New Capital Ship Modding questions

Yup, one of the tutorials included in the mod pack covers how to set up a model in XSI for conversion and if I remember correctly it includes how to place weapon/exhaust points.

You'd have to make them. I can check which file they're in, but there should be a .tga in the Textures folder that has them all, a .brush file that separates the big image into individual icons and each ship's entity file has which icon to use.

Yeah, the ship entities all have a section (in the beginning for capitals, end for frigates) that lists the abilities they use, it just uses names of the Abilityxxxx.entity files. If you just use other capital ship abilities you should be fine, if you use some frigate abilities you'll need to do a little bit of work since capital ship abilities need to be defined by cap ship level, and frigate ones don't.

You sure can, and in the entity files yep. There's a section in each file for weapons.

Like above, should be a .tga file somewhere in Textures.

The easiest thing to do would just be to make a copy of an existing ship, and change what you need changed (the mesh, the icons, weapon values, ability list, costs, whatever). Making a new entity file from scratch is very much not recommended. If you use an existing as a template it's easy to just change stuff that's specific to your ship and be sure that you don't mess up anything basic that every ship needs. Those entity files are pretty long, and most things you actually probably won't touch

damn, annatar, did you make sins?

one question, the mod tutorial is for the old ModTools, it has sections like:

   "With the mesh selected, under the “Get” section of the Model/
    Animate/Render/Simulate Toolbar on the leftmost part of the
    program window, go Property > Texture Projection,"

and:

    "Go Select > Select n-sided polygons > Five Sides or more"

which are not in my version... now what the heck?

No

But he is the re-incarnate of a butterfly!

I smell like sunshine dust.

note edit above, plz, thanks

Sorry EviliroN, I don't do any modeling so I can't answer that one for you.

hey no problem

actually I have a different idea...

what are the basic file I would need to IMPORT another capship from another mod into a mod I am compiling?

this is just for me, I am not distributing or whatever, just wondering.

it would take out all that modding crap that has frustrated me in 4hrs work time now, lol!

example:

if I DL Sacrifice of Angels mod, I want to import just the Starfleet captial ship, where and what files will I need to move and where are the files located, etc...

another thing, modders, what is the text line to add a sixth Captial to the fleet?

Really depends on what it uses. The basic idea is you'd look at the entity file for it and it will list everything you need to know about it. The mesh name will be a .mesh file in Textures. Particle effects for the weapons will be in the ParticleEffects folder. Icons will be the trickiest probably because they were added to the master image with all the icons. Easiest thing there would just be to use the image file from the mod, along with whatever .brush file relates to that image. You'd also have to note the stringName and stringDescription fields (the ids are prefixed with IDS_) and transfer those into your English.str file from the mod's, so you get the ship's name and description in the info cards.

Sorry it's a bit abstract, but I don't have any file names in front of me while at work

Presumably, you'd just add it to the race's build list in the race entity file and it will spill over automatically.

again Annatar, thanks

well... i'm creating a capital ship of mine... how many weapon points can be put on a ship? i made a super battle ship class with 50 cannons in it

I saw a working model of a babylon 5 ship (with a rotating centre piece, totally awesome) and it said it had 40 gun points on it. Not sure if that meant working or not, but I did see it shooting in the vid.

Edit

Here this is what I'm talking about:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/305381/page/3/#replies

If that guy is still around maybe he can help you or some of the people that posted in that thread.

Hijack!!!
Check out my thread and let me know what you guys think about my ideas.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329761

It should be 10 firing points per weapon, and up to 3 weapons. So all in all, 30. I don't know what happens if you go over it, likely they're just not used rather than the game crashing.

I think you should ask me 1st before you start importing ships from SoA 2 into your mod. The only people that have permission right now are the 7 deadly sins team. I want to keep it that way.

There is a slight problem with the extra capital slots... Sure 4 extra caps is great, but what about the UI?? It is still the same 1.05 UI with space for 15 ship slots. Unless someone knows how the grid system in the brush files works having those 4 extra slots with no UI space for them is kind of pointless. Duplicating UI textures is a waste of resources.

I have had up to 18 points of one weapon type working with no issues that i am aware of. This was before i found out about the supposed 10 point limit. The starbase in entrenchment has far more than 10 points per weapon. I question the 10 point limits because of the success i had using more than 10.

I've imported tons of others mods into my own. But I don't even distribute.

I'm basically making a 7 deadly sins for myself with whatever I want for me to use.

I understand the work people put into them but as I am not sharing with anyone the only credit given would be for me to see, right? Plus it was a hypothetical. I greatly appreciate your work and your input.

Thank you