SE IV Shipsets "mod"

[Heretic]

Hi all!

I would like to ask a question about the shipset pictures.
After gaming around a lot, i find it more and more "frustrating" to only be able to choose from one single picture for a shipclass.

Lets take the Star Trek mod(or any else ):
When you click on create ship, you get to choose vessel screen, you choose, lets say a light cruiser chassis which is at the moment the picuture of an intrepid class cruiser.
I wonder now if it wouldn´t be much more fun if you would be able to have not only one pitcure for a light cruiser class, but more, so you could produce a light cruiser class naming it Intrepid class (and later on then USS Voyager and so on) and designating the intrepid class picture to your new shipclass, then you decide at some later point to create another light cruiser, but instead of having the same picture again, you choose as you next new light cruiser class the picture of a Reliant class frigate ( yes i know its the Miranda class) and so on.

MY problem is now: How do i manage this?
I tried in the vehicle txt to name the "alternate Bitmap name lightcruiser1 and so on and created a corresponding lightcruuiser2.bmp in the shipset but that doesn´t worked.

Any ideas?

After a while, you choose to create another light cruiser

[Ed Kolis]

Nope, unlike MOO2, there is only one picture per hull size. The alternate pictures are only used when the game can't find the regular picture. You could mod the game so that you have a lot more ship sizes, though...

[douglas]

Not possible. You can create more vehicle sizes, even give them the same statistics (including size), and assign new pictures to them, but you can't get more than one picture for a given "size". The alternate picture is only used if the primary picture is not present in the shipset, in which case the alternate is used for every ship of that size.

[El_Phil]

I don't think you can do directly what you want to do. One ship size, one picture can't be changed (I think).

However you could have two identicaly sized ships set to different pictures. So just duplicate entire light cruiser sized ship entry and change the primary bitmap for the copy to the new picture. Repeat for whatever ships you want to have alternate pictures. And make sure you have both the fullsize bitmap and the mini_bitmap pictures.

[El_Phil]

Hmm duplicated three times. We're thorough around here....

[Atrocities]

If it could have been done my friend, we would have done it.

You can however name the ships anything you want. I name the first ship of any class the class name.

IE Intripid I
Then I name the ships as they are produced:
USS Intripid 1900
USS Voyager 1901
etc.

[Heretic]

Well, yeah, that i do allready too.

But it is possible to create more hullsizes for, lets say the Federation, using the same stats as the "first" one?
So you would name the second class Assault Frigate, then the next Heavy frigate, and they do all share the stats of the "normal" frigate?

Must i repeat this for every Race or just for the ones that deem "worthy" of having more than one picture for a class?

And to think about one last point:
If i would make such a thing for a Star Trek Setting, could i use the Star Trek mod of yours as a basis or wouldn ´t you allow such a thing, atrocities?

[Captain Kwok]

Any new ship entries will be available to all races by default. What you need to do is for the the primary image, specify the name of your new Federation ship picture, and then for the alternate image choose a picture that the other races already have by default.

For example, say you wanted to add a second type of frigate because you wanted to use your nifty Sabre-class image. You can copy the existing frigate entry, and change the primary image name to something like 'SabreClass' while keeping the alternate as 'Frigate'. You can change the stats of the new ship if you want or keep them the same.

If you're editing Atrocities' Star Trek mod, you can restrict the new ship entry to the Federation only, by adding a new tech requirement set to level 1 in 'Federation Tech' or something of that sort. Look at the heavy destroyer (defiant) entry to doublecheck what Atrocities used.

Also note you'll need both a 128x128 portrait size image and a 36x36 top-down image of the new ship you're adding.

[Antonin]

There are many shipsets that do not include images for certain ship types that are used with certain mods.

For example, DevNull and Miner's Guild use corvettes, heavy destroyers and prospectors, but most SE4 shipsets do not include these types, so the images used are the default frigate, destroyer, transport, etc.

It would be great if the shipset designers could create some odds-and-sods ship images to fill in these gaps.

One of my favorite books is the Klingon Ship Recognition Manual, and one of my favorite races to play is the Klingons. It would be cool to incorporate some of the "alternate" destroyer, cruiser, transport, etc designs into SE4, so the heavy destroyers in DevNull will look different from the ordinary destroyers.

[Fyron]

Such as the SE4 Shipset Neostandard?