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Messages - Vandermeer

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1
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 28, 2022, 07:36:38 AM »
I find the idea most of the weapons being limited ammo interesting as a balancing factor. I'm surprised that the unbalanced version has this.

Hypothetically, how easy would it be for someone to mod the mod so that these weapons had "infinite" ammo? Edit 2: Literally as easy as a .csv file edit
Yupp, ammunition handling is pretty well integrated into the standard game. I agree that it serves well for balancing, but also flair (rare munition adds imagination of massive projectiles), which is why I left it there for the amped up version too. Note though that ammunition capacity is still greatly enhanced in the balanced version, so I basically never run out except for serious invasion battles where enemies come around with 10 battleships and such.

Quote
Edit: Also, the quad lancer torpedo looks weird on the Auria Battleship, specifically talking about the large universal hardpoint at the center. The sheer size of the torpedoes partially cover over the 4 nearby medium mounts.

In fact, IMO the lancer torpedoes in general are quite large.
I also realized this problem, but I didn't want to change the original, since this was the intent of the author. It is somewhat better on the Antares for which I presume it was made, but yeah, they generally seem a tad bit too big.

I really like the ship designs! On a minor note, some of the weapons/ships are lacking descriptions. Some flavor text would be a nice addition  :)
I will do that when I have time next week again.

2
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 11, 2022, 08:47:25 AM »
As for the blueprints, yes, I experienced this issue too and had asked in the forum, but nobody got an answer for me. Currently the only way to get the rarer designs through console is to add the item "ifed_ship_package2" manually, which will give you all the missing designs. Don't ask me why the command line mod doesn't include these blueprints, because they certainly exist.

The blueprints being split into two packages because of how the ships are tagged in ship_data.csv. the tag section controls what blueprint packages each ship falls under. Most of the ships are under ifed_ship_bp, but some are under ifed_ship_bp2, and the prototypes (mk. 2s) are under rare_bp. ifed_ship_bp and ifed_ship_bp2 tags are part of the mod, defined in data/campaign/special_items.csv. This means that a player needs to find both blueprint packages to unlock most of the Federation ships (they are effectively split between two packages, believe Shadowyards does something similar). rare_bp is base game tag, and means that the ships aren't part of any package, and will only be dropped as single blueprints (think paragon, hyperion, etc.).
The problem here is however that the "allblueprints" command gives me all the bps associated with the ifed_ship_bp tag, and also all the rare_bps. For some reason it does not give me the ifed_ship_bp2 ones, even though they are of a blueprint package like the other. I have seen it done this way in other mods (like the Hiigaran one), where this worked fine.
I must be doing something wrong here obviously, but I cannot spot it. This is the only tag on those ships, and the principle is just duplicated for the "bp" and "bp2" packages.

Quote
Also noticed that the Titan/Ocean class Battlecarriers have inconsistent text, still referring to them as the Titan (always liked the titan name, but probably conflicted with another mod back in the day maybe?)
Good spot. Yes, that happened in the unbalanced version, because I later shifted to actually calling both versions (mk1 and 2) "Ocean" in that one. Is corrected.

Quote
Also you might want to consider adding the NO_AUTO_ESCORT ship hint to the carriers, depending on how you want them to play.
Done. I actually expected for CARRIER + COMBAT in tandem to work this way, but good to know that wasn't it. Though I have also not seen any strange behavior until now honestly, but better be sure.
Uploads are refreshed with these little changes.

Quote
As for making the mod it's own faction, I personally am a big fan of that idea, as that gives me a lot more opportunity to interact against the ships (and fight against them!). Plus the Federation has a nice style that could be expanded upon. However, you could also double down on making them a special "player only" faction by adding some lore and story to the world, and take advantage of the new story features to make it clear why only the player has access to these ships. You could even add campaign missions where the player has to build up this new fleet. Obviously more work either way, but it would add some nice spice.
Well, since this is like 70% for my own use, and only 30% to honor Keptin's contribution and keep the flame alive, I will certainly not do the story thing. I do actually play in a very RP fashion in my own game, starting with a mysterious Ares-class inheritance on my lv1 nobody with no money. Then working myself up to the first grand rEdacTdd system exploration to receive/unearth a Yukon (..via console) following "my relatives diary". With that and more new information(after finding all non-rare bps), I ventured deep into my massive map to found the federation on the technology in the distance, which slowly gives me access to the rest.
My officers have story too, but the thing is: I can make all this up in my head. Doing work for popups that are already spoilered to me, just isn't worth it for my own use.

Not to mention heavy modding like this could actually scare away future potential updaters. I mean, if people actually like it, they will then demand to only play the story laden version in the future, which might be more difficult to maintain.
No, my 30% mission here is also egoistic to a degree, that I hope to maybe spur others to keep this alive should there be another major update. ..Because then I don't have to do anything anymore. ;D


That being said, since it was in the original, I can see on your other point how having an option to make them a faction could be interesting just under the "I want to fight these ships as enemies" lens.
I will see to it in time, though I am currently too busy to look into it. Perhaps in 2-3 weeks.

Quote
And speaking of spice, I have no issues with the idea of "modernizing"/uniqifying the faction a bit via ship systems. Probably could use the tune up, but whatever systems are added should fit the theme of the ships/feel like it fits (for example, I could imagine a system that drastically expands weapon firing arcs so a federation ship could bring it's full arsenal to bare for a short period - though don't know how to explain turret suddenly being able to turn more, ahh minutia). Might add a bit more life into the faction and make it feel more modern, but also isn't necessary.
Well, that turret idea is not taken.
Waiting for other ideas. Since they kind of seem of the iPod clean faction, perhaps something techie with shield hits?
Hmm, I already advertise their unique armor technology in their description, so something related to that would actually feel the most right to me.

3
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 08, 2022, 12:56:28 PM »
I have a question, the Weftin version let the Independents have access to the ship set and I actually kinda liked that since it gave them their own thing.
I don't think this is it's own faction, though I could be wrong, so do these only exist as blueprints to find or does anyone get it by default?
No, they only exist as blueprints. In the first historic conception of the mod by Keptin, they were actually their own faction, though the game mechanics were vastly different then. I was struggling to decide whether they should become a faction in the new age. Before you could very tightly ally with one side, essentially making that empire yours. But now, since 4x mechanics exist, the only faction that is truly ever "your side", is the one you found yourself, so that is already in.
My thinking process was thus that having to share these cool unique designs with some random other spawned faction that is never actually on your side, kind of takes away from them being "your ships"/"your empire". So I decided against placing them as their own faction.
Decision open to council though.


The earthcracker was once a "boss" enemy back in the super early days of starsector, back when we only had 3 factions and 1 star system, it would orbit the sun and ear through your fleet, but would give great loot for the time.
Ohh, I never saw that part. Interesting. This mod is truly a fossil. :)

4
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 08, 2022, 08:19:37 AM »
So far I'm really liking weapons/ships, only a few comments;

Weapons;
Cain - Any chance on a tone down of the impact? not a big fan of flash banging myself every few seconds with a single weapon, and having more than one is just Eye Cancer.

Cain/Hadron Accelerator - tone down firing sounds just a tad, they are quite loud for their power (Superweapons arsenal BFG Ultra would make sense being that loud with its huge power and low ROF, but these fire fast enough to warrant a volume decrease)

Ships;
The ships look great, but mechanically I feel they are missing something, few people I play with agree. They are missing flavour, by that I mean Built In mods specific to the faction (think Shadowyard's engines or Apex armor). You could add that extra stats into a built in hullmod or other specific hullmods to give them that extra edge. Think something similar to the XIV group buff or on the other hullmod side the range extender the Paragon has, but make it slightly less (think other ships have hullmod like this, Gown from Scalartech maybe)
Regarding the ships I wouldn't want to change anything. Adding this extra flavor of specialty might have become a trend over time in the mods, but the original of Interstellar Federation is rather old -up to the beginning days of Starsector-, and I want to keep it original. I also think that the rather unique layout of the ships (or as Melcyna says, the weapon arcs) are in some sense their individual touch.
That being said, if I hear enough people pointing this out and maybe even coming up with ideas, I could probably just make another special version with flavor upgrades in them, like I already did with the higher stats one. I will see.

For the weapons: Yes, the Hadron is a superweapon, and you normally can pretty much only get it via console (or amazing luck), so this is working as intended. For the Cain, ...that is actually my favorite weapon out of the mod, and I usually go all out with them on the big carrier ship. I personally love that every single shot you can fire every couple seconds seems like some blistering blinding calamity has just descended. The weapon seems like it compacted a solar flare and hurled it towards some unsuspecting -soon to be lava- little spaceboat. The destruction is so great that the screen flashes and breaches the fourth wall through the harm of the users eyes as well. ;D ;D
I am unlikely to change that. In fact, if I could also add screen shake to it too, I probably would. ;)

5
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 02, 2022, 06:03:55 AM »
Im loving the ship designs. They fit really well.
I dont know if this is a little nitpick-ish, but it doesn't seem like the ships in my colonial defense fleets ever use the interstellar federation weapons, even if i prioritize them over vanilla weapons.
Yes, same with the ships actually. I already had this listed under "issues" in the first post. It is the same actually with any ship mod out there. For some reason your personal faction seems to ignore your preferences most of the time. Not sure what to do about that, or if there is just something I misunderstand about the mechanic. Others welcome to comment and educate me on the problem.

Thanks a lot ;D, also I fund a orbital laser that cost 950 dp and wonder where is it used.
I have no idea either; it always came with the mod. Well, I can make an educated guess, because if you look into the graphic folder for the ships, you can see an "earthcracker" design, which looks like an orbital or satellite. It was unrealized in the original mod, but I would bet that it was meant to mount such a weapon/ should have come with it inbuilt.

Currently you would need to custom mod some hull to have over 950 ordnance though. :P

6
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 01, 2022, 08:44:14 AM »
some how most the ships only require 10 DP, and I use command to get all blueprints but still miss some ships in this mod
Ok, I cross checked with two prominent mods the values for Supply per Deployment and Month, CR per deployment, CR regeneration per day. I adjusted them to more reflect the modern standard for their size class.
I also noticed the prices were not as high as the new version sets everything. I made the ships more expensive, but it probably isn't enough yet. Waiting for more feedback.

Update is uploaded in first post.

7
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 01, 2022, 06:40:14 AM »
some how most the ships only require 10 DP, and I use command to get all blueprints but still miss some ships in this mod
The deployment point costs I had overtaken from the original mod, so I guess this is a balancing issue now appearing in the new 0.9 era. Back then frigates actually cost more to deploy than capitals, so you will see these costs going down to 5 even on battleships in the current state.
I agree that this needs correcting. I will cross reference this with other mods later and release a version where this cost pyramid is the right way around.

As for the blueprints, yes, I experienced this issue too and had asked in the forum, but nobody got an answer for me. Currently the only way to get the rarer designs through console is to add the item "ifed_ship_package2" manually, which will give you all the missing designs. Don't ask me why the command line mod doesn't include these blueprints, because they certainly exist.

8
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: April 01, 2022, 01:17:57 AM »
Does the faction only appear on normal sector? Because I have random sector enabled and they didn't spawn
It is not a faction mod. This only spawns blueprints at exploration for use in your own faction.(like the Musashi mod) In its very early days, the mod used to be a faction mod too, but since it seems more challenging to create such and I got what I wanted already, I don't know if I should re-implement it.

9
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: March 31, 2022, 02:13:26 AM »
Man, I remember playing these ships on the original Exerelin back in the day, and loved their design. Forgot about them, then found this post and felt a nice wave of nostalgia. Thanks for bringing them back! Can't wait to try it out.

Also, you should get this post moved from the Modding to Mods forum. Would be easier to find there where it belongs.
Glad I can reach some that also had this experience. I will try to get the movement done. I would have posted in Mods directly, but I think the forum settings prevented it or something. Also the old 0.8 update to this mod also never left the modding page.
Currently this update is listed in the index as a faction mod, which it isn't, so I have something to contact them over anyway. It was also listed as "by Vandermeer", but it is from Keptin. :(

10
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: March 25, 2022, 12:50:09 AM »
@Vandermeer, i might be mistaken but these look identical to the ships from.
https://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=22749.0
No, that is the person that used the open license to rebrand Keptin's original work. As I described at the beginning, he only ported half the ships, but no weapons, fighters, special hullsystems, sounds, nor integrate it into the 0.9 mechanics like using blueprints. All in all, Weftin's is either a failed update, or some sort of fork of the original, but I think for that definition to hold, he would have to at least added something to the mod, instead of just renaming the ships.
I don't want to say anything more bad here, so let's just leave it at "there is a proper update now". Just follow the link to the original mod, and you will see.
//Edit (11.04.22): As I know now, Weftin was not attempting to restart or fork the original mod. His interest was simply in wanting to create some ships (the stats there are actually original), but without doing spritework. Since this mod had been stranded for so long and is artistically very pleasing, I assume he saw these open-source sprites as a good futureproof pick, or maybe he was just inspired by them. I guess it makes the situation kind of awkward now of course when against expectations there is suddenly an update, and the sprites see double use now. Admins seem to agree that everything is fine with the situation though, and so do I.

59151 [Thread-3] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.RuntimeException: Ship hull variant [hii_luun_Standard] not found!
java.lang.RuntimeException: Ship hull variant [hii_luun_Standard] not found!
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.B.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.B.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.O0Oo$Oo.getFPCost(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.O0Oo.<init>(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.oo0000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.public(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.ResourceLoaderState.init(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

looks like you missed something else :3

you left the variant call in the default_ship_roles file
Wow, that is what I get for copying some file structure from other mods. I couldn't spot this problem myself because it refers to another mod (Hiigaran) that I use, so there was no error for me. Anyone who didn't have that mod however would have had this problem. (but nobody said anything? :()
It is fixed in the new upload now.
Let me know if there is more.

11
Mods / Re: [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: March 22, 2022, 12:23:29 AM »
Getting a crash when I try to start the game

136036 [Thread-3] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.RuntimeException: Ship hull variant [ifed_antares_kazi] not found!
java.lang.RuntimeException: Ship hull variant [ifed_antares_kazi] not found!
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.B.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.B.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.O0Oo$Oo.getFPCost(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.O0Oo.<init>(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.oo0000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.SpecStore.public(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.loading.ResourceLoaderState.init(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
Apologies, there was a problem where for unknown reason the second variant of the Antares class was saved with the same id as the first variant. It is corrected now, and the issue was only present in the 'Standard' version to begin with.

12
Mods / [0.95.1a] Interstellar Federation (refurbished)
« on: March 21, 2022, 11:59:32 AM »

Greetings,
I have taken it onto myself to revive this great mod, which I adore very much, for the current version of the game. (and it barely took 2.5 years to get there) Some of my first Starsector experiences involved this mod all the way back to when Starsector didn't even have a galaxy map. In consequence I can't think about playing the game without it anymore, and also consider these the best sprites around both in realism and design. As I recently really wanted to try out the new version with all those interesting 4x elements, there was finally no other option than to do the work and lift it to the new standard.

Now, you might have seen some of those ship in Weftin's mod as well, but he only created his own ship fantasy using some of the open source sprites available from the original mod, so it was in no way an attempt of actual mod revival.

Anyway, I can now pronounce that the updating is complete and tested.(and wasn't at all as difficult as people made it out to be too with that supposed 0.9 hurdle...)
Since I mainly did this for personal use at first, I ended up with two versions to release:

Standard
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ad5n9wkhir7ooma/Interstellar_Federation_Refurbished.rar/file
This version is true to the original in all regards and intents. The collision meshes are all cleaned up and simplified greatly, but turret slots and ship stats are otherwise untouched. The issue with this might be that the old 0.6-0.8 balancing might not really apply exactly anymore though, so feel free to express what shortcomings you see.
All blueprints can be found in form of packages by exploration in the game, so no need for a command mod.


Unbalanced
https://www.mediafire.com/file/sdip8ydy39m4m9p/Interstellar_Federation_Refurbished_-unbalanced-.rar/file
This is the version I play on, where the Federation tech represents some lost marvels of engineering.(yes, even more lost than usual) Consequently all ships are about 20% better in all, armor, hull, flux-capacity + venting, and even ordnance. Also the fuel consumption and capacity are upgraded such that the travel range effectively doubles, because I wanted to play a distant empire far out from the core. Some minor other adjustments too, but nothing too noteworthy. These ships are very pricy as a downside.
In the ship meshes most larger classes replace all their numerous 'small ballistic' slots with 'small universal' ones, which shifts the gameplay much towards more effective PD lasers for me.
Some weapons are also somewhat more far ranging, slightly stronger, and have greater magazine capacity. I also moved the Dual Lancer Torpedo to medium from large, which can change fighting style a lot if properly utilized.
All in all, despite being "unbalanced", it is still far from the ludicrous levels of the good looking, well styled Musashi Manufactorum mod, where I needed to nerf all the weapons by up to factor 4 in damage because they broke the game so much.(..and that is their 'standard' release)



Artifact prototypes
On top of this, both versions have something extra from me sprinkled in for more adventure. Rare artifact blueprints of 4 major ship classes can be discovered, which, again, have about 20-30% higher statistics over their standard counterpart, except mostly for propulsion related things.(the "feel" should stay the same) They also have slightly changed sprites to accommodate a different outfit style:
Spoiler
[close]
They also have nicer engine lighting to accompany the feeling of advancement:

Spoiler
[close]
Notice that I named the better large carrier "Ocean class" here, which is the only name adaption I did. The first time I saw this mod and got this ship, that was the first word that jumped into my mind. The play experience with this ship was then so formative to me, that henceforth every good looking large carrier I had in any game had to be named "Ocean" in my mind.
I am generally really pleased with the naming scheme Keptin came up with. Only this last one stands out, because "Titan" is just somewhat generic, and simply not a fitting name for a ship in carrier role, as it implies visions of brutish strength rather than that of an advanced floating mobile city-fortress. (You still have the original in "Standard" though)

So these are the only real additions I made to the original mod, and I think that is ok, since no original files were harmed, and the extra can be voluntarily ignored if off taste.


The Ships
Here are all the ship sprites copied over from Keptin's original post in oversight:
Spoiler
-Capital Ships-
Titan-class Carrier, Auria-class Battleship, Antares-class Battlecruiser, Yukon-class Prototype Destroyer


-Cruisers-
Ares-class Heavy Destroyer, Ballista-class Anti-Capital Cruiser, Mercury-class Prototype Gunship, Montana-class Utility Cruiser, Helios Assault Ship


-Destroyers-
Vixen-class Missile Ship, Shogun-class Electronic Warfare Ship, Zephyr-class Strike Carrier, Defiant-class Heavy Gunship, Toa-Class Destroyer


-Frigates-
Albatross-class Attack Ship, Scythe-class Interceptor, Dakota-class Frigate, Orion-class Hypertug, Rickshaw-class Strike Frigate, Echo-class Scout Ship


-Fighters-
Hornet Fighter, Draken Interceptor, Foxbat Fighter, Tracer Heavy Bomber
         

-Industrial Ships-
Mazerk-class Superbarge, Tahoe-class Cargo Barge, Trexel-class Fuel Barge
[close]

The Weapons
Spoiler
Omega Device, Lancer Torpedo dual, quad, single, Piranha Anti-Fighter Missile Launcher, Riptide & Locktide MLRS, Harpy MRM Pod:
 
Hadron Accelerator, Nucleon Ram, Cyclotron Eviscerator
   
Cain, Peacemaker, Citadel PD, Mass Driver, HV50 Autogun, HV75 Autogun, HV100 Autogun, Thunderchief:
             
[close]
Although the 3+1 superweapons are technically still in the game, I made the drop rate of their blueprints extremely low, so they are only there formally. Mainly because they aren't really necessary as the ships are plenty powerful and struggling with ordnance anyway. You can still introduce them with command or by upping the rarity rating in weapon_data.csv .


Two bothersome issues
- While testing all ships, the only problem I faced on the ships themselves is that the teleport ability of the supercarrier didn't look as good as it used to in older versions. It kind of just plops out and into existence without much of a large flash that used to accompany the procedure before. If someone knows how to remedy this, I would incorporate it promptly.
- Secondly, -this might be because my understanding of the faction mechanic is still not complete-, but when I found my own faction and enable nothing but Interstellar Federation ship and weapon blueprints, for some reason they still don't get chosen by the AI, and I end up with just your common shabraques. Maybe someone can explain. Is this because the game doesn't actually care much for your chosen BPs (a mere "suggestion" like the Canadian constitution), or is there some sort of tinkering involved that needed to be done but I missed out on?


The Future of the Mod
I mostly made this mod for my own gameplay to be fun, and then decided to share the fruits. See it more as an "as is" release, so while I might be around a bit to address some immediate issues, I certainly wont shepherd it around for months and years to come. ..Though I might be back updating it if a Starsector urge comes for a new update, and no one has done it yet by themselves.
I can guarantee for nothing however, so everyone is free to take it and carry the torch of this great mod on. (isn't it nice that I can praise this very post so much, because I didn't make this myself? :D)


Special Thanks to Keptin, and my goddamn borderline clinical perfectionist obsession of having to have my games exactly as I want them to be, and no different! (once more, more time spent modding than playing...)


//Edit: Removed some words over Weftin's Ship pack, which took some sprite resources from the original.

13
Modding / Re: Prune-blue after trying to make blue-prints work
« on: February 13, 2022, 09:05:03 AM »


Question closed, I managed to clear it up by starting the csv from scratch again. Who knows what was wrong inside, -my tip is still on some unknown hidden characters somewhere-, but now that I did everything without resorting to much copy-paste, it is fixed.

Edit: Oh, and the issue with the "bp2" not working correctly was an issue with the console commands mod, not the others. When I add bp2 manually, I can get the blueprints, even when for unknown reasons they still don't appear through the "allblueprints" console command.

14
Modding / Prune-blue after trying to make blue-prints work
« on: February 12, 2022, 08:10:52 AM »
Hello forum,
I have recently set out to make this old (and spectacular) Interstellar Federation mod work again in newest version and have largely succeeded:


(yes, I realize someone has already attempted it, but he cut out half the ships, all the weapons, probably the hullsystems, and then even renamed all the remaining hulls like they were his models while changing nothing about them. Open license, fine, but respect for the artist and work should still exist. Oh, also, while the original artist released the mod as "interstellar federation", the updating modder re-released it as "[my name]'s ship pack".
..Not illegal, but clearly bad manners as I see it)


Anyway, so far it seems that all the hulls, weapons and new shipsystems are working as intended, so the mod is working in its old state from before 0.9 already. On top of the ships being summonable in console however (which is what I currently have to do to get them), I also wanted the mod to adapt to these modern times and have the designs be hidden in random salvage so you could legally produce them. However, despite my best efforts, I couldn't get the new blueprint system to do its work. I followed the intro to blueprint modding wiki section which would have you believe that the game will automatically generate the blueprint items and recognize the intended effects once you take these steps defined there. Either there is some glaring oversight by myself, or that is simply not the case, for I can't get the blueprint items to show up even after following this, and also pretty much copying the setup I saw in the Hiigaran Descendants mod.
Additionally there are some other shenanigans that just don't make sense to me which I will explain below. So since I am pretty much at the point where the logic of the system has become unclear to me at the root, it is finally cheaper to just ask, and hopefully someone here can see through whatever went wrong when I show how I set it up so far:

First you design the special blueprint items that would hold the weapons and hull you want to be distributed.
Hiigaran mod for comparison:

Mine:

I tested whether there were issues with the "order" number, or accidental hidden characters in the id, but nothing.

Then, since I shopped together a custom graphic, I link that to the blueprint.
Hii:

Mine:

Here I suspected the long folder name might be an issue for some reason, but then recognized that it wasn't since all the other image linking (hulls, weapons, fx) went through the same process and worked perfectly fine.

Then you use the blueprint plugin params as the reference tag in the weapons and hulls you want to show up.
Hii:

Shii:

(rarity increased for testing purpose)
Now here comes the weird part. I initially had the ifed_ship_bp2 prepared to have some upper designs, like Montana, Auria and all the "mk0" designs be part of a separate blueprint package. ...But having them like that made the whole model illegal for the game, meaning if I used the "allblueprints" console command, they would not show up.
Why that is I simply cannot fathom, since they just ran under exactly the same setup, but with a "2" at the end. Also, if the blueprints don't work at all, because...

...they don't show up in the game anywhere, and therefore weren't generated, then how does the blueprint system even matter to the legitimacy of the hulls in the first place?
Anyway, the current "rare_bp" ones actually worked without the "ifed_ship_bp2", and are only carrying those temporarily because I wanted to test whether the tag was broken itself and could somehow delegitimize a running design. ..It did not, the ships are still there, but ships that only have "ifed_ship_bp2" are stricken from the records for some reason.

What is weird is that Hiigaran and other mods like Musashi or Star Federation have the very same setup with sometimes even more custom blueprint package categories, and for them it all works just like this.

With the weapons it appears to be same. I have found a rare_bp weapon blueprint of this faction already, but not the defined package, which is unsurprising seeing how it doesn't exist as an item.


In the beginning I even had my own procgen drop_groups file that added lines so these modded blueprints should have dropped with higher likelihood than all others. When it became clear that something was scrambled, I already simplified it and deleted the procgen accelerator, but the issue was apparently not in the drop rules.


Anyway, I hope someone can help, because as far as I understand it, I can't learn more from reading wiki or analyzing other mods. If I carbon copied but renamed one of those mods, probably some blueprints still wouldn't work, or at least that is how it looks like to me at this juncture. Obviously an error or something missing must be afoot, but I have lost too much time looking for it in vain.

15
If I were to add a line ->
Code
item_:{tags:[my_awesome_bp]}
to one or more blueprint drop groups with some arbitrary frequency, would these blueprints continue to drop, or does the blueprint giveaway stop once you have a category or single ship unlocked?

I could find out by playing, but I refuse to get new post 0.9 ingame experience spoiled before everything is finely modded.

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