New Total Conversion mod in the Works

There are two problems or more here…

1. Ship is the same as the other one:- If you mean that the icon of the ships sold at the ship dealer is the same or wrong, that is because you have to make a ship icon for each ship, and each must be given a different unique internal name so the hash is unique!

Find Osprey’s guide to making ship icons for that, it’s the best:-

Search, pals, search!

http://www.swat-portal.com/php/wbboard/portal_database.php?action=view&id=439&sid=d7ddcc2727900a4326cf0ca22f8d949a (thanks to Swat)!

http://the-starport.net/freelancer/download/singlefile.php?cid=5&lid=400

2. If you mean the ship itself is looking like another ship, then as Timmy51m says you must check the shiparch entry and the goods.ini entry

Ship rank and encounters problem:-

Well Timmy51m, OK it can be done as you describe above but that way is too complicated, adding new shipclasses is a bit tricky and not necessary as this is a quick and simple fix.

Just to clarify…

The difficulty levels should be d1 for one ship and d2 for the second, d3 for the third, d4 for the 4th etc.

If the npc_class = lawful, class_fighter, d1

the d1 means ship difficulty (Rank) = 1, so if the encounter asks for rank 1 ships then your ship will not appear, it is only a rank 1 ship…

Your encounter difficulty must be asking for 1, e.g.
encounter = area_scout, 1, 1.00000 - the 1st (1) is the ship rank, the second (1.000000) is chance out of 1 of this encounter happening, so 1.000000 = 100% = every time.
and set the factions that will appear in this encounter:-
faction = li_n_grp, 0.500000 <– half chance of Navy wing
faction = li_p_grp, 0.500000 <— half chance of Police wing

To allocate ranks to your NPC ships, first rename your npc_ship = entry in faction_props.ini with a rank component in the name, like this for clarity:-

npc_ship = Ca_Nv_Hookbill_d1 <— Hookbill for difficulty (rank) 1
npc_ship = Ca_Nv_Kestrel_d2 <— Kestrel for difficulty 2

Then in your npcships.ini:-

[NPCShipArch]
nickname = Ca_Nv_Hookbill_d1
loadout = Ca_Nv_Hookbill_loadout01<– the weapon loadout
ship_archetype = Hookbill <-- the ship type
…
level = d3 <-- the pilot’s rank - note below d5 they won’t fight much!
…
pilot = pilot_military_ace <-- pilot behaviour tactics
npc_class = lawful, class_fighter, d1 <— ship difficulty = rank = 1

[NPCShipArch]
nickname = Ca_Nv_Kestrel_d2
loadout = Ca_Nv_Kestrel_loadout01
ship_archetype = Kestrel
…
level = d5 <-- pilot rank
npc_class = lawful, class_fighter, d2 <— ship difficulty = rank = 2

Simple when you understand it. We have covered this before in more structured detail.

Unfortunately this forum doesn’t lend itself to easy finding of posts, but do a search and it should come up:-
http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2604

http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2635

http://the-starport.net/freelancer/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2863

Okay, if what you’ve put in those files is the only entries you have for your ships then you are only asking li_n_grp and li_p_grp to fly the condor and no other ship, so unsurprisingly that is what they are flying.

This is what you have in factionprops:

[FactionProps]
affiliation = li_n_grp
legality = lawful
nickname_plurality = singular
msg_id_prefix = gcs_refer_faction_li_n_short
jump_preference = jumpgate

;npc_ship = ca_navy_hookbill_fighter_1
;npc_ship = wingman_ca_navy_hookbill_fighter_1

npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d1-2
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d1-2
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d3
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d3
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d4-19
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d4-19
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d1-2_alt
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d1-2_alt
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d3_alt
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d3_alt
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d4-19_alt
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d4-19_alt

[FactionProps]
affiliation = li_p_grp
legality = lawful
nickname_plurality = singular
msg_id_prefix = gcs_refer_faction_li_p_short
jump_preference = jumpgate

npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d1-2
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d1-2
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d3
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d3
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d4-19
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d4-19
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d1-2_alt
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d1-2_alt
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d3_alt
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d3_alt
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d4-19_alt
npc_ship = wingman_ca_condor_fighter_d4-19_alt

This entry:
npc_ship = ca_condor_fighter_d1-2

makes a call to the npc ships file to look for that entry where it will find:

[NPCShipArch]
nickname = ca_condor_fighter_d1-2 –-----------------> This entry
loadout = ca_condor_fighter_loadout01
level = d2
ship_archetype = ca_condor
state_graph = FIGHTER
npc_class = lawful, class_fighter, d1
pilot = pilot_default

As you can see this references the line:

ship_archetype = ca_condor ---------->ca_condor in shiparch.ini

That’s the ship they will fly.

Under li_n_grp you have commented out the hookbill so they will not fly it:

;npc_ship = ca_navy_hookbill_fighter_1
;npc_ship = wingman_ca_navy_hookbill_fighter_1

I assume you understand that by placing ; in front of a line of text that the information will not be read yes? Sorry if that’s a dumb question but I have to ask just in case.

Don’t ask me what on earth the alt npc ships are for, do you know? The wingmen are obvious. I’ve never looked through the code of flak88 but the guys a friggin legend and if this is your first attempt at making a mod then you sure have thrown yourself in at the deep end, that mod has some of the craziest hacks going from what I understand.

Is this your first mod? Have you tinkered with the SDK instead, unaltered code would make it far easier for you to follow tutorials and there’s stacks of them for you to reference.

The way I look on it is you’re converting some very nice ships, no matter what else you will still have those ships which is your base materials. Have you considered just going on a mission and converting all the ships you want for your mod and stacking them up in a folder. Then hardpoint them and make sur files for them.

Once you’ve done that you can set about dealing with getting them into your mod one ship at a time. Just get them into the game so you can fly them, test them thoroughly. Once you have all your ships in and working then concentrate on another step like getting the npcs flying them.

It seems to me that you might be trying to do a lot of things at the same time which can allow mistakes to creep in, they may be minor at first but they soon add up and before you know it you’re completely lost.

Make a good plan and take it steady, one step at a time, when you do that one thing, test it, if it works make a backup copy for a fall back so if you screw up the next step you can fall back without loss.

Here is a video tut i made a while ago on how to do nice looking ship buttons a very easy way

Its on german but even with no german knowledge u should understand what I’m doing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj_o1UvSa0Y

Encounters are one of the stickiest parts of modding to understand in the beginning but they are quite understandable.

Just take a day and trace through one of the tutorials to understand the chain and connections between the parts, then it is straightforward.

After doing 3-4 encounters from scratch it will become second nature.

Then you should try multi-group surs from scratch. Heheheh.

Never heard of a maximum. If there’s one it’s surely something like 255.

Just don’t forget that quantity is NEVER better than quality. It’s preferable to have a small, well-built mod than a large, boring one.

It may look good as a bullet point, but FL never benefits from having players so spread out that it takes ten hours to find another guy.

EDIT: And don’t overestimate how many unique systems you can make. EVE’s systems don’t work the same as FL’s do; there’s just about no travel time in EVE between planets, a lot of things are procedurally generated, etc. You don’t want to make a carbon copy of EVE in FL, you want to adapt EVE’s universe and style to FL.

IIRC Underverse has more than 100 systems.

Yes, 108. I think Solurus Systems has over 300. The main limit is finding places to fit them all in lol.

You can use decimal positions so that the map doesn’t start looking like a grid when you start filling it with lots of systems, like the discovery map has turned into.

Ozed.

just some stats from http://www.moddb.com/mods/discovery-freelancer, and i doubt they have reached the max yet.

• 260 player flyable ships in the game total, of which 225 are introduced by Discovery;
• About 110 new player flyable ship models introduced by version 4.85;
• 134 systems in the game total, of which 79 are introduced by Discovery;
• 11 new systems in 4.85, with about 30 systems receiving significant updates in the latest version;
• 448 bases in the game total, of which about 275 are introduced by Discovery;
• 91 factions in the game total, 44 new factions added by Discovery, of which 11 were introduced by version 4.85;
• Over 100 new weapons introduced in 4.85, upping the number of new Discovery weapons above 200;
• 46 new commodities introduced in 4.85, with multiple new trade routes;
• 117 role-playing IDs in Discovery, of which 53 introduced by version 4.85;
• About 10,000 new infocard texts introduced by Discovery, of which about 7,000 added or rewritten for 4.85.

if im right and youre talking about moddb, you won’t need any development team. besides there are sure some lone modders over here who would like to help you essentially with your project if you need it and have time to organize it. on the other hand there are multiple lone modders who did their mods without any team and got results worthy even more than being mentioned.

You have misunderstood what they ask for on moddb. None of the Freelancer mod makers are “companies”. We’re either single modders like myself or groups of talented individuals who get together to make a mod. None of us earn money from it that’s for sure lol.

All moddb want is a website which you can make in half an hour using freewebs. That is that. I have three sites on moddb and have never been asked if i’m a company. You’ve simply read the requirements wrong.