Manipulating Capital ships max level

As usual, letting us know what you've tried to do and where would help us help you figure out what's not working

This is one thing I've been wanting to do for campaign type maps, increase capital ship max level for higher level skills. At work so can't help out, but hope you figure out how.

Heh, i know im doing something wrong as usual. But i was more curious to see if anyone has actually made some progress with this one.

i know my little pirate mod should be working but it dosent. and i am pretty sure with cap ships you have to add more than just a few lines of extra code.

I may be mistaken here, so don't take my word for it, but I thought I heard somewhere that 10 is the maximum. Can anyone clarify this?

I heard something about it, But when i take a look at most of the files that we have to play with and it looks like we can actually expand on it.

I *attempted* to add new skill levels (up to 12) for cap ships. Did nothing except add in the lines in the gameplay.constants file.

Upon starting a game, instant pirate warnings. Instant, and constant...


I tried:

CapitalShipData
ExperienceLevelData:0
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 200.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 60.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 1250.0
ExperienceLevelData:1
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 500.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 80.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 1500.0
ExperienceLevelData:2
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 900.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 110.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 1750.0
ExperienceLevelData:3
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 1500.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 150.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 2000.0
ExperienceLevelData:4
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 2300.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 200.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 4000.0
ExperienceLevelData:5
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 3300.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 260.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 2400.0
ExperienceLevelData:6
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 4500.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 310.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 2600.0
ExperienceLevelData:7
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 6000.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 390.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 2800.0
ExperienceLevelData:8
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 7800.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 480.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 3000.0
ExperienceLevelData:9
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 9600.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 590.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 3800.0
ExperienceLevelData:10
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 11600.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 670.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 4600.0
ExperienceLevelData:11
ExperienceNeededForNextLevel 0.0
ExperienceGainedForDestroying 760.0
UpgradePriceForNextLevel 0.0
LevelUpEffectName "CapitalShip_LevelUp"
LevelUpEffectSoundID "CAPITALSHIP_LEVELUP"
PurchaseNextLevelTime 90
neutralPlanetCultureRepelRateMultiplier 0.5
enemyPlanetCultureRepelRateMultiplier 0.0

Bold bits what I added. Needless to say, it didn't *quite* work. Didn't get a freeze or a mini dump, so it was "partly" right. There's obviously more to it than just that though.

I know there's a cap ship level progression code block somewhere (I'm thinking gameplay.constants though I don't remember for sure), so I would think it would be possible to expand on it further.

@foodro: But did the capitals themselves actually get 12 levels?

I Tried something like that as well, but once i hit level ten the changes didn show after that.

if he got pirate warnings all the time when he added a few lines in the non pirate part of the file, it probably means that the hardcoded file/s is reading gameplay.constants on a line basis.

example (not based on the file at all)
look at line 10-25 for capital level data.
look at line 26-40 for pirate data.

I noticed this when modding some beta files, but thought they got rid of it for retail (didnt have the same issue anymore).

@ Archpsi: This would be odd, considering that's not how the other files behave (for instance the player.entity files, you can append your changes to the bottom of each section and have them show up ingame).

I know, thats why I said I thought they got rid of it (modifying it so that doesnt occur in retail).

Wouldn't know. The pirate "warning" was so fucking annoying I had to quit the game. So, I didn't get a chance to check.

yeah, that is the problem with the .entity files, at first i thought it's like python and the contents are being parsed by tab stops. But what i have concluded for now, they are just storage or configuration files where you can modify values. Even more strange is, that changing the "variable name" in front of the number does in fact change something, so i'm a little helpless here, what the concept behind the .entity files really may be.

It would be real nice to know witch programming-language is behind all this. If you rally want to change something fundamental the changing database it not enough. As there are counters on nearly everything(numberofplanets 4, numberofconnections 7...) i would gess there's a counter for the max-ship-level too. But i fear its not accessible atm.

actually, on some of the videos on youtube, you catch glimpses of people's cap ships, im not so sure but i think i saw a level 12 once or twice, it kinda suks that the max level wasnt put in the game guides, so no one really knows what the max levels are.

The max level is hardcoded to 10.

Carbon16 was right... you can only decrease the maximum level. 10 is the top, currently.

okay, but i could have sworn that i saw level 12s....it might have been the beta testing though on the vids.

I attempted this as well, but failed. Remember that the capital ships display a level icon, that is not, afaik, moddable.

Did you consider modding not the amount of levels, but rather changing the effects and xp requirements of each level? So that level 2 would require maybe 400 xp (factor 2) and level 10 would need say 80000 xp (about a factor 10).. Of course, you would probably also need to change the capship files to increase the hull/shield/damage/whatever increases per level.

I tried doing this but failed (The xp-requirements didn't change ingame; I just realized that I probably have the 1.02 data files, that is probably why), but will make a new attempt tonight.

Huh. I was looking for this. For some reason I got the pirate thing too; gave up, ate dinner, tried again and it worked fine. No idea why. Or what I did differently. Only thing I can think of is I put a return in before I pasted the block the second time.

Anyway, are we absolutely sure that it's hard-coded? Admittedly, I searched through all the GameInfo files and didn't see anything that would indicate a cap in there, unless it's called something very strange...... And despite adding an extra 10 levels, once you hit 10, you can't use the upgrade capital ship thing to buy more levels and the XP no longer displays. I'm sort of curious if the display thing is simply an overlay issue? Since there are overlays for each level and for each ship. I haven't actually tried getting to 10 then going out and killing things for a while though. Maybe I'll do that later.

If it is hard-coded though... that's lame. Would seem odd that it would be when so many other things aren't.


So I take it that no one got anywhere with this in the end? (just looked at the date :p)

In the MainInfoCardIcon file, there are all ten capital-level-graphics, from the bars and stars to the crown and star, so I'd suppose you'd have to draw new pictures if you were to get the rest of it working...