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[Wyvern]

Update!  Still very work-in-progress, but there's no more need for console commands - loading up a game will (once per save) gift you with two variants of the Magpie class frigate; for a normal game, you can find them in storage at the abandoned terraforming station in Corvus.  If that's not available, the first backup location is an omnifactory, and the final backup is just adding them directly to the player fleet.

Changes: Tweaked stats on the Magpie a fair bit; larger flux pool, lower shield efficiency, unstable injector built-in, burn rate goes to 11.  That sort of thing.

Download link

The plan is to create a series of combat freighters modeled along the lines of the Apogee: relatively lightly armed, durable, and actually worth deploying into battle even when you have access to more dedicated hulls.

As a secondary goal, I want these ships to be relatively easy to fly, particularly for new players who may not know things we take for granted like "put unstable injector on everything" or "max vents first".  As such, they rely on weapon slots as the primary limiter on outgoing firepower instead of the vanilla-default of ships being flux-limited, a tactic that I know will run into trouble when a player gets access to these hulls and, say, Templar mod weaponry.  I do intend to put in mechanisms to limit that, but for now, just be aware that such combinations aren't intended and will be nerfed.

Ships:

Spoiler

Magpie:

The basic offering of Corvidae Light Industries, the Magpie comes in two variants; the Magpie (X), on the left, is a bit more combat and a bit less freighter (and probably better as a new player's first ship), while the base Magpie on the right is a bit more freighter and a bit less combat (but is arguably the more survivable of the two).  The big difference comes in the available weapon mounts; the turrets are all built-in, leaving the Magpie (X) with one energy and one synergy, vs. the Magpie's one energy and one missile.  High Energy Focus for the ship system, too; the Magpie (X) variant shown with an antimatter blaster is just mean.

Rook:
No picture yet; this "mining" destroyer is still very much under construction. Planned armament is two small hybrid turrets (with broad firing arcs that overlap to the ship's rear, but don't quite overlap to the front), one medium universal hardpoint (off-center so it overlaps nicely with one of the Rook's turrets), one small missile hardpoint, and an array of five built-in mining lasers (that can all focus fire towards the front of the ship, but don't provide anything even close to full PD coverage).  CLI marketing department suggests a mining blaster, hammer torpedos, and light machine guns.  A more practical weapons load might be a heavy autocannon, light assault guns, and a harpoon rack.

Corax:
Officially designed as a "long haul" freighter capable of solo operation even in hostile space, the Corax is intended to occupy a similar niche to the current Apogee - albeit with slightly less firepower; I don't intend this ship to be a top-of-the-line combat vessel, though there may be an (X) variant in the works as well...

[close]

[Harmful Mechanic]

Congrats on joining the modding fraternity. This looks interesting; I'll have to check it out in detail, but it's a really promising start.

[Orikson]

Oh my, looks cool. Also, more black coloured hulls, those are rare!

So, does this work something akin to Ships/Weapons mod or Lion's Guard mod that adds hulls into the game?

Can I load it without a restart and what are compatibility problems do I have to look out for?

EDIT 01:

So far, it's compatible with all the mods I have on (the popular, non-problematic ones).

There's one nuance I want to ask. When unpacking the files, why does it go from .tar.gz to .tar before another round of unzipping to get the folder?

Also, I think you should add a notice to delete Mac OS files that come together with the essential files, as they prevent start up. The files I'm talking about have ._<file name> (i.e. ._wyz_magpie), which makes them distinct from the files needed.

That's all for now.

[Wyvern]

Huh.  Not being able to unpack in a single step is weird; .tar.gz is pretty standard... but I can package the next release differently, I suppose.

Also weird that the ._whatever files would cause problems; they certainly don't on my machine.  Still, proper cleanup of "invisible" files before packaging is something I should've done anyway; I'll keep that in mind for the next release.

Compatibility: should be compatible with everything, with no need to start a new game, since it doesn't add any sort of faction or anything else that'd interact with other mods (yet).  Just the two ships, and doesn't even bother with making them available via in-game mechanisms (thus the instructions to use console commands).  The next version will probably do something like drop a Magpie into the abandoned terraforming station in orbit around Asharu, and the plan is (eventually) to have the mod add an extra market to that station where the Corvidae hulls can be purchased.

[whatdoesthisbuttondo]

Also weird that the ._whatever files would cause problems; they certainly don't on my machine.  Still, proper cleanup of "invisible" files before packaging is something I should've done anyway; I'll keep that in mind for the next release.

Windows tends to dislike file or directory names starting with a leading dot, though unpacking an archive should usually not be an issue. Drag&Drop in explorer might be a problem though, since you aren't allowed to create such file names in explorer (works on the command line though).

[Wyvern]

Ah-hah.  Figured out why I didn't have any problems from such files: they don't exist on my machine.  Instead, the compression tool I was using "helpfully" created them.

I've updated the original post with a new download link; the resulting archive is, sadly, a bit bigger... but at least it's not adding fake files that aren't actually there.

There are also a few minor stat / display tweaks; the most notable changes are entirely under the hood, though, as the Magpie (X) is now implemented via a skin file instead of as an entirely separate hull from the base Magpie.