Topic: Shiplist, strings and names.

[Czar Mohab]

Ok, so after about a 2-3 year stint without playing SFC 1, EAW or OP I finally decided that I needed to revive OP for purposes of playtesting/tweaking a ship for a story I'm working on (see Second Chances). Its been, like i said, 2-3 years since I have tweaked anything in OP, and I know how to edit the shiplist with all the specs and whatnot, but I think that there is more to it to bring the ship into the campaign (it works in skirmish). I know I have been successful because the BBX I edited in way back when not only works, but is very available when playing from new campaign.

So my issue is two fold. One, how to get the new ships into the campaign, and two, how to get it to stop reading as "Advanced Battle Raider" ingame (as ship class) and read as "Advanced Battle Frigate" (or in the case of the BBX, "Advanced Battleship") ?

Czar "Such a nub question for someone such as myself" Mohab, who notes that the word "nub" was intentional.

P.S. Thanks in advance!

[Czar Mohab]

So did I mispost this question or something?

The search function doesn't help me much, if that is your concern. Believe me, I looked. Heck, if someone could just even link me a page where the answer is, I'd be grateful.

Czar "Maybe no one is home..." Mohab

[Rod ONeal]

You need to edit the strings.txt file to add your ship type.
The section below from the strings file is where the ship type is created in game. You can see the section "|Advanced Battle|Advanced Battle Raider". The left side is what the game reads from the shiplist. It's limited to 15 spaces maximum (that's total spaces not characters). That's why it only says "Advanced Battle". That's 15 spaces. The right side is what it says in game when it sees "Advanced Battle" in the shiplist. It says "Advanced Battle Raider".

|Advanced Light |Advanced Light Raider
|Advanced Heavy |Advanced Heavy Raider
|Advanced Battle|Advanced Battle Raider
|Raider-X Cruise|Raider-X Cruiser
|Adv. Salvage Cr|Advanced Salvage Cruiser
|Adv. Slaver|Advanced Slaver

To this section I would add "|Adv Battle Frig|Advanced Battle Frigate" Like I've done below.

|Advanced Light |Advanced Light Raider
|Advanced Heavy |Advanced Heavy Raider
|Advanced Battle|Advanced Battle Raider
|Raider-X Cruise|Raider-X Cruiser
|Adv. Salvage Cr|Advanced Salvage Cruiser
|Adv. Slaver|Advanced Slaver
|Adv Battle Frig|Advanced Battle Frigate

In the shiplist, where I'm assuming you have Advanced Battle Frigate written, change it to "Adv Battle Frig" (without the ""). This will make "Advanced Battle frigate show up in game.

There are a number of things in the shiplist that can prevent a ship from showing in campaigns. There's no easy way for me to know (or guess) which parameter(s) might be preventing yours from showing up.
The best suggestion that I can make is to copy (Ctrl+c) and paste (Ctrl+v) a ship that shows up in campaign and edit the specs to create your new vessels.  Do this manually by opening the shiplist and copying and pasting. I don't recommend using shipedit to create all new ships. You can usually use shipedit safely to edit specs though after you've done the copy/paste. Some people won't even do that with shipedit. They prefer doing all editing with excel.
Only change the attributes that you need to. Don't change things like Years of availability or special role, etc.. Just change the power, weapons, and those types of things. The other attributes are some of the things that determines availability.

hope this helps

[Czar Mohab]

Yeah, that actually sounds familiar... should work, thanks!.

Czar "no time to test now" Mohab