +3 except range, movement and spotting which is always +1 (you can have multiple heroes though) and the same for initiative with the 1.20 rules/patch.
You need a number of kills to be able to get a hero, the amount of kills depends on the campaign/dlc you play.
For example if you can get a hero between 100 and 300 kills and between 301 and 1000 kills then when you have 100+ kills then after each combat that unit has a chance of getting a hero, if you still don't have a hero when you have for example 299 kills and then in the next action you get 3 kills then you are - I think at least - guaranteed a hero.

When you get a hero the game does a 'roll' of 1-7, 1-4 gives you +1, 5-6 gives you +2 and 7 gives you a +3 hero.

Hero can have the following abilites +attack, +defense, +spotting, +range for artillery and AA only (towed or tracked), +initiative, +movement (might be 1 or 2 more, these are the ones I can remember). Note that in the case that AA (like the 8.8 cm FlaK 36 for example) gets a +1 range but it can also switch roles (to AT in this case) that the +range only applies to when the unit is in the AA role and not in the AT role!

I don't know in which file they are, I guess they are in the executable only, and you cannot edit the type of heroes you get. Once you get a hero and save the game, then the hero is in the save game file.

If you get a 'crap' hero the either reload or disband the unit and hope for a better hero later on. There is no way to remove a hero (might be great if we get the ability to remove a hero in the game for some prestige or something like that).

edit: AA can also have +1 range, ty bebro

ty

Minor addition: range+ heroes do also appear for AA units.

Re files

Afaik the file "heroes.pzdat" has cosmetic stuff like the definition of country specific heroes, their pics, names etc.
The min/maxkill limits for hero appearance are defined in "gamerules.pzdat". As Rood said, the actual hero mechanics itself is probably in the exe. Apart from this modders can set heroes incl. specific bonuses in the editor though for on-map units in a scenario.