Sat Mar 08, 2003 1:45 am
[LEARNING! Questions regarding ship stats, speed, etc.
Hello all! I am just now getting my feet wet with modding so please bear with me. 
I figured I would start small and just mess with ships first. This seems like a common starting point and it is also something that appears to be easy to test. Here are my questions:
FIRST) The download section of the INI decompress tool says the game can use uncompressed .ini files. Does this mean you do the following?
Step 1: Backup the .ini file you are about to work with.
Step 2: Decompress the .ini file you want to change.
Step 3: Make any changes to the file you are planning to change.
Step 4: Rename the Whatever.ini.txt file to Whatever.ini
Step 5: Put the file in the place where the original .ini file was.
Step 6: Load the game as normal.
Is that the process?
SECOND) I started looking through data/ships/shiparch.ini and I have a few questions.
1) How do you tell which ship is which? It seems relatively difficult to tell.
2) Where are the ship speeds located? I would like to experiment with some higher cruise engine speeds (and perhaps higher afterburner speeds) for certain ships (especially the lighter ones).
3) There seems to be a lot of stuff that relates to turn radius like:
steering_torque = 43000.000000, 43000.000000, 230000.000000
angular_drag = 41000.000000, 41000.000000, 141000.000000
rotation_inertia = 8400.000000, 8400.000000, 8400.000000
Are those the data types that determine how maneuverable the ship is?
If so, what do you change to increase maneuverability and/or improve turn radius. If not, where/what do you change, and how?
4) Where is the information for what the optimal/max level guns/shields/etc it can install, and what level for each slot?
To give you an idea of what I am trying to do here, I am hoping to create a few experimental ships like the following:
5) How do you tweak WHERE they can be bought and the price they can be bought for? (If I am going to test this, I need to be able to get the ship early on. If I have to play for 10 hours to afford my new test ship, this ain't gonna work so well. Heh.)
A) A very fast, very maneuverable ship with low level guns
B.) A very fast, normal maueverability ship with excellent guns and small cargo hold (this would be a "contraband" ship... you can get in and out of places fast, fight well, but you cannot carry a lot of cargo... thus, what you carry must be very valuable... drugs, perishables, etc).
C) Some other weird ships that are not like the stats of the existing
Thanks!
Edited by - ThresholdRPG on 08-03-2003 01:48:45
I figured I would start small and just mess with ships first. This seems like a common starting point and it is also something that appears to be easy to test. Here are my questions:
FIRST) The download section of the INI decompress tool says the game can use uncompressed .ini files. Does this mean you do the following?
Step 1: Backup the .ini file you are about to work with.
Step 2: Decompress the .ini file you want to change.
Step 3: Make any changes to the file you are planning to change.
Step 4: Rename the Whatever.ini.txt file to Whatever.ini
Step 5: Put the file in the place where the original .ini file was.
Step 6: Load the game as normal.
Is that the process?
SECOND) I started looking through data/ships/shiparch.ini and I have a few questions.
1) How do you tell which ship is which? It seems relatively difficult to tell.
2) Where are the ship speeds located? I would like to experiment with some higher cruise engine speeds (and perhaps higher afterburner speeds) for certain ships (especially the lighter ones).
3) There seems to be a lot of stuff that relates to turn radius like:
steering_torque = 43000.000000, 43000.000000, 230000.000000
angular_drag = 41000.000000, 41000.000000, 141000.000000
rotation_inertia = 8400.000000, 8400.000000, 8400.000000
Are those the data types that determine how maneuverable the ship is?
If so, what do you change to increase maneuverability and/or improve turn radius. If not, where/what do you change, and how?
4) Where is the information for what the optimal/max level guns/shields/etc it can install, and what level for each slot?
To give you an idea of what I am trying to do here, I am hoping to create a few experimental ships like the following:
5) How do you tweak WHERE they can be bought and the price they can be bought for? (If I am going to test this, I need to be able to get the ship early on. If I have to play for 10 hours to afford my new test ship, this ain't gonna work so well. Heh.)
A) A very fast, very maneuverable ship with low level guns
B.) A very fast, normal maueverability ship with excellent guns and small cargo hold (this would be a "contraband" ship... you can get in and out of places fast, fight well, but you cannot carry a lot of cargo... thus, what you carry must be very valuable... drugs, perishables, etc).
C) Some other weird ships that are not like the stats of the existing
Thanks!
Edited by - ThresholdRPG on 08-03-2003 01:48:45