Cpt_Rei_Fukai wrote:
FYI: You may need to alter the base ownership in universe.ini as well for your edits to work correctly. The others seem to have forgotten that part.

You sure? Near as I can tell, just changing the system’s .ini file seems to have worked. I changed Pittsburgh to be controlled by Bretonia Police, a faction I’m currently neutral with, and when I flew out into space, Pittsburgh was neutral and it even said “Police Base” (normally, it says “DSE Base”) when I hovered my mouse pointer over it. As an additional test, I changed Fort Bush to be controlled by the Liberty Rogues, who are hostile to me. Sure, enough, when I flew out there, Fort Bush was hostile, said “Rogues Base”, and it even had Bounty Hunters shooting at it. I took a look at universe.ini (in the “DATA/UNIVERSE” folder) and it didn’t seem to have the usual faction and reputation text strings in it.

Well you don’t, because as the name already impies, the missions are random.

Well yeah, but there’s got to be a part of the game data that influences all the different aspects of those random missions, right? That’s what I want to try to change.

AFAIK the missions are influenced by five factors:
[olist]

• The offering faction
• The enermies of said faction
• What factions can occur in the vicinity of the base
• The valid mission types against the enemy faction
• Level requirements
  [/olist]
  You must decide which of those points you want to adress.

Like I said, what you want to achieve is a lot of work.

I know it’s going to take some effort on my end, but I do want to try to learn how to do this stuff. That’s why I want to take it slowly, one thing at a time, so that I can gradually take in how to do it and avoid information overload, and I’d be greatly appreciative to anybody who can help me out. So, let’s start from the top. What file or files do I need to look at to see how random missions are made, and what’s the first thing I should edit to start moving towards what I want to do?

Alright, I think I got it, thank you. Now, next, I would like to change the targets of random jobs. As I said before, I would like for the Blood Dragons to give jobs to attack Samura Industries, the Hogosha, and perhaps maybe the Outcasts too. How would I go about changing that?

Okay, what all .ini files do I need to edit just to change the faction that controls a given base? I just want to focus on that for now, ignore the other stuff I asked about for now.

Yeah, this does seem more complicated than what I’ve been doing up until now. I messed with the mbases.ini a bit, but the sheer amount of information in this one file is a bit overwhelming.

Let’s start simple and go one thing at a time. I’d greatly appreciate if someone could walk me through this and help me figure it out. I just think I’m going to need a little help doing this.

Let’s start with changing which faction controls a base. How do I change that? Editing the “localfaction” line does not appear to have done it, as I tested that by changing a friendly planet’s (specifically, Pittsburgh) localfaction to a faction I was neutral with, but the planet remained friendly/green when I clicked on it while out in space.

After spending some time editing reputation and ships, I’m starting to feel a bit more ambitious. Something I would like to do now, if it is not too complicated to do so, is edit a base to change the faction that controls it, change the random jobs that are offered there, and maybe the NPCs that can be found there. How would I do that? Is it possible simply by editing .ini files?

Specifically, I would like to do the following. If I could get specific (and simple) instructions for doing so, that’d be great.

== Change Kabukicho Depot’s ownership to the Blood Dragons, and fill it with Blood Dragon NPCs who say the same stuff that the NPCs in Kyoto Base say. (I don’t like how the Blood Dragons’ only base is sort of isolated off in it’s own system, so I’d like to give them another one in a more populated system.)

== Change Narita Outpost’s ownership to the Hogosha, and have Kabukicho’s original NPCs appear here. (Storywise, the Hogosha’s operations are “technically legal” so it kinda-sorta makes sense for them to have a base out in the open.)

== Change Shinjuku Station’s ownership to the Kusari Navy. Move Shinjuku Station’s NPCs to Yokohama Shipyard, and populate Shinjuku with Navy and Police NPCs.

== Change Planet Junyo’s ownership to the Kusari Police. The NPCs can stay the same, but the vendors and bartender should be aligned with the Police.

== Change Tsushima Depot’s ownership to the Kusari Navy.

== Change Nansei Research Complex’s ownership to the Blood Dragons, and fill it with Blood Dragon NPCs (and maybe a few Golden Cs since they’re supposed to be kindasorta allies). Move Nansei’s original NPCs to Tsushima. (Just so the Blood Dragons can have one more base, and Nansei is out of the way enough to be a plausible location for an outlaw faction’s base. I kind of like the Blood Dragons a little bit, if you couldn’t tell, and I’d like for them to have a bit more presence in the game. One BD base in an otherwise-empty system and a few BD NPCs on one other faction’s only base in a nearly as desolate system just isn’t enough.)

== Every base mentioned above also offers jobs that reflects the factions who now hang out there.

Or, failing that, perhaps I could create an entirely new base, cobbled together from existing assets? I have a feeling this would be more complicated, but it might not be. Couldn’t hurt to ask. I’d prefer to remodel existing bases though, depending on how complicated a task that is.

I’d also like to change the random jobs that specific factions offer. For example, the Blood Dragons give jobs to attack the Kusari Police and Kusari Navy. Would it be possible to change that to have them give jobs to attack Samura Industries and the Hogosha instead?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

Got it! Thanks.

One more thing I’d like to know. Is it possible to make a duplicate of an existing ship and just change the stats? Like, take a weak early-game ship, and make a new ship with stats suitable for mid-late game that has the same model, name, descrpition, etc of that early ship? I want to keep the existing ship as-is, but just make a second, better version of it that’s available later in the game.

Alright, I think I was able to get it. I went into shiparch, found “ku_dragon” and changed the value next to “ids_info3” to “66520” (which is the “ids_info3” value for “bw_elite”). In-game, this seems to have changed the red Dragon’s stats to display the Stiletto’s stats, while keeping the standard Dragon’s name and flavor text description. Did I do it right?

Another thing I’d like to do is make Juni’s Defender playable, if that’s possible without mods that require more than just editing plain text files. Is there something I can just copy and paste like I did to make the red Dragon playable?

Okay, I’m guessing the CSV doesn’t have a cockpit normally and thus can’t be made playable without a full-on mod? What’s the Samurai? Just a red Dragon with a different name?

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.

Hmm, if that’s how it works, then could I simply make my red Dragon have identical stats to an existing ship (say, the Stiletto for example), could I then change the red Dragon’s ID numbers to be the same as the ship whose stats I copied, in order to have the red Dragon’s stats be displayed accurately in-game without having to edit .dll files? Would that work?

Where do I place these files? What are they, even? Do I need to do anything else?

So I need some sort of program to edit infocards.dll? What should I use? I would like for the ship’s actual stats to be displayed ingame.

Also, someone mentioned earlier in the thread something about making Juni’s Defender and the CSV playable. Could I get something to copy-and-paste to make that possible, please? I’m mostly concerned about the red Dragon, but once I have this whole process figured out, more ships couldn’t hurt. I think those two are the only other ones that aren’t player usable, and are the appropriate size for a playable ship (i.e., not a transport or a gunboat or something. Actually, what would happen if you modded something huge to be playable and then tried to land somewhere with a docking port too small for your ship to fit inside? On rare occasions while playing, I’ve had my ship experience slight problems with pathing and collision detection while attempting to dock. Can’t imagine what a gunboat trying to dock with a tiny space station would be like. Part of me would kind of like a playable gunboat, but I can’t imagine it would actually work out that well.)

That doesn’t seem to have worked. The red Dragon’s stats are still identical to the regular Dragon.

Sorry! I took a break from this game for a little while. I admit, I kind of forgot about this thread in that time. I tried out what you said just now, copy-and-pasting that text into the appropriate filed, and it worked! I can now buy a red Dragon. Is there a way to change its stats instead of having it be identical to the regular Dragon? I’d like it to have higher stats/able to equip better weapons than the standard Dragon. I don’t mind just copying the same stats as another ship.

Would it also be possible, without too much difficulty, to scale the model up, just make the ship be bigger? Could I change the name and menu description as well? If that’s a bit more complicated than just editing text files in Microsoft Word though, I’d be fine with just changing the stats.

Also, I hope that you’re doing well and that you’ve made a full recovery since you made that post. Be safe and be well, everyone.

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.

I didn’t really understand anything that was said in the thread that you linked to, I’m sorry. Would it be possible for you to give me a more simplistic, step-by-step explanation?

Hi again, all. Something I’ve been wanting to do is to add some new playable ships to the game. Specifically, I want to make the red Dragon used by the Blood Dragon faction playable (preferably with somewhat better stats than the normally-playable brown Dragon). I was able to figure out on my own how to change the ships that each Ship Dealer offers, but how would I go about making non-playable ships playable, or adding new ships? I would greatly like to know, as I would really like to make the red Dragon playable. Another thing I was wanting to try doing was making a “Mk.2” version of each early-game ship, which has higher stats suitable for post-story, and can be bought around level 20-ish. That way, there’s a much larger selection of ships that are viable post-story, but doesn’t compromise the difficulty of the story or the sense of progression from getting stronger ships as you go through the story.

If that is at all possible (and if what I said made any sense, I’m kind of bad at explaining things), then I would greatly appreciate some instructions on the matter. Or, alternatively, if a mod or mods to do the things I want already exist, then I would greatly appreciate being directed to them. I am not very tech-savvy and have only just begun to learn about modding Freelancer, so I’d appreicate explanations that are explained in simple terms. Thanks in advance!

That worked, thank you! Alright, now I’ll see if I can edit the reputation changes for story missions so that next time I play through the story, I can have my reputation not be completely reset upon finishing.

I tried to install that patch you linked to, but it didn’t work. It fails to install every time I try. Is there anything else I can try?

adoxa wrote:
Assuming you’ve got JFLP (or otherwise decoded files) search the mission files [c]DATA\MISSIONS*\m*.ini[/c] for [c]SetRep[/c], then figure out which ones you want to comment out…

I’m sorry, I don’t really understand what any of that means. Could you explain it to me, please? Sorry, I’m not a very tech-savvy person, so if there’s a way to do it manually, I’m going to need a bit of a walk-through. I appreciate the help.

Hello all, I’m new here. I just rediscovered Freelancer after many long years. I had a good time playing through the story, but one thing that really bothered me is how the story mode messes with your reputation with the various factions to the point that earning reputation during the story is essentially meaningless. It makes sense for Liberty’s peacekeeping factions to turn hostile when you get publicly shitlisted by all of Liberty in-story, it makes sense for the Rheinland Military to become hostile once you start openly fighting them in-story, and it makes sense for various criminal factions to become neutral or friendly when the story requires you to cooperate with them. But the other scripted reputation changes feel excessive. The first mission in the Bretonia arc resets your reputation with the Bretonia Police and Armed Forces back to neutral for some reason. After one late mission, nearly every faction becomes hostile except for certain criminal gangs and a small handful of other factions. And when you finish the story, your reputation with nearly every faction (if not all of them) is changed to what appears to be the default values. I’m really not a fan of this. I spent a lot of time and credits trying to build up my reputation as I went through the story, and with it effectively being reset at the end of the story, it feels like all that effort was pointless.

So I ask, is there a mod that tones down those story-based reputation changes to not effectively reset everything towards the end? If not, could one feasibly be made without being too much of a hassle? Ideally, the only reputation changes I’d want to happen as a result of story progress are the ones that I said “made sense” up above, as well as Liberty peacekeepers/Rheinland Military becoming friendly/neutral again at the end of the story.

Thanks in advance to anybody who can help me out with this. I greatly appreciate it!