Modding Discussion Starting with a different ship.

Sorry, I don't really know where this should go. I guess I could throw it in a few places, but I feel like it could be made a mod, of which I don't have the skill to make.

Alright, so I know the initial idea is probably REALLY easy to implement (I'm guessing it's something to the effect of moving a couple of files and congrats), but it would be really nice to be able to choose which ship you have, rather then have it determined by your race. An extra menu when creating a character that allows you to choose which ship you get.

And I honestly LONG for the day when modding for this game becomes so advanced that we can actually change how we start the game because this is where this theoretical mod becomes more of a mod, and less of "I'm to lazy to do it myself" kind of thing, because could you imagine starting on a planet (not in your ship hovering around a planet) with the wreckage of your ship not too far off. Grabbing the items you need wouldn't be much different, except you have to pick up S.A.I.L. as well, and find another ship to install it in, in which you take off to the cosmos again. So you find another ship, guarded by bandits or something, and you have to take them out, get on the ship, install S.A.I.L. and then take off!

Or, you crash your ship, and find another NPC who doesn't have a matter manipulator, but they do have a ship, all it needs is some core fragments. So you fix their ship, and the two of you take off to the cosmos.

Or maybe you were raised by a different race, a Human that was raised by Avians or something. Edit the dialog that your character uses when inspecting things (giving them more knowledge of the race they were raised by), and have their ship (vanilla start, just with a different ship and all).

Or many another things that could be! Spice up the intro, make it more interesting when someone starts a new character, it's not the same boring thing! (heck, changing up what's on garden planets would be nice too, I miss the days where there were interesting things on the first planet you started on, but I know there's a mod that kinda fixes that)

 

Ive thought about this type of thing, and the only logical way I could see it being done is if you kinda hijack one of the tiers, like Tier 3, since all the ship layouts are the same at that point, and create options that the player can select so that the next tier, tier 4, would be of the race ship they wish. It would be extremely hackish, and a ton of work, and I am not very keen on doing it myself. not to mention the unknown amount of technical issues that may come up. It would just be a nightmare.

 

There is another way to change ships, but it is also very crude, you unpack the game files and make a mod folder in the same format as the original race folders, and swap the ship files there (it similer to how the custom ship mods work).

 

Mhh, I see what you're saying about knowledge and the ease of which one can do that, but I was never stating that I knew that it was easy. I said it was "probably easy," meaning that I am uncertain, but it sounds easy enough with some basic knowledge that I lack. Mind, I'm still in the contradictory wrong here, as it seems choosing another races ship, or changing ships, or what have you, seems to be a much LARGER ordeal then I initially thought it would be (it's not just throwing one file into another folder, apparently >.>). So... Yea... Also, I figured there wasn't a way to make another menu when you're creating a character, because someone would have figured that out by now, right? Maybe? Heck, I don't know, actually, it's never really been an issue, has it...

This was kinda what I was thinking initially, though a bit more then what I said (move files around and viola!)... Though, I wonder... Is there a way to make another race... Uh... slider? Like the option to choose between different clothes and hairs and colors (not really a slider, what would those be called?)... If so, could one, theoretically, create a new one of those, and maybe allow it to select between all the different ships? Because if that is possible, and it works, then that could be a work around... Right?

The only other idea that I have is just make a different race for each of them, but that would be so cluttered and would have to rely on a race extender mod (plenty of those out there at least). I guess you wouldn't have to download every different race, though, just "Human with floran ship" race and whatnot.

At this point, though, it's kinda beyond "modding" and I should really just throw a suggestion on the suggestion forums now, shouldn't I? It just feels like, since it IS so close to 1.0, that it's far past time to suggest something new like this... I guess it doesn't hurt though.