New ship styles for AIs

from GalCiv2 Forums

This is sort of a strange question, so bear with me.

In DL, which is the only GalCiv game I have right now, there are six ship styles (Terran, Drengin, Torian, Altarian, Yor, and Dread Lords). If I wanted to mod the Drengin to use the Altarian ship style, I would change:

<ShipStyle>3</ShipStyle>

to

<ShipStyle>4</ShipStyle>

in the Drengin race code.

However, if I create a new ship style, or download one from the Internet, how would I go about getting the AIs to use it, particularly with mods? Most of the downloads, at least, say things like "makes the ____ ships available as a player ship style". I like creating simple conversion mods, and it would be nice to have more then just the default ships available for them.

As a hypothetical example of what I'm asking about, there's quite a few Babylon 5 ships in the Library here. If I were to download them, and create a Babylon 5 mod with them, how would I do it?

modding
5,850 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

When I add a ship style for myself I use the S99 prefix. 99 might be for custom races, or it might make it available to all races. I'm not sure on that point. But what if you specified <ShipStyle>99</ShipStyle> in the race code? Would that work?

(you would also have to make sure your custom ships had the S99 prefix)

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Don’t know… I don’t actually have any new ship styles right now. Haven’t bothered to download any and wouldn’t have the first clue how to make one. S99 is the “Generic” ship style… not sure what it does. I’m going to try a quick test mod and see.

BTW, what happens if you give a race the Dread Lords ship style?

Note: Forum bugged out when I tried to post this last night, so I went ahead and tried both. Giving races 99 as their style appears to do nothing. Dread Lords style works but AI ships with it look very weird.

Curtains - Customize Windows with additional styles
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Don’t know… I don’t actually have any new ship styles right now. Haven’t bothered to download any and wouldn’t have the first clue how to make one. S99 is the “Generic” ship style… not sure what it does. I’m going to try a quick test mod and see.

BTW, what happens if you give a race the Dread Lords ship style?

Note: Forum bugged out when I tried to post this last night, so I went ahead and tried both. Giving races 99 as their style appears to do nothing. Dread Lords style works but AI ships with it look very weird.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

you cain't add new shipstyles with DL it doesin't surrport shipstyle only DA and TA do so you'll need to update.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting qrtxian, reply 3

BTW, what happens if you give a race the Dread Lords ship style?
End of qrtxian's quote

Be careful when using that option. The DL's don't possess all hulls. A race playing with their shipstyle won't be able to create the multitude of ships as the other races can. For the AI this can be esp. dangerously/stiffleing, because he will lack some basic designs right off the start, and he can't do anything against it. It might break the game.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting <span>foxthree</span>, reply 4
you cain't add new shipstyles with DL it doesin't surrport shipstyle only DA and TA do so you'll need to update.
End of <span>foxthree</span>'s quote

Well... I asked. Currently I'm short of money + I hate buying things online, so no DA or TA for now (were/are they ever available in stores?)

In regards to the DL hull issues: are you sure about that? The normal DLs seem to only have three basic hulls, but they use them for all sizes of ship - I've seen Dread Lord 'fighters' (tiny), 'defenders' (small), 'frigates' (medium - same hull as the defenders, but different HP) 'battleships' (large) and 'dreadnoughts' (huge - same as the large hulls, but different HP again). I've also seen several types of DL cargo hulls, including transports and constructors (I once actually had them build a starbase). In my quick test, the AI with the DL ships (Terrans) had several scouts, colony ships, and constructors right from the start.

The two oddities I ran into were: the ships had large, visible colony and constructor modules on the 'tentacles' of the hull, which looked odd, and the starting 'flagship' was actually a Terran hull (although not the USS Enterprise - looking one the normal flagship uses).

Slightly off-topic: is it still possible to download mods from the library on this site? I know that they can't be uploaded to it anymore.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

yes you can buy the ultimate ed for 29 to 39 at your local game stop there the only store that carries it other than that its amazon or ebay Sorry about that.

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting qrtxian, reply 6

In regards to the DL hull issues: are you sure about that? The normal DLs seem to only have three basic hulls, but they use them for all sizes of ship - I've seen Dread Lord 'fighters' (tiny), 'defenders' (small), 'frigates' (medium - same hull as the defenders, but different HP) 'battleships' (large) and 'dreadnoughts' (huge - same as the large hulls, but different HP again). I've also seen several types of DL cargo hulls, including transports and constructors (I once actually had them build a starbase). In my quick test, the AI with the DL ships (Terrans) had several scouts, colony ships, and constructors right from the start.
End of qrtxian's quote

Yes, you are right. The error might be on my side. Actually, a few months ago I found an xml-sheet which was related to the Dread Lord's ship-style; and there was a line <hidden>1</hidden>; which was labelled "0" for all Stock Races, except Pirates and Dread Lords, so I changed theirs to "0" as well and now I can select those shipstyles in the game-setup screen, too.

But, problem is, that there are some hulls lacking; right at game's start I only have the "small" hull. So I thought, maybe this has something to do with tech and started a Battle of the Gods szenario - where I seem to have all hulls available except the Cargo Hull.

I can actually circumvent this by using the templates (where there are ships designed with those hulls I can't select) and then take the design to upgrade it... but I don't know if the computer AI will be able to do so, too.

I've seen this glitch with the Terran hull in one of my games, too.

Well, on those DL ships you can only attach stuff at the end of their long & short tentacles. With one exeption, which is at the rear. Yeah, looks strange.

As for the real Dread Lords, they don't have their weapons visible, can't say how they do it....

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

One other oddity - for a mod I made, I tried making a few tweaks to the Dread Lords to be a similiar ancient evil race in the mod's setting, among which was giving them black hulls. It didn't work, and I assumed that DL hulls were 'automatically' red. But when I tested giving the Terrans their hulls, they were the normal Terran white/blue. Is it just not possible to mod the DLs?