New ships without replacing existing ones?

[Azuvector]

Just curious if this is currently possible, or if FTL hardcodes the ships. Haven't really looked into it beyond downloading the Serenity replacement for the Kestrel.

[Kieve]

Until recently it was not. However, the new build of the profile editor ExpiredMayo posted will allow ship-builders to include a savegame with the custom ship.

What this means is, instead of patching to replace an existing ship, a mod-maker can simply add the ship into Blueprints.xml as its own entity, then use the profile editor to create a save that uses that ship. Thus, when someone goes to play the mod, they'd select "Continue" and have the new ship set up for them.

There are two downsides to this approach though. 1) The first sector will always be the same. 2) Ship name & Crew will be the same. Ship name can be edited with the profile editor as well, but for those who like to name their starting crew, they'd kinda be SOL. The obvious benefit is, it's no longer necessary to replace a ship in the hangar, which may or may not be unlocked to that user.

EDIT:
I should clarify and state that yes, FTL does have a strict hardcoded limit of the 9 ships and their B variants from hangar selection. Adding more into that simply isn't possible.

[shark]

actually 9 ships and 9 alternates, thus 18. we don't have that many custom ships floating around to start worrying about using up all 18 ships

[Vhati]

1) The first sector will always be the same.

You could move the player's ship near the exit beacon in the saved game though.
Add in some upgrades and resources to make up for the skipped first sector...

Dunno what event-fu could be used at the exit (now treated as the start of the game) to make things interesting.

[DrkTemplar]

1) The first sector will always be the same.

You could move the player's ship near the exit beacon in the saved game though.
Add in some upgrades and resources to make up for the skipped first sector...

Dunno what event-fu could be used at the exit (now treated as the start of the game) to make things interesting.

The end beacon is shared with all sectors, so you would want to be careful what you put in that event. Plus you couldn't stop a player from jumping away from the exit instead of to the next sector.

[thashepherd]

1) The first sector will always be the same.

You could move the player's ship near the exit beacon in the saved game though.
Add in some upgrades and resources to make up for the skipped first sector...

Dunno what event-fu could be used at the exit (now treated as the start of the game) to make things interesting.

The end beacon is shared with all sectors, so you would want to be careful what you put in that event. Plus you couldn't stop a player from jumping away from the exit instead of to the next sector.

You can create a dummy augment and make every event in the first sector completely dependent on it. Then you can hardcode your own first sector to be different based on the ship you're in. I think technically you could do a LOT with dummy augments, if you were willing to put the work in. Cross-sector storylines, etc.

[Kieve]

You can create a dummy augment and make every event in the first sector completely dependent on it. Then you can hardcode your own first sector to be different based on the ship you're in. I think technically you could do a LOT with dummy augments, if you were willing to put the work in. Cross-sector storylines, etc.

There is, and some portions of Incursion will make use of that, in fact. The trick is, you can't have any "Store" beacons in the sector, or players could sell the augment and break the storyline. The solution I planned in Inc's case was to generate a store at the end of the augment's purpose, giving the player the chance to sell off and get rid of it (since events can't remove augments save for one specific instance of one specific augment). As an added bonus, that beacon gets marked with a highly visible 'quest' tag, and guarentees the player a shop in the sector.
'Course there are downsides too, but we work with what we're given, right?

[thashepherd]

You can create a dummy augment and make every event in the first sector completely dependent on it. Then you can hardcode your own first sector to be different based on the ship you're in. I think technically you could do a LOT with dummy augments, if you were willing to put the work in. Cross-sector storylines, etc.

There is, and some portions of Incursion will make use of that, in fact. The trick is, you can't have any "Store" beacons in the sector, or players could sell the augment and break the storyline. The solution I planned in Inc's case was to generate a store at the end of the augment's purpose, giving the player the chance to sell off and get rid of it (since events can't remove augments save for one specific instance of one specific augment). As an added bonus, that beacon gets marked with a highly visible 'quest' tag, and guarentees the player a shop in the sector.
'Course there are downsides too, but we work with what we're given, right?

Wait - are you saying that *one instance* of removing an augment is the ONLY time that works? I assumed that was universal functionality.

You can generate your store, or maybe you could create a <choice> on exiting from a generic store that checks for the presence/absence of the augment and re-adds it if it's supposed to be there. The problem THEN is that if you're using multiple augments (maybe AUGMENT_0101 where you have bit flags or something) then you have no way of knowing which one to re-add.

I also thought about something a *bit* simpler. The "Letter of Marque" concept that gives you higher rewards from random encounters while you have it on your ship (just needs choices added to whatever events you want it to trigger on).

[Vhati]

Plus you couldn't stop a player from jumping away from the exit instead of to the next sector.

You could advance the rebel fleet to make most of the sector not worth visiting.

Or if a sector map section gets added to the editor in the future, specific scary events could be assigned to surrounding beacons to fence the player in (or "It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take this." upgrade events within the corral).

[DrkTemplar]

Plus you couldn't stop a player from jumping away from the exit instead of to the next sector.

You could advance the rebel fleet to make most of the sector not worth visiting.

Or if a sector map section gets added to the editor in the future, specific scary events could be assigned to surrounding beacons to fence the player in (or "It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take this." upgrade events within the corral).

I think advancing the rebel fleet up to the exit beacon would be the easiest and quickest way to "encourage" the player to simply move to the next sector. If it were me, I would rather just override one of the ship variants. You can easily remove the mod if you decide to play the overridden variant down the line.