Custom Hulls

Jewelry+Hull = Template for tech independent ship

from GalCiv2 Forums
I've seen many posts like "Why can't I see my custom ship in my game? I didn't put any components on it" The reason is that each ship class has an inherent miniaturization associated with it. What we really need is the ability to create custom hulls-- templates of just hulls and jewelry that we can then use as a starting point for any ship. I've done some of this, by creating empty hulls at start up and saving them with the prefix X- I then use these designs as quick starts. However, my medium, large, and huge designs rarely get reused. Either they are missing some tech, or they are obsolete when I'm ready to build them.

Wouldn't it be much better to be able to save off a hull and jewelry as a template, that could be used at any tech level, assuming you could build that base hull size?

--Brad
ideas
6,831 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Bump for the good idea
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
amen, put this in the minor tweaks section & get people to ask for the same thing
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This is an absolutely great idea. The problem I've begun to have is that my shipbuilding list clutters up intensely--ships that I want to build I'm missing one tech associated with (but which isn't crucial to it) and others I can't seem to figure out why they don't show up until they're long obsolete.

Maybe a solution would be to have a "ship designer" module that's not truly in-game--sort of like a map editor for Civ-style games, where you could do the "building up" of designs with the presumption of all techs available, and you pick the miniaturization levels the ship's built with, and so forth. At the very least, a ship hull+jewelry builder that's outside the gameplay itself would really help--sometimes I'm not ready to play a full game, but I'd enjoy building a ship.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
@harperBrad

You can do the same thing with Medium, Large and Huge designs. Check out my Terran Ship Pack download in the Library here.

You have to first open the game in Cheat mode. Enter in the Windows Start/Run line the following command, substituting your path to the Galciv2.exe.

G:\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\GalCiv2.exe cheat

Once in Cheat mode, start a game as the player you want to make models for, with the type hull design you want to use. Once the game starts, hit CTRL-SHIFT-R. Click okay on all the screens that come up - this will give you all techs.

Go into ship builder and design the basic hull size you want to use. Put on any jewelry you want to. DO NOT put anything on it as far as engines, weapons, sensors, etc. Save the ship with a naming scheme of your choice to denote it is a base hull template. Once you are done, close the game. You may want to save the game so you can always use it just for ship Building. That way you don't have to use cheat mode unless you want to design stuff for another race. I call mine as "Ship Building All techs Human" save for example.

Now you have to go into the My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\ships folder. (I'd make a backup of this entire folder first in case you have issues and need to restore it.) You will see two files for each ship - the 'shipname'.shipcfg, which holds the graphics data such as what is on each hardpoint, etc. This one will not be important for now.

The second type is the 'shipname'.xml file. This is where we will do our changes. Open it up in the text editor of your choice - notepad works fine, I use the free version of XMLSpy because it uses colors to highlight the different parts of the XML code.

You will se something like this (I replaced all ' - ' with either '<' or ">" - for posting reasons as the forum will not let you post the code with those in it.)

-?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?-
-GC2Ships-
-Ship Name="GatorBase"-
-Component-CargoHull0-/Component-
-Description-Troop Transport-/Description-
-DisplayName-Gator Base-/DisplayName-
-Model-UD_GatorBase1-/Model-
-Tech_Requirement-Planetary Invasion-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Impulse Drive Mark II-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Basic Life Support-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-ImpulseDrive-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Advanced Troop Mods-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Warp Drive II-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Extended Life Support-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Warp Drive-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Warp Drive IV-/Tech_Requirement-
-Tech_Requirement-Warp Drive V-/Tech_Requirement-
-UserDefined-1-/UserDefined-
-/Ship-


To get the ship to appear you simply remove all the tech_requirement lines you don't want. It will then appear with the hull size when it is researched as the only tech requirement. You can leave in any of the requirements you want to keep. For instance, in the example above, this is my Base Template Troop ship. I want it to appear with the Planetary Invasion tech and not before (as it is a cargo hull, it would otherwise appear at the start.) So I edit it to read

-?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?-
-GC2Ships-
-Ship Name="GatorBase"-
-Component-CargoHull0-/Component-
-Description-Gator Class Troop Transport w/16 Atmosphere Assault Boats Base hull-/Description-
-DisplayName-Gator Base-/DisplayName-
-Model-UD_GatorBase2-/Model-
-Tech_Requirement-Planetary Invasion-/Tech_Requirement-
-UserDefined-1-/UserDefined-
-/Ship-
-/GC2Ships-


Pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

One caveat regarding the 'Model" line. This is the line that pairs the XML file with its companion "shipname".shipcfg file. If you save ships with the same name in the game, each time you will get a new shipcfg file with an incremental number at the end. I.E. UD_GatorBase0.shipcfg is the original, UD_GatorBase11.shipcfg then ext saved ship with the same name, UD_GatorBase2.shipcfg the next, etc. I use this because I save my creations several times while working on them - some take several hours - and I don't always have the time to finish at one sitting. But if I make a mistake, I can always manually point the XML file to an earlier shipcfg file to go back and start again.

I always save my base templates in an archived ships folder so that when I start a new game I simply have to delete the old ships folder (after archiving it) and replace it with the folder containing my base designs. This way each game will start fresh.

Another caveat is that the ships will also be saved in each saved game file - be careful as this could lead to confusing ship designs if using the same name from game to game. That is one reason I clear out my old ship folders. I also archive the save games with the old ship folder and restore both together if I want to play it again.

(BTW, for the metaverse ships, the path is slightly different. \My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\Metaverse\ships )

Hope this helps - let me know if there are any questions. Again, you can download and check out my Terran Fleet Ship pack to see how this actually works.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Important Note!!!!! (Can't edit my post - they have removed that feature for some reason.)

This method only works with version 1.1 and above. 1.0 used uneditable (by the user) shipclass files.

Also with 1.1 Beta version 3, ships will auto-obsolete, making this method difficult. This has been fixed in 1.1 Beta version 3A realeased tonight. I just verified it.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What I did was create a basic hull design with all the goodies. Used it through a game and did modificatons as I went. Once I finally had a base hull design I liked, I removed all engines, sensors, weapons, defences, etc so that all that was left was the base hull with jewelry. These were labled BASIC(personal hull name type). Then once that particular base hull becomes available, you get your hull design to build with.