Swapping ship picture
 

Folks, I Need some AI design / Mod advice for an unusual thing I’m trying to do in a Mod’ I’m working on (Battlefleet Gothic). My problem is that I’d like to make 2 warships of the same size that are same in all respects except for the picture. My intention is to have one picture used for ships with a certain weapon, and the standard one used for all the rest. I’m using the carrier picture for the unique picture so all standard shipsets will have it. I’ve fiddled around with AI tags but can’t find a way so far that will force the use of one ship definition (with its unique picture) over the standard one.

Has anybody done this or have any ideas?

Re: Swapping ship picture
 

The only way to achieve what you want is to create a new entry in vehiclesize.txt - more or less identical to the first one, except for the image. Then you ought to be able use mounts to make sure that your weapon can only be used on one of the ships. (You might have to make one hull 1kt larger than the other or something, to make sure that the mount can only be used on one of the hulls.)

Re: Swapping ship picture
 

Dogscoff is correct. You can also give the second design a new tech requirement, adding a technology to the tech.txt file and giving it a starting value of 1. That means when you start the game its already researched. Then put all of your new weapons for it under that technology. For example:

Big Ship Technology
Level I Gives you Big Ship Hull
Level I Big Ship Weapons Technology

Big Ship Weapons Technology
Level I Big Gun A
Level II Big Bun B
etc.

If you opt for Dogscoffs idea and go with mounts, simply make the component 10,000kt and give it a specific weap family number. When you create the mount, set the mount size min/max to the size of the HULL you want it to work with and us the weapon or component number fir tge 10,000kt comp or weap that you wish.

For examples, look to the Star Trek Mod, Federation Cloaking Technology, Federation or is it Defiant Cloaking in the mounts and components files.

Good luck.

Also there is a lot of information over at the Mod Works on www.spaceempires.net/home in the forums.

Re: Swapping ship picture
 

That will work, but you could omit the step using mounts (since they are looking for a certain hull size) and just make the new hull one ton larger or smaller than the other design with the same effect. Then you can directly associate the new design with the slightly larger or smaller hull with ease from the design creations file.

Thanks for the help. I was thinking along the lines of using hulls of the exact same size and could not noodle that one out.