Making a player-usable custom ship style

Published on March 23, 2007 By kryo In Modding

In order to make a custom style for your own use, where all (or some) of the core ships are replaced:

1. During a game, design enough templates to make up the new style. You'll need at least one template of each hull size if you want it to be useable by the AIs. If you won't ever use it for an AI race and don't build core ships, you'll really only need a Cargo (preferably two) and a Medium template to cover the colony, miner, and survey ships you start with.

2. In AI race customization screen at game creation, pick the style you used when you made your templates, edit it, and save it under a new name.

3. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipStyles and open your style's xml file in a text editor.

4. Change the <Prefix> value to something unique, with no spaces or special symbols. Check through the file for any instances of the original style name you copied yours from and change them to your new name.

5. Go to My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\ShipTemplates, and rename the .shipcfg files for the templates you made in step 1 to match the prefix value you set in step 4.

6. Once renamed, copy at least the three starting ships' templates to GalCiv2\DarkAvatar\Data\ShipCfg as well (this is necessary to make them appear when you use the style for your own race), and rename them to match their roles in the same format as all the other files in that folder. So prefix_ColonyShip.shipcfg, prefix_SurveyShip.shipcfg, prefix_SpaceMiner.shipcfg, etc.

7. Start up the game, and go edit the style via AI race setup. Pick each item on the left and double-click the template on the right to assign it, then save.

Your style should now be ready for use. Whether you use it yourself or for an opponent, the three starting ships (and any future core ships or AI designs if you replaced more) should use the templates you made yourself.

Comments (Page 2)

Audiafox

on Jul 13, 2008

Hey, is there a way to make it so only one copy of each template appears?

This is in my OCCR mod, which is currently pending approval. For some reason or another, under the Templates tab in the Shipyard, two Colony Ships appear, two Constructors, etc. but not all of them are duplicated. One of them was my own design, the other the default Terran design (although I used the Altarian style when I made templates). Then I renamed all my templates and shipcfg files to match those, to hopefully override them, and now I get two copies of my design. So I have Colony Ship, which says unknown hull size and "default colony ship design" as the description. The other says cargo hull, and has no description.

And it isn't just that each is seen by the game as being two different templates with two different hull sizes. The Star Fury template is duplicated as well, but both copies say tiny hull (though only one has the description).

Also, I cleared out my My Games/GC2TwilightArnor/Ships and ShipTemplates folders, so that isn't where it's coming from. There are no duplicates in the mod's folders, so far as I can see. I noticed that MrKorx's Asa Race Mod (version 1.8) also has this problem.

USAF_Ronin

on Jul 13, 2008

When the game starts what three starting ships do you have on screen. The Terrans or yours?

Audiafox

on Jul 13, 2008

Mine. The ships work fine, but for some reason, under the templates tab in the Shipyard, a number of them are duplicated. Not all of them though.

USAF_Ronin

on Jul 15, 2008

What is the prefix for your ships?

Audiafox

on Jul 18, 2008

I use "s12" as a prefix. Again though, it isn't that the style doesn't work. It works fine. There are just a number of duplicated templates in the templates section.

I have tried just deleting the extras (which, BTW, look exactly like mine, not like the Terrans' or one of the other races), but it is only a temporary fix. They all come back when you start a new game.

Maybe you're on to it with the prefix though, perhaps the game automatically adds in some templates for the custom race?

USAF_Ronin

on Jul 18, 2008

I have a lot of player usable ship styles and I stay completely away from the "S#". In the library I have several ship sets posted and each has a separate prefix. So instead of S0 for Terran mine is FED.
S0_UD_Sampleship would be FED_UD_Sampleship. And my Romulans use ROM and so on.

Here is the interesting bit. I used the Thalan shipstyle as a starting point to create my Romulans. After I set up the Romulans as a seperate player usable ship style and started a new game only my Romulan ships were accessible. But the hulls that were available to create NEW ships were all Terran.

This happened with every ship style I created. The Terran ships don't appear but their starting hulls appear in the shipbuilder. Perhaps during the process of creating your personal ship style the ship set resets to Terran.

But if you follow Kryo's directions right, only your ships and not Terrans will appear. Works for me every time.

Audiafox

on Jul 20, 2008

You're not really understanding me. None of them are Terran ships. They are all mine, both the normal and duplicates.

I'm not sure what causes this, it's rather strange.

USAF_Ronin

on Jul 21, 2008

ok then you got me.

Audiafox

on Jul 21, 2008

Thanks for helping anyway.

Actually, I just played a game as the Iconians, and they have the same problem! A bunch of their templates are duplicated. Now I think this is a glitch with the game itself, and hence unfixable by we the modders.

USAF_Ronin

on Jul 22, 2008

I'd be curious if anyone else is having your problem.

lippisch

on Jul 29, 2008

Im interested of the relation between shipstyles/configs and AI decisions what to build/research? I've replaced every ship for the terrans, with a hyperdrive only as equipment. Nothing else. But now the AI doesnt research any weapon technology and builds the ships without any.

USAF_Ronin

on Jul 30, 2008

I've never seen this before but then I spend most of my time making ships and shipstyles I haven't actually played the actual game in a long while. But I really hope I do one day.

I was curious if anyone had this problem with my ships so I brought up the question in reply#386 in: F&E.

I hope to get a answer soon.

kryo

on Jul 30, 2008

No relation. The templates are used as the graphic only.

Harborne

on Oct 12, 2008

Thanks this thread really helped me

PapaFrita

on Dec 06, 2008

My ship style is invisible when I choose the race, but the three starter ships have not changed. Here's what my files look like:

Step 5: Djani_UD_T_D'janiFlagship_t.shipcfg, which is how the game saved it but with my new prefix, which i changed in step 4.

Step 6: Djani_D'janiFlagship_t.shipcfg, which is what the other files in that folder look like.

What am I doing wrong?

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