Building ships from assimilated / conquered stations

posted on October 6th, 2013, 8:47 pm

Hello Fleet Operations Community,

I've just now discovered Fleet Operations even though I've been a huge Star Trek Armada fan ever since it came out and am having a lot of fun with it.

While I understand and like most of the changes that have been made to the original in the interest of balance and fairness I was wondering if I could change a small detail in a config files or via a mod of my own:

In Star Trek Armada II I think you could build other faction's ships (even the constructions ships and thus even a complete base) when you assimilated or conquered a station of another player. In Fleet Operations the construction options will be greyed out and it will read "Only buildable by: "

Can anyone tell me where the options for this are hidden? I thought it might be somewhere in the techtree files but I couldn't spot anything about that particular behaviour.

Thank you in advance

[Tyler]

posted on October 6th, 2013, 8:57 pm

Last edited by Tyler on October 6th, 2013, 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think there's a line of code in every ship and station odf that prevents them from being built by anyone else.

It's buildableByOwnerRaceOnly = 1 that prevents it.

posted on October 6th, 2013, 9:00 pm

welcome to the forums.

it's defined in odfs, not in the techtree.

afaik there's only two simple lines that control this behaviour, see my response in this recent thread:
//www.fleetops.net/forums/technica ... hips-12394

you'll need to automate changes these lines in multiple odfs. once you've changed your odfs you'll lose multiplayer compatibility.

if you want to make a submod for these changes you can use the include instruction i believe (i've never done this, so i can't help you on it any further), read up on the mod system:
http://guide.fleetops.net/guide/modding/modmodules

posted on October 6th, 2013, 10:53 pm

Thank you both for your extremely quick help!

I've had a look at the odf files and found the mentioned lines in the files. I'll probably try writing a small text parsing program that does the changes for me rather than editing every single one myself and see how it turns out.

Thanks again for your help. Fleet Operations is a great project and I can't wait to see how it progresses

posted on October 7th, 2013, 12:42 am

They're apparently planning to remove that line in the V4, so you may have to find a work-around again later.

posted on October 7th, 2013, 8:48 am

I've had a look at the odf files and found the mentioned lines in the files. I'll probably try writing a small text parsing program that does the changes for me rather than editing every single one myself and see how it turns out.

notepad++ should be able to do it without needing to write any code. use the find and replace function over all the odfs.

posted on October 7th, 2013, 4:53 pm

Word also allows you to replace keywords. I had to use that several times for my school projects.

posted on October 7th, 2013, 6:51 pm

Word also allows you to replace keywords. I had to use that several times for my school projects.

afaik word can't do that across multiple files by default. you'll need to use VBA to kludge that function in.

also word is terrible for plain text purposes, it excels at rich text. odfs are plain text.

posted on October 8th, 2013, 9:18 pm

Thank you again everybody! And you are amazing Myles. I use Notepad++ for quite a few things already but I wasn't aware it could do that with multiple files. I tried it on the odf files and it worked like a charm.

I now have the build options I wanted. The remaining catch is that a construction ship build from a conquered yard will still only show the mixed tech yard. I guess I have to find the option/file which tells the ship that it can only build a mixed tech station if it has been conquered.

I will keep looking - feel free to give me any pointers if you know where I have to look, though

posted on October 8th, 2013, 10:17 pm

There's a line of code in the built list that forces it to only show up at certain times, remove that and it will always be available.

It should be something like buildItemXAvailability = X. Useful link.

posted on October 9th, 2013, 8:36 am

It should be something like buildItemXAvailability = X. Useful link.

that's exactly the line.

i detailed that in the other thread that i linked to earlier:
//www.fleetops.net/forums/technica ... hips-12394

posted on October 9th, 2013, 9:43 am

Right, I tried changed that but used the wrong value - that's what you get for doing these things late in the evening after a long work day.

I apologize for my incompetence. I'll try it when I get home today and will report back to wrap this thread up

posted on October 9th, 2013, 9:51 am

Right, I tried changed that but used the wrong value - that's what you get for doing these things late in the evening after a long work day.

I apologize for my incompetence. I'll try it when I get home today and will report back to wrap this thread up

afaik you just have to set the value to 0 or delete the line, the default value is 0, and that should hide nothing.

posted on October 9th, 2013, 4:28 pm

Does that allow you to build ships from both avatars of another race or just one of them? I think the AI can build from both avatars because I see stuff like Phalanxes from Risner and also the upgrade torpedo turrets from Mason.

posted on October 9th, 2013, 4:56 pm

Does that allow you to build ships from both avatars of another race or just one of them? I think the AI can build from both avatars because I see stuff like Phalanxes from Risner and also the upgrade torpedo turrets from Mason.

avatar is handled differently.

a mayson constructor builds a mayson antares yard, which builds mayson intreps (weaker than risner intreps). doesn't matter which race uses a unit capable of building, it's build list only lists same avatar.

so if your fed enemy is mayson, you can't steal it and build risner.

when i just tried a single player game, the ai started the match by building a risner constructor. now i have no idea how the ai is allowed to build without the avatar restrictions.