Ships in Design Templates, images folder and shipnames.txt

[rjord2021]

Hi

I was going through the design templates for the base game and comparing the ships in the design template with the ships in the image folder.

The picture below is for humans .



Q1... I have highlighted in blue 7 ships in family 4 that have both bmp and png formats. Any reason for the bmp formats here and do I need to create a bmp format as well?



Q2... Ships in Images folder not in Design template.Where do the ships like the bomber get their specifications of what component is on the ship or base?

Bomber , explorationship, fighter, and the genericbase



Q3... Ships in Design Template not in images folder. Are these related to the generic base in the image folder?

defensivebase, energyresearchstation, hightechresearchstation, monitoringstation



Q4... Shipnames.txt Is there a way this file can be specific to certain races. If I have a base called Starbase 17 I do not want the Romulans or Klingons creating a base with that name.
Edit: Think this is done using Design names index in the races file.

[mordachai]

Q1:
You don't need the .bmp. This game has a few handfuls of files strewn about leftovers from development.

Also - most of the modding is done as a "look here first, then fall-back on what's int he base game folders" - not all folders work that way - some have to be 100% filled in in your mod - the modding guide has more info on that. But it's easy to test - put what you want in your mod - start a new game - choose that race & start a custom game at tech level 3 or whatever to enable all of the ships & then see if everything matches up in the ship designer, or etc.

Same thing with all of the .scc files - those are from their source control system - and can be deleted from your mod (or not copied there in the first place). I have liberally removed what appears to be garbage files from my mod without any issues whatsoever (though I have seen folks wrongly claiming that some of this stuff is needed - never in my testing - nor in feedback given about my mod - nor rationally thinking - junk is just junk).

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Q2:
bombers & fighters are in the fighters.txt file in the root game folder (q.v.). No "design" to it - just a list of capabilties for each fighter / bomber in your mod. There is a template for your explorer (explorationship.txt <-> explorationship.png)...

Q3:
defensive base uses medium space station icon. I hate it, but that's the way it is.
the research stations - I don't recall which one they use. Just build one or look at it in the game editor to see what it matches up to in that list.