Wow Quarks, thank you very much for such a detailed answer!

While I was waiting for an answer yesterday, I went ahead and did some research of my own. I learned about the UTFEditor and read a guide about how to add hard points. I think I understood everything about the orientation vector (if I run into a problem I’ll be sure to ask it here ).
I also did some extensive combing through the different ini files, in order to see what I can do about a Nomad turret.

So, for the 2 things I wanted to do, I decided to proceed the following way:

1. For the freighter I decided to make a completely new one, albeit heavily based on the Humpback. This will impact the vanilla game balance the least and achieve my goal in a smoother fashion. That is, to have a freighter type ship that is viable late game (ie on the same level as the Very Heavy Fighter ships).
I will base it on the Humpback but buff it’s stats (armor, energy, shield and weapon classes) as well as add a new CD/Torpedo hardpoint. It will be available at Freeport 9 for lvl 30+ players. I’ll probably call it “Civilian CTE-5000 Bastion Freighter”.

2. The second thing I wanted to do is make high level turrets available, so my freighter has appropriate weapons to use. Originally I wanted to make the Nomad turret available, but after looking at it’s model with the UTFEditor and looking at how the other Nomad weapons are made available to the player, I decided against it (The 2 weapons are not mounted on any of the ships, they are a separate category (special nomad gun) and have completely different models. The reason players get them is because they are in the cargo of the Nomad ships, which then can be looted - found that in the loadouts.ini.).
So what I am going to do is just convert one of the 2 droppable Nomad guns into a turret (makes a lot more sense too - I mean the deal almost the same DPS). And while I am at it i want to convert a few of the artifact weapons found in wrecks into turrets too.

So, now that I know what I want to do, I have a few more questions.

1. For the new ship I managed everything so far, my only problem is the market_ships.ini. Why is the line of numbers that determines if the ship package is available so complicated? The first number is the required level, but then we have “-1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1” for available ships and “-1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1” for not available ships. Why isn’t it just 1 for available and 0 for not available?
Also, since I made a new package for my new ship (in the goods.ini) should I add it to every station’s block, even though I only plan on making it available at Freeport 9?

2. For the new turrets my question is: what changes to the ini sections of the weapons are necessary to transform a normal weapon into a turret. I now that I need to change the cmp and map files to “li_smlturret.cmp” and “li_equip.map”, since all equippable turrets in the game use these. I also need to change the “hp_gun_type” to the turret of the appropriate level. Anything else? What are these LODranges?

3. Finally, I would very much like to update the descriptions for the transformed weapons and make a new description for the new ship. Could you tell me how to change the dlls?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Hi all!
I would like to make some very simple changes to my single player game.
Sadly getting into the ini-file editing is prohibitively complicated, since - even after extensive searching - I couldn’t find a comprehensive guide on editing.

Here is what I know: I need a decrypter to unpack the inis. I got a program called FLUC. It worked fine.

Here are the 2 things I want to edit:
1. I want to change a few things about the Humpback freighter: Increase max energy and energy regen, increase the hull points (armor), increase the max allowed class for shields and guns/turrets and (if possible without adding a new hardpoint) add a CD/Torpedo slot.
2. I want to make the Nomad turret lootable (that is make them drop from defeated Nomads) and equipable in a turret slot.

I think for 1. I need to edit the “shiparch” ini and for 2. the “weapon_equip” ini.

Now comes the hard part. I found the sections in the ini files for the specific ship and weapons. Now I just need to know what lines I need to change and what values I need to input.

This is especially tricky for the Nomad Turret since unlike the lootable nomad weapons it was not intended to be equipped. Which means that it’s section is missing entries that the equippable nomad weapons have. Especially problematic is the question if the special texture for the Nomad turret will fit onto a turret hardpoint, since all equippable turrets use the same texture (“li_smlturret.cmp”). The Nomad turret uses the “no_gunship_turret.cmp” texture which is in the TURRET folder and not in the WEAPONS folder.

For the Humpback changes: Is it even possible to add a CD/Torpedo slot with out adding a new hardpoint or replacing an old one? That is to say, how can I find out if the Humpback model has a “HpTorpedo01” hardpoint?

Finally, what do I do with the ini files once I made the changes? Do I have to re-encrypt them? And if so how do I do it? Since FLUC does not seem to support something like that.

I would be grateful for some help. Thanks!

EDIT (some additional questions):
How do I change the player level requirements for ship purchase?
Will existing savegames still work after I changed the inis?

EDIT2:
What are the “xxx_good” ini files for?
Will the in-game descriptions of ship and weapon stats reflect the changes? Will the Nomad Turret have a description/stat page?