Personally, I've never been sure why ships in a vacuum leave a contrail in this game. The only way I can not be annoyed by them at all is for me to lie to myself and force myself to believe that they are possibly the side effect of bussard scoops/collectors at the wingtips. :p

Though it would be cool to change their color. ^_^

I am awesomer than you.

No, no!
They're "manouvering thrusters" *wink*
Because, you know, you only need to, umm...uhh...huh. Right. You only need to be able to manouver when moving quickly!
Yeah, that's it...

Bah! :p

Can't be true, there's only one contrail on the Bounty Hunter ships. :p HAS to be a bussard scoop.

i always assumed they were the exhausts from the cockpit air filter removing the smoke caused by the pilots "relaxation aid".

......we had one once but the end fell off

Heeheeheeheeheehee ^_^

So is there a way to change the contrail color? It'd be neat if you could make it match your engine exhaust. Green for snail- er.. Rhienland fighters, red for Anubis, and little flamey things for the Kusari ^_^

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hadrian,
the relevant line of code in the goods.ini entry for your ship package is;

addon = contrail01, HpContrail01, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail02, 1

entering anything other than "contrail01" causes the game to crash as soon as you enter the ship dealers. changing the last number makes no difference to the graphics as far as i can see .

the only files i can find so far that mention contrail are in the fx folder and are called something like "gr_contrail.ale" and "li_contrail.ale"

havent a clue as to the possible usages of the 2 files above but im afraid to say i think we'd have to learn to create our own graphics if they dont do anything we want.
sorry i couldnt be of any more use

dr del



" AND the horse you rode in on pal!!!!!"

Ok, I found the equipment reference to contrail01. It's found in select_equip.ini

[AttachedFX
nickname = contrail01
particles = li_contrail
use_throttle = true

It'd be my guess that you could create additional contrails here, referencing different particles. I'm not exactly sure how'd that work, since I believe the only other particle reference I've seen is for the smoke on a thruster. I know there are some missels that have different coloured smoke (green, specifically). If anyone can figure out how to create new particle's, or knows already...

yup just managed to add contrail02 using the gf_contrail01.ale

imagine my deep and lasting sense of joy when i discovered it looks the bl**dy same!

i think your right and were going to have to look at the particle side of things.

just managed to follow a pirate ship up close (must have freaked him out a bit as i wasent firing at the time and noticed his (and everyone elses) contrail looked like mine anyway - did you mean the engine trails themselves or the plumes that come from the end of your wings etc?


dr del


"tuppence a bucket ...well stamped down!"

The unexplainable vapor trails that come from your wingtips.

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hi,
their not that unexplainable - friction with your hull ionizes small particles in space and the magnetic fiels generated by your engines/hull funnel them to natural flare points like the tips of your wings etc.

oh come on, at least its better than my doobbie smoke explanation of a few posts ago . its amazing what you think about after a bottle of jack daniels - 'scuse me while i lock my door in case the mind police are in the neighbourhood.

dr del

"move along,move along ,no evil mind control software here ,nothing to see at all honest , now move along before you have a nasty accident"

The space between stars isn't like the junkyard that surrounds our planet. You aren't going to run into so much that it funnels a constant stream to just your wingtips. Explanations like this don't make sense anyway because your engine isn't going to have such a strong magnetic field that ice crystals are going to be caught by it. Plus, some ships have them on the wingtips, but not their verticals, others like the Bounty Hunter ships only have them on one of hte verticals and not on the wings. It's probably a better explanation that you are seeing the after effect of a small scale bussard ram. Possibly drawing the hydrogen away from ice crystals leaving the oxygen atoms to wick away from the scoops like a vapor trail. Or some junk. :p

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hey,
yup your right - just sobered up, re-read it and thought "what a bunch of crap!" sorry ;-(


dr del

not many people know that the first known reference to laxatives is found in the bible "moses took two tablets and went into the hills" it also says later on that "the lot fell upon ahab" but this is thought to refer to something else.

No worries dude, we're probably all wrong. :p

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I am awesomer than you.

Space Propultion made easy

I'm willing to dig into the "why the hell not" explanation. Why are they there? Why the hell not? They ARE a neat effect.

Anyway, I was digging around through the effect inis today in hopes that perhaps there was a colo(u)r = line somewhere. Failure. I did come across another contrail effect file, though (gf_contrail01). It wasn't fully defined, so I went and made all the entries for it, stuck them on the Starflier and....
It's exactly the same. Dirty bugger.

The .ale files seem to be of UTF type. The UTF editor opens them, but it only lists 2 trees (ALEffectLib & AlchemyNodeLibrary). Each tree opens to 1 node of the same name. The information in the nodes is meaningless to me. *sigh*