UnholyPariah wrote:so would it be possible to maybe change your ship to a normally unobtainable one such as a rock scout or a pirate vessel?
id kinda love a pirate vessel...
Theoretically, unless there's game logic beyond the save file that prevents it. That said, my initial attempt has not worked. There's additional data floating around here that I haven't been able to identify, and unfortunately it seems to vary between two save games using the same ship class. So it could have to do with the map that's been generated? It's also possible the files are partially encrypted/obfuscated in some way.
I've also noticed that different ship types put their weapon load-outs in slightly different places in the file. For example, the Red-Tail begins its at block 09 of offset 690, whereas the Rock cruiser's begins at block 08 of offset 680. Even two games with the same ship have them in slightly different locations. So editing what's on your ship is easy, as you just replace what's there. But even then there're complications ... there seem to always be 12 blocks separating weapon 1 from 2, but sometimes they're all 00 and sometimes they're not. So it may or may not be possible to add something to slot 3 in a save game that only previously had 2.
So unfortunately this is looking like it's going to be much harder than I thought, at least to do much.