few modding questions

[Pocus]

Hi,

Is there a working utility around to edit some parameters in the races file, the one I found so far is not working (it tries to connect to a distant site and fails).

I'm surprised no one did a small mod with ship names for many races. Is everyone still using the city names from the vanilla game? I can't imagine that some of you are not using custom ship names, with themes (like ravager theme, merchant theme, sea creatures names etc.)

I have done a small one myself but I guess there are others around?

Last but not least, has anyone tried to reduce the number of construction resources, down to 4 or 5 (common metal, rare metal etc.?) that should ease much the AI that is probably not able to gather all the necessary resources at time.

[DasTactic]

Hi Pocus,

I tweak a few of the factions from time to time but I can't remember a time that an actual utility was built. I think the issue is that that so much of what you end up changing with factions is part of global files with all the factions. Also the files are just CSV format rather than something like XML so they tend to be a bit all over the place. Would be nice to have though. Each of the files has information at the top and from there it works very much like a spreadsheet. The easiest approach I've found is to use file comparison software to check the changes from mod to mod or back to vanilla.

I'm not sure you can split ship naming up too much. You can re-make the shipNames.txt but I'm not sure if this is just for the player or for all the ships in the game.

I'm not sure about the specifics of reducing resources. Adding to them is doable but I can't remember anyone simplifying them.

Not much help with those, sorry.

[Pocus]

That's ok, I'll do some editing on my side. I was speaking of designNames.txt, I find it weird that nobody went ahead and proposed something else than the vanilla city names.

Unrelated, am I right that there is a maximum of 50 shipsets?

[Retreat1970]

Unrelated, am I right that there is a maximum of 50 shipsets?

Yes

[Sabranan]

Pocus if you're talking about my tool it should work even if it can't connect. It checks for updates when you run it, but if it fails to connect it should still just run once it times out. Should be a matter of seconds.

That said it doesn't edit the shipNames.txt file, since that's literally just a list of ship names (and I believe they're global, I don't think you can edit ship names by race). It's easier to edit in notepad than it would be in a tool. Race files are a different story, it should make it much easier to edit them.

Regarding construction resources, you could reduce the number of them but that would involve removing any references to said resources in the components.txt and race files. It would be easier just to lower the amount of each resource required.

[Pocus]

It's working [:D]
Yesterday I was on a poor internet connection and perhaps I did not wait enough for the time out, I don't quite remember. Today at home the app launched. Nice program, congrats!

It has parsed RetreatUE Bacon mod and it generates a high number of warnings. Should I bother with them, I would say yes, but people seems to enjoy the mod even without all these troubles and my time is limited. Also, these are UE issues, but no one is supporting the mod anymore I believe.

Side question, when setting up a custom game, I guess I should not specify the Shakturi, as they will appear with the storyline. But is that true also for the mechanoid?

[Retreat1970]

Also, these are UE issues, but no one is supporting the mod anymore I believe.

Current versions are final. Modify RetreatUE however you want.

[Sabranan]

I don't recall anything game-breaking from Retreat UE but like most mods it does have some typos. Might be a good mini-project for someone who has the time to go through and eliminate all the warnings, but as it is it works fine so I would say as a player you shouldn't have any major issues.