Is there a way to add new ships to the game (using the same model as existing ships)?

There are several tutorials in the download section, try drizzt4.0 ship creating tutorialv1.5.pdf

After all the 3d modelling stuff there is a lot of information on this topic after page21.

The Blood Dragon, the CSV and Juni’s Defender are probably the easiest to make player accessible because they are already in the game.

Yeah, it’s a little harder than just making an already-flyable ship sold at a station, but not too much harder. Sure thing, I’ll make a video for you. My goal is to open up Freelancer modding to more people to help grow the scene further. Right now, there’s a core of us old-school players and modders from the old Lancers Reactor (TLR) days. Would be awesome for some new blood or even just more people from the good old days.

Not too much trouble at all. I’m a massive fan of helping the community grow. More than happy to create tutorials and videos. Just time poor in general, haha.

I wrote a small tutorial below for you ahead of the video. See if this works out.

1 - Go into EQUIPMENT/goods/ini.
2 - Add the following good to the file:

[Good]
nickname = bd_hull
category = shiphull
ship = ku_dragon
price = 500
ids_name = 12006
item_icon = Equipment\models\commodities\nn_icons\ku_elite.3db

This lets us use the ship as a good item. Note the hull part in bold. This is pointing to the Blood Dragon version, which we can find by looking in DATA/SHIPS/KUSARI/KU_BLOOD_DRAGON. There’s a ku_dragon.cmp file which is the hull of the ship. But, that’s not enough. We want it to have things on it though and sell as a package.

3 - We now need to make a package that uses that hull good. Scroll down a bit more and add this:

[Good]
nickname = bd_package
category = ship
hull = bd_hull
addon = ge_ke_engine_01, internal, 1
addon = ku_elite_power01, internal, 1
addon = ge_s_scanner_01, internal, 1
addon = ge_s_tractor_01, internal, 1
addon = shield01_mark04_hf, HpShield01, 1
addon = LargeWhiteSpecial, HpHeadlight, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight01, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight02, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight03, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight04, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight05, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight06, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight07, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight08, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight09, 1
addon = SlowSmallGreen, HpRunningLight10, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail01, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail02, 1
addon = DockingLightRedSmall, HpDockLight01, 1
addon = DockingLightRedSmall, HpDockLight02, 1

I just copied the ke_package since it is the Kusari Elite package, which is also a Dragon. Notice the part in bold which is setting our Blood Dragon hull to be used by this ship package.

4 - Add the package to a station/planet. I’m adding it to Manhattan, which is Li01_01_Base. Open EQUIPMENT/market_ships.ini. Look for the base you want to add it to, which for me is the above. Modify it to have the package you want to sell, which is our bd_package.

[BaseGood]
base = Li01_01_base
marketgood = gf2_package, 4, -1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1
marketgood = lf_package, 1, -1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1
marketgood = bd_package, 1, -1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1

5 - Load the game fresh and test. You should see the red hull Dragon for sale.

basic-meme wrote:
I would appreciate a more detailed, step-by-step walkthrough, if it is no huge trouble to you, thanks. This seems to be a fair bit more complicated a process than just editing ship dealers or editing story mode reputation changes.

Did you give my tutorial explanation a go? Just interested to see if you got it working or not. Got Covid at the moment so haven’t been able to do much.

traversal wrote:
Got Covid at the moment so haven’t been able to do much.

Hope you get better soon.

To change stats, you are looking for the [Ship] section with nickname = ku_dragon in Freelancer\DATA\SHIPS\shiparch.ini

To adjust weapons, you modify hp_type = hp_gun_special_# with the # representing the class of weapon 1-10. The second part to that is HpWeapon## with the ## representing 01-06 which is the ID of the weapon mount, in this case, the Dragon has 6 gun mounts. Example:

hp_type = hp_gun_special_9, HpWeapon01, HpWeapon02, HpWeapon03, HpWeapon04

This translates to Class 9 guns can be mounted on gun mounts 01-04.

Other stats are found in [Ship] section that you can adjust to meet whatever your goals are. As for adjusting the size of the model, Someone else will need to chime in since I’ve never messed with that stuff. Hope this helps.

Unlike equipment, ship stats are not generated by rt reading of the arch file. Stats are written by hand and read from infocards.dll. In other words, in game displayed ship stats will not change if you alter the actual stats in shiparch - that has to be edited manually with a .dll editor

So what he’s saying is that the info sheet will still show the old stats but if you attempt to mount the higher-rated weapons/equipment on the ship it will work.

Here are some scripts for the Blood Dragon Samurai and CSV. I’ve added a cockpit file for the CSV which i’ve also included.

To make these for sale, add these lines to the base of your choice in market_ships.ini. Remember you can only have three ships for sale maximum at any one base.

marketgood = junkercsv_package, 1, -1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1

marketgood = samurai_package, 1, -1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1

The Samurai and CSV_Junker are mods. You need to use FLMM to run those. You make a folder in FLMM’s mods folder for each and drop the XML file into them. Then, in FLMM, enable that mod.

The csv.ini file is the cockpit file used by the CSV_Junker mod. You can see that line in the XML file for it where the cockpit is defined. But, I’m not sure why the mod for the CSV is pointing to SHIPS\UTILITY\CSV\ as where you need to put the csv.ini. I’d think it better to make a new directory (e.g. DATA\COCKPITS\UTILITY\CSV), put the csv.ini in there and then change that line in the .xml file to point to it.

Why was the non-cockpit folder used, @Dromedary?

As for DLL editing, you can use something like FLDev (this is what I use). Inside InfoCards.dll you can then search for your ship name. The infocard entry after each ship has the stats.

For example, I looked up Hawk which shows as ID 066534. That’s the ship info and flavour text. On the next line I can see 066535 showing 4/0 3300 45 26/26 4 6 M, CM, CD which are all the equipment it supports. 066536 is the file with the labels for those, so it has Stats, Gun/Turrets Mounts, etc as text values.

If you’re adding them as copies to then have as ‘new’ ships, you’d need to make three infocard entries per the above - one for the flavour text, one for the stats, and one for the text next to each stat. In the files where you added the red Dragon earlier, note those IDS entries in the ini file. Those need to point to your new infocards.

Technically, yes, you could just reuse those IDS to have the same stats. But that’ll mean the ship will also have the same name and description. If that’s not a problem though, go for it!

DLL editing is easy using something like FLDev, though.

1 - Load it up.
2 - In the Home tab, select the Freelancer.ini and resources.dll file using their Browse buttons.
3 - Click the DLL Editor tab. Select a DLL file in the DLLs List (in top-left) and click the Active checkbox just beneath it to see what’s in the selected DLL file.
4 - Search for whatever you need in the middle search bar and hit Enter or the Search button to perform the search.
5 - Click on the entry you want to change, change it in the text field, then click Update. They’re not yet applied, though.
6 - In the lower-middle you can see your changes and untick any you change your mind on before you Apply.
7 - Click Apply Changes when ready. You will get a warning that this is not reversible.

Not that this is for editing of existing datacards, not making new ones. You can download the FLDev starter DLL files, which are blank DLLs for you to write new infocards to.

Nice! Yeah, if the stats display there, then you’ve done it properly. You can test it out against enemies, too. Jump into a normal Dragon and note the damage, then go up against the same enemies in the Red Dragon and see. Since the Stiletto has more shields, the damage should appear as less taken off the shield bar.

Correct! Juni’s Defender is actually even easier, because it is already set up in shiparch.ini and uses the normal Defender cockpit.

Look up “nickname = li_elite2” and you’ll see her Defender. All you need to do is make a hull and ship package separately for it in goods.ini, then in market_ships.ini, sell that package at the base you want.

For example, add these to your goods.ini:

[Good]
nickname = le2_hull
category = shiphull
ship = li_elite2
price = 10
ids_name = 237033
item_icon = Equipment\models\commodities\nn_icons\li_elite.3db

[Good]
nickname = le2_package
category = ship
hull = le2_hull
addon = ge_le_engine_01, internal, 1
addon = li_elite_power01, internal, 1
addon = ge_s_scanner_01, internal, 1
addon = ge_s_tractor_01, internal, 1
addon = shield01_mark02_hf, HpShield01, 1
addon = LargeWhiteSpecial, HpHeadlight, 1
addon = SlowSmallBlue, HpRunningLight01, 1
addon = SlowSmallBlue, HpRunningLight02, 1
addon = SlowSmallBlue, HpRunningLight03, 1
addon = SlowSmallBlue, HpRunningLight04, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail01, 1
addon = contrail01, HpContrail02, 1
addon = DockingLightRedSmall, HpDockLight01, 1
addon = DockingLightRedSmall, HpDockLight02, 1

Then, add this to the base you want to sell it at in market_goods.ini:

marketgood = le2_package, 0, -1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1

No worries. Yep, same process. Just duplicate the sections of the files you’ve been editing, and then change the relevant ID for the copied ship to refer to the stats of another.

If you want your own custom stats, you’ll need to use FLDev to create a custom entry in an infocard, and if you do that, you might as well make a custom ship name and description, too, since those require custom infocards, too. Then you’d refer to the ID of the new infocard.

Good to see someone else getting into FL modding again! I’m going to make some tutorial videos on what I know. I’m trying to learn how to model custom ships and get them appearing in the game, but currently still having issues with that. Once I learn how to do that successfully, I think I can cover all the basics in videos. Hopefully we’ll get even more people having fun with FL modding again.