I’d like to throw up a concept for a mod I’ve been considering. I believe that some of the ships in this game just don’t quite fight right. Some cruisers are barely bigger than frigates, while some frigates are the size of cruisers. I’m thinking of doing a mod that will rescale some of the ships in the game so frigates are sufficiently weedy and cruisers are sufficiently impressive.
What do you guys think, and not to sound dumb, but I’d like to double check… what exactly would I need to change to do it?
Ah this takes me back to the days when 270 was the largest ship size you could have without crashing the game 
To answer your question on the How, what you need to do is find a hull config file (\data\hulls\Federation Buffalo Cruiser.txt) Open it up and look for the width and height.
From example:
[config]
classname = cruiser
name = Federation Buffalo Cruiser hull
guiname = Federation Buffalo Cruiser hull
sprite = Federation Buffalo Cruiser.dds
damagetexture = Federation Buffalo Cruiser_damaged.dds
hulktexture = Federation Buffalo Cruiser_hulk.dds
width = 240 <-- This one here
height = 240 <-- And this one here
powerproduced = 10
cost = 180
racename = federation
(rinse repeat for ~90 other hull files)
Changing these 2 variables will change the ship size in game (I suggest that you keep width and height the same) Depending on how far from the path your going to stray will depend on what else might need to change.
Thank you. Out of all the hulls in the game there’s probably a half dozen I’ll be messing with for sure, though I am tempted to scale up the cruisers by 20% just because… but I think I’d make that a separate mod in its own right just because.
Here’s the first version of it modding only the core game ships. The expansion ships will come next along with some tweaks based on c&C
My rules of thumb was that frigates should be between about 80-100m and cruisers between 200-250m. There are some exceptions but in general it does make it clear which is which and cruisers look very impressive next to their frigates.
All of the Imperial Frigates were shrunk (some more than others) and all the cruisers boosted to give them some additional heft.
All of the Rebel frigates were tweaked. Their cruisers were also expanded somewhat to make them clearly and impressively larger than the frigates.
The Rabbit was expanded a bit to make it bigger and more impressive… just because.
The Federation Buffalo was made larger and more impressive (a three nacelled ship should be big!) while the Panther was made significantly larger as not to look like a pregnant frigate.
The Alliance only needed to have the Cobra shrank but I am considering taking some weight off the others as well.
Tell me what you think!
GSM.zip (27.1 KB)
A mass resizing of hulls (seemingly for little more than reasons of aesthetics, yes?) has the potential to exert a non-trivial effect on gameplay. As to the nature and scope of that effect, I leave it as an excersise for the reader to discover.
The changes aren’t that huge. At least not for the most part.
And can you think of a better reason than aesthetics to change sizes?
stop me if I’m wrong but dosn’t scaling affect the chances of being hit?
Well, I don’t like looking at cruisers the size of frigates and frigates the size of cruisers. Some of the ship sizes in the basic game are pretty ridiculous.
I agree with that. However, I would be reluctant to alter ships without also thoroughly taking into account how the size of a hull directly influences how easy it is for enemy weapons to acquire it. Just be sure not to make an uninformed decision. Enjoy your evening. 
If you have any ideas for balancing it out I’d be open to suggestions.
So should I bother completing the mod with the ships from the other races?