MOD -- new ship classes

[Samurai]

Hi,

One of the things I find annoying about SE3 and SE4 is having to use the same ship picture for different types of ships.

For instance, say I design and build a cruiser predominantly fitted with beam weapons. Then I design and build a cruiser sporting missile launchers. They look identical, which hampers, in my opinion, the ease of tactical combat, organizing and reorganizing fleets, etc.

A little while ago, I realized SE4 provides a work-around by affording the possibility of adding new ship classes.

Because I like to play the game starting out will all techs available, almost all of my ships are of the dreadnought size. So I went into the vehiclesize.txt file and copied the section for dreadnought and pasted it four times. I then changed each of the new ones to:

DreadnoughtB
DreadnoughtC
DreadnoughtD
DreadnoughtE

I left all stats unchanged, so there wouldn't be any advantage or disadvantage to using any of them.

Then I added appropriately named mini and portrait photos for the new classes to my race folder.

So far, this is working great. Because I like using a Trek-based shipset, I can now choose from five Dreadnought-sized ships that look like the Enterprise-A, Defiant, Excelsior, Enterprise D and Enterprise E.

I have one major concern: Can this in any way screw up the AIs' ship-building (by adding in ship classes to the main vehiclesize.txt file)? My guess is no, because --I believe-- the AIs will never give orders to build ships using the new sizes.

Am I right?


[This message has been edited by Samurai (edited 19 January 2001).]