Designing the Initial Starting Ships

It sounds like what you really want is to be able to design ships outside of a game entirely.  Then save those as templates and use them in game. 

There is a ship designer button on the main menu, which is currently a placeholder, so I think this will be available.   In the stream they showed how all the racial pieces will be available for building.

That will be awesome too.  But what I'm really asking is that I can design the starter ships (either from the main menu or during game creation) so that when the game starts, the miner, survey ship, and colony ship you start with are not pulled from the generic ship set for that specific race and are instead your own designs.  Thats all im asking for really

Oh, I am sorry I did not understand, my bad.   This is a small thing, but it has occurred to me also, now that I understand.   I tried to brush it off because, heck, those ships are free, but it would be nice to have exactly what  you want.

I remember doing this early on when I played galactic civilizations two ultimate. You make a template then you do I forgot, maybe it was custom. I never cared to do this seriously, maybe cause it was to hard. What you want is to be able to do this easily. This was only done with the survey ship though.

To accomplice this you will need to create both a ship and a template of said ship and edit a number of the xml files since modding support is not yet in.

I will use my design of the Voyeur in the examples. For the design files go to the "Post Your Gal Civ III Ship Designs!" (page 31) thread.

First the ship.

Design your ship as a hull; so no active components. To get the look and feel you can add the graphic elements but not the real components. You show these by going to the options in the designer and tick the "show parts from other styles". Save it under a name using only letters and numbers (no spaces) and specify the correct role type. The ship role must match the "Role" field in both the ShipBlueprintsDefs.xml and the ShipDefs.xml. And the ship size must match the "ShipHullType" field in the ShipClassDefs.xml and the "ShipHull" field in the ShipDefs.xml.

Reopen your ship design and without changing anything save it again with the same name, but this time as a template. There is a bug in the designer that he forgets the ship role, so make sure you specify the same ship role as in the ship save.

Exit GalCiv3 and go to your design folder ("My Games\GalCiv3\Designs") and make a note of the names of the ship and ship-template designs.

Secondly the files to modify.

The files to edit:

• FactionDefs.xml
• ShipClassDefs.xml
• ShipBlueprintsDefs.xml
• ShipDefs.xml
• ShipText.xml
• ShipClassText.xml

FactionDefs.xml

This one specifies your starting ships and which ship classes belong to the faction. Find your faction and modify or add the ship and add your ship class. Pick an unique internal name (example: "TerranVoyeur").

<StartingShips>TerranVoyeur</StartingShips>

and

<ShipClass>TerranVoyeur</ShipClass>

ShipClassDefs.xml

The ship class definitions. Add or modify a class. Use the template-design-file-name of the template for the "ThumbnailOverride" and "ShipDesign" fields (example: "Voyeur_1B63E250B709401A83A86D54A3C33AC5"). And enter into the "BlueprintDef" field a unique blueprint name (example: "TerranVoyeurBlueprint"). The "DisplayName" and the "Description" fields are links to the ShipClassText.xml file.

<!-- Begin Ship -->

<ShipClass>
<InternalName>TerranVoyeur</InternalName>
<DisplayName>TerranVoyeur_Class_Name</DisplayName>
<Description>TerranVoyeur_Dec</Description>
<ThumbnailOverride>Voyeur_1B63E250B709401A83A86D54A3C33AC5.png</ThumbnailOverride>
<ShipHullType>Tiny</ShipHullType>
<ShipRule>Scout</ShipRule>
<ShipDesign>Voyeur_1B63E250B709401A83A86D54A3C33AC5</ShipDesign>
<AIShipClass>Scout</AIShipClass>
<StrategicIcon>Scout</StrategicIcon>
<BlueprintDef>TerranVoyeurBlueprint</BlueprintDef>
</ShipClass>

ShipBlueprintsDefs.xml

Defines the component composition of the ship class. Use the name as used in the ShipClassDef ("TerranVoyeurBlueprint"). In this example i instruct the game to add 2 sensors for every lifesupport. This means less ship range, but better sensor range.

<!-- Begin Blueprint -->

<ShipBlueprint>
<InternalName>TerranVoyeurBlueprint</InternalName>
<ShipHullType>Tiny</ShipHullType>
<Role>Support</Role>
<RequiredComponentType>Sensor</RequiredComponentType>
<ComponentType>InterstellarDrive</ComponentType>
<FillerComponentType>Sensor</FillerComponentType>
<FillerComponentType>LifeSupport</FillerComponentType>
<FillerComponentType>Sensor</FillerComponentType>
</ShipBlueprint>

ShipDefs.xml

The definition of the starting ship. Use the design-file-name of the actual ship design (example: "Voyeur_A0946D40992C4CE38C05559613DBF59C"). Notice that the ship design and template design file names are different. Also notice the sensor and lifesupport difference from the standard scout. Specify the "DisplayName" field for the link to the ShipText.xml file.

<!-- Begin Ship -->

<Ship>
<InternalName>TerranVoyeur</InternalName>
<DisplayName>TerranVoyeur_Name</DisplayName>
<ThumbnailOverride>Voyeur_A0946D40992C4CE38C05559613DBF59C.png</ThumbnailOverride>
<ObjectGfxConfig>Voyeur_A0946D40992C4CE38C05559613DBF59C.objgfxcfg</ObjectGfxConfig>
<StrategicIcon>Scout</StrategicIcon>
<ShipHull>Tiny</ShipHull>
<Role>Support</Role>
<CanBeBuilt>false</CanBeBuilt>
<Faction>FACTION_TERRAN</Faction>
<ShipComponents>NavigationalSensors</ShipComponents>
<ShipComponents>NavigationalSensors</ShipComponents>
<ShipComponents>BasicLifeSupport</ShipComponents>
</Ship>

ShipText.xml

The ship name as the player will see it.

<StringTable>
<Label>TerranVoyeur_Name</Label>
<String>Voyeur</String>
</StringTable>

ShipClassText.xml

The name and description of the class.

<StringTable>
<Label>TerranVoyeur_Class_Name</Label>
<String>Voyeur</String>
</StringTable>

<StringTable>
<Label>TerranVoyeur_Dec</Label>
<String>Superior Sensor, but slow scout ship.</String>
</StringTable>

All the above gives me the Voyeur ship as a starting ship.

Happy modding .

I know what you're talking about.  I've fiddled with it plenty but have never seemed to have been able to get it working right.  It only let me start out with the designs I selected but the starter ship were still stock.  I just use it to keep my designs carrying over game to game at start

And awesome Thecw!  I'll definitely being doing this for my games!

I must be missing the point some way.

I designed my own cheaper versions of the colony and constructors at the start of the game and they are always there when I start a new game. As soon as the tech is available, I can design whatever I want. You would have to do this for each race but you are not tied to the stock designs. Maybe I am wrong but I thought all the ship parts are available regardless if what faction you play. I do miss not having color control, but it will be added I'm sure.

I am sure this is not what you mean. Just wishing I could understand. If you want the stock designs to disappear from your game entirely, that is probably not going to happen, but I suspect that is not what you mean either.  

If the stock designs could disappear you would need to be able to reset this, or otherwise this game would needed to be reset, and no one wants this. What he's talking about is that at the beginning of the game you start off with default ships, and he wants to design those. The game let's you with a lot of diffulty. I'm not against making this easier.

Maybe I can elaborate a little more.  

At the beginning of every galciv 2 Twilight of the Arnor game, you start out with three starter ships surrounding your home planet (not your initial designs you start out with in your ship designer, I'm talking about the ships you PHYSICALLY start with.) This includes a generic Colony ship, Survey ship, and Space Miner.  All three of these pre-built ships are always stock (what the game designers designed for that particular race) regardless of what custom designs you have the tech unlocked for.  

It doesn't matter if I designed a colony ship with early game tech the last game I played, my pre-built starter terrain colony ship is always going to be that generic ship with the colony module attached to that spinning ring in the absolute center of the ship.

What I'm asking is that the designers for galciv 3 include an option that will allow us to design the pre-built starter ships for a particular race BEFORE the game even starts.  So instead of having the 2-3 stock starter ships surrounding your home world, you have ships of your own design right from the very start, instead of the stock designs that particular race shipped with.

Hope that cleared things up a bit

mbrash5,

I ran into a bug with starting ships, but i have a workaround. See the [Bug][.61] Custom ship class is not instantiated for ships with start of game techs. post for the details of the bug.

The workaround (if applicable for a given ship).

Move the template design files to the "steamapps\common\Galactic Civilizations III\Designs" directory and you will be fine. Added benefit: you can then use the template-file name for the "ThumbnailOverride" and "ObjectGfxConfig" fields in the ShipDefs.xml. So you can remove the 'normal' ship design (after backing it up of course), if you want to get rid of the 'empty' ship in the shipyard build list.

Okay, I understand now. I like that idea. I suppose it will take some modding at this juncture, but it doesn't seem so difficult that it couldn't be possible in the basic start up. Maybe an option to start with no ships would be the way to make it possible, with a lot of start up cash to quick build the first ships.

Franco fx,

It is already possible. I am doing in my current games. See my previous 2 posts: they explain how to do it.

Because the blueprints of the standard ships are useless, i actually already play with 17 active custom ship classes (all with their own custom ship design); Which the game automatically updates (like "Voyeur M1", "Voyeur M2", etc).

The bug that i mention in my second post relates to the initial automatic ship design update (which should generate the "Voyeur M1" design), not to the assignment of (additional/replacement) starting ships which does work.

Change in version .70 (Beta 4).

Roles (except Assault and Support) should no longer be specified in ShipBlueprintsDefs.xml. Specifying any role other than "Assault" or "Support" will result in multiple ship-design-versions being created. So for the earlier mentioned example, that should now read as:

<!-- Begin Blueprint -->

<ShipBlueprint>
<InternalName>TerranVoyeurBlueprint</InternalName>
<ShipHullType>Tiny</ShipHullType>
<Role>Assault</Role>
<RequiredComponentType>Sensor</RequiredComponentType>
<ComponentType>InterstellarDrive</ComponentType>
<FillerComponentType>Sensor</FillerComponentType>
<FillerComponentType>LifeSupport</FillerComponentType>
<FillerComponentType>Sensor</FillerComponentType>
</ShipBlueprint> 

The game should now automatically assign the proper ship Role.