[Sundansyr]

Since the engines are the very first thing put on the ship in the components equipped list... I've put them in every time.

Conversely, if I set 'equipped components' to 0 (zero), there are no problems. There are also no component slots on the ships! Regardless of the components file. I've noticed on the playerpurchaseships that the 'equipped components' line is parsed: 0 // 0 rather than with the number of equipped components for that ship record.

As for the acrobat file...
It says *nothing* about how to open, edit, save, or manipulate Xfiles. It just says what they are and basically what they do for the game... nothing more informative than that.
To whit: I took an existing Xfile and merely pointed it to a new mesh using an existing model (recolored), renamed it, adjusted the spaceobjects file, component layout file, and all that, and it shows up just fine in the game start. Just crashes whenever I try to use it or open the spacedock (when it's made buyable).
My layout is within the required parameters.

May it be weapons? I've noticed that regardless of firing arcs I have seen that very seldom will a ship fire more than two weapons at a time even if they're all in the same firing chain. (button '1', for instance)

This new model has 7 weapons, 5 of which have forward arcs.