This tutorial on Changing starting ship in multiplayer should help you out. It covers what makes a legal ship for the game, and one that doesn't cause problems with the player's account.

Thank You.

But i still got a questions about letting peopel choose. I want to design the server so that it would represent only two clans the sabre and titan clan. I could very well figure out how to change the starter ship and the money, guns, etc. from the many torurials, but how do i let the players choose which side they will join, without having to actually mod every base and planet to sell only the sabre or titan. Is there some way to pop up a screen when new players get in that makes them choose a side and then give them a sabre or titan as a starter? and i wanna cut down the number of systems to a handfull so people dont spend days trying to find others. How is all this possible and will it crash my server? oh and btw, what proggie do i need in order to mod the mpnewcharacter.fl file? appreciate your response.

-=B/G=-

Only way I know of is setting the mod right before they log in. Use your standard starting mod if any. When someone logs in and asks you to make them a sabre or titan, you set the mod up, then have the player log back in with a new character.

The nice thing about edits to mpnewcharacter.fl is you don't have to restart the server, or even the game if you play it from the same computer. Make the change for the player, let them get the ship, then remove the mod. Yes it's time consuming, and you have to do all the work, but unless there's a utility that can do what you want, you'll have to swap out ship changes to mpnewcharacter.fl. Besides which, every person logging in would require the utility, and it may give them freedom to create any ship they want to. Would you really want a bunch of titan ships with cloaks? In the long run, it's best to make the edits yourself. pain to do it sometimes, but only if you got lots of players wanting their clan ships.

The other option is to use a program like IONCROSS to directly edit player's accounts. Of course this only works when the player isn't logged in, but it'll let you give them the ship they want. You may have trouble with the lights and contrails, as these are separate. Those red docking lights you see when you're entering a space station? they may not be there when you switch ships, and haven't bothered to memorize the lights that each ship has.

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There is no knowledge that is not power.

The Freeworlds MOD (I think it was the Freeworlds; I only played it once) did something similar to this (but with Star Wars factions and ships).

You start off without a ship and have to bribe a faction into letting you buy one of their ships. With a little thought I am sure you can see where this will do exactly what you want. Just remove all the Marketgood lines from your market_ships.ini file except for your admin base and your starting base. The player has to choose between one of the two ships to get off the base and you have no more for sale any ware else. If you set up the factions right then if you bribe one your hostile to the other.

Well - the starting ship is controled by the server mod only. For mpnewcharacter, thats serverside and so no one will need any mod.
So, you could just set alternate weeks to 'recruit' for different clans. Only trouble is existing players wanting to create new characters then...

However, if theres other stuff in the mod, meaning the people would have to download it, then you could just make two mods - one that starts you in one clan, the other that starts you with the other.

Thanks guys,
You've opened a lot of insight on this, what i prolly will end up doing is to get rid of all the market lines from market_ships.ini (thank you {GrimAxe}Achilles) and if i set it up so that the outcast and corsairs factions are there then i wont have to create new factions. I dont want to make a mod for downloading, this will just discourage firstimers and people who dont want to dl stuff. Although Lethal Dosage's idea is very well thought out. all in all i should have things on smooth sailing when summer time arrives. (darn english). So thanks again. Before i leave, what is the proggie to translate the mpnewcharacter.fl file. Would BiniQDU work?



-=B/G=-

Please be aware that changes to market_ships.ini will require everyone to have the same modded file (mod) as you. If you haven't patched the game, then you can make this mod optional for those wanting the sabre or titan.

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There is no knowledge that is not power.

mpnewcharacter should already be decrypted...If it's not, then install the SDK (1.5beta is the latest, but some people may prefer the 1.3 until the beta status is passed )