Questions here: an inquiry thread! [Updated Sep 15th, 2014]

[mr_easy_money]

You can set the system from "true" to "false" whether the ship starts with it or not.

true; forgot about that. got carried away in thinking about the artillery crash fix. it works one way by default, and the fix makes it work the other way for artillery

[FearTheBlaziken]

How can I tell Slipstream when to use a Special Tag when a Certain Blueprint from another mod (Like Captain's Edition's Ion Shield or Insurrection's Regenerative Armour) is detected?

If so, Is there a way to do it though 2 separate data files? (Example: autoBlueprints.xml and blueprints.xml)

[kartoFlane]

<mod:findName /> tag should be able to do the job. The advanced tags only search through the data file corresponding to their append file, ie. an advanced tag placed in blueprints.xml.append will look for matches in blueprints.xml, but not other files (IIRC). This means that you'll need to copy it over to autoBlueprints.xml.append if you want to do stuff with occurences in both files.

So for example, to find the Kestrel:

Code: Select all

<mod:findName type="shipBlueprint" name="PLAYER_SHIP_HARD">
    <!-- Other tags doing something with the tags that matched -->
</mod:findLike>

[meklozz]

If that doesn't do it, you can also use <mod:selector> or <mod:findWithChildLike>. They are explained in the readme_modders.txt that I recommend anyone (at all interested) to read, but in short, selector lets you find a tag with a specific value or attribute (value like an event text, or a ship description (CE has unique ones, whereas you couldn't tell the difference by the generic name alone), attribute like type="enemy" or such). findWithChildLike lets you find only tags with another specific tag inside, like only finding events with quests in them or something.

You can only interact directly on the level you find it, though. So you kinda have to keep using them to find trace of other mods in every file, often multiple times. I'd recommend to stick to the standard findName most of the time, since other mods tend to have their own naming and stuff. If they don't, you can try forcing it, like changing the name of something in one file in some such way that it will continue to reference the original if the mod isn't present, but switch to what you need in another file where you may be able to make more changes.
Like, I couldn't dynamically change offsets in greebles to be compatible with what I wanted once, but I could add another ship txt/xml file and only switch to it in the ship blueprint if I found the CE ship description. You probably don't need to bother with any of that, I'm just rambling on way too long.

As far as augments go, it depends on what you want to do with them. There shouldn't be any harm having some code that will go unused if the names aren't found. Similarly, a blue option for an item that doesn't exist should be fine.
It gets worse if the augment is only changed, since the names are the same, and just values may change. And if you want to do something like only changing a part of the ship if the augment exists (e.g. augment exists>add artillery with something, augment doesn't>do nothing), you may be out of luck (of course, you don't necessarily have to check for the specific augments, just knowing that CE/sMPK is present by the descriptions or names may be enough). You could go with blue options again (as many mods have in many ways), but you'd need to add the augment itself, and it may not be possible to do what you need anyway.

[Stormbringer]

what happens if i make a defence drone fire a beam?

[Zobody]

So I have been wanting to make a auto-ship uprising mod, but the thing I am stuck on right now is that I don't know how do I change the rebel fleet ships to my ships and disable ASB. Got help on that?

[gentasaurus]

I have a question that might be a bit of a stretch. Are custom races possible? I've heard the abilities are hardcoded, but the author of Captain's Edition made a hologram race with its own abilities.

Also, a smaller question, is the reactor power for an enemy ship the minimum? Does it scale up throughout the game?

[elijahdb]

I have a question that might be a bit of a stretch. Are custom races possible? I've heard the abilities are hardcoded, but the author of Captain's Edition made a hologram race with its own abilities.

Also, a smaller question, is the reactor power for an enemy ship the minimum? Does it scale up throughout the game?

Your second question is that yes, the reactor power on enemy ships does get bigger throughout the sectors. Your first question, however, has the answer of no, they're hard coded for Windows computers (the hologram race was actually a type of race that the FTL devs decided to toss aside, and it was found by modders who used it).
However, there is a tool made for Macs that lets you change the races up a little, I don't know the extent of the tool because I use windows. Here's the link. http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=29055

[gentasaurus]

Thank you very much! I'll look into that

[ARC-1778]

So how do you have more than 9 crew, I know it crashes if you get offered one with 9 but how would one resolve this? What causes the crash? Thanx