[MOD] A Fed. dreadnought hull for GSB!

From the shipyards of the Federation, my latest creation: the first dreadnought hull for the game! Designated the “Buffalo King,” this beast of a hull will let you test-drive your desire to madly stampede across the plains instead of munching on grass in the meadows. :stuck_out_tongue: This hull design should go a long way towards keeping the player community happy until the game developer releases official dreadnought hulls for our enjoyment. I expect that we won’t have long to wait! :smiley:

OK mates, here’s the necessary bits; commentary to follow. Save this file as “Federation Buffalo King Cruiser.txt” and drop it into your game’s GSB/data/hulls/federation folder. The Buffalo King uses the same graphic as the standard Fed. Buffalo cruiser hull.

"name" attribute corrected; kudos to Tavar for the tip!

10/23/2009: speedboost of 25% removed on account of font changes made to hull info screen; kudos to kurisu for the tip!

[code][config]
classname = cruiser
name = Federation Buffalo Cruiser King hull
guiname = Federation Buffalo King Cruiser hull
sprite = Federation Buffalo Cruiser.dds
damagetexture = Federation Buffalo Cruiser_damaged.dds
hulktexture = Federation Buffalo Cruiser_hulk.dds
width = 250
height = 250
powerproduced = 104
cost = 520
racename = federation

[bonuses]
0 = ARMOURBOOST,0.45
1 = INTEGRITYBOOST,0.50
2 = SHIELDBOOST,0.40

[runninglights]
0 = 102.50,2.00,200.00,2.00,1
1 = 64.00,75.00,200.00,2.00,1
2 = 63.00,224.00,200.00,2.00,1
3 = 62.00,113.00,200.00,2.00,1
4 = 153.50,1.00,200.00,2.00,0
5 = 192.00,76.00,200.00,2.00,0
6 = 194.00,112.00,200.00,2.00,0
7 = 192.00,224.00,200.00,2.00,0

[engineglows]
0 = 73,252,24,40,STANDARD
1 = 183,252,24,40,STANDARD
2 = 128,274,24,40,STANDARD

[targets]
0 = 116.50,84.50,0,1,109.50,78.00,123.50,91.00,
1 = 99.50,186.00,1,1,88.00,172.00,111.00,200.00,SHIP_EMMITER_THIN,(damage_sprite_sparks-99.50-186.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-97.00-190.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-101.00-190.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-97.00-184.00),(damage_sprite_smoke-99.00-186.00),
2 = 157.50,112.00,1,1,149.00,102.00,166.00,122.00,SHIP_EMMITER_THIN,(damage_sprite_sparks-157.50-112.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-158.00-111.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-157.00-115.00),
3 = 154.00,185.50,1,1,142.00,170.00,166.00,201.00,SHIP_EMMITER_LARGE,(damage_sprite_sparks-154.00-185.50),(damage_sprite_sparks-151.00-179.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-157.00-180.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-156.00-188.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-158.00-191.00),
4 = 129.00,151.00,0,1,120.00,142.00,138.00,160.00,(damage_sprite_sparks-129.00-151.00),
5 = 87.50,47.00,0,1,75.50,38.00,92.00,53.50,
6 = 133.00,114.00,0,1,125.00,102.00,141.00,126.00,(damage_sprite_sparks-133.00-114.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-133.00-113.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-133.00-116.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-136.00-120.00),(damage_sprite_smoke-133.00-116.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-129.00-124.00),
7 = 71.00,165.00,0,1,60.00,154.00,87.00,227.00,
8 = 142.50,91.00,0,1,134.50,82.00,149.50,98.50,
9 = 125.75,5.50,0,1,119.00,1.50,132.50,9.50,
10 = 139.25,38.00,0,1,128.50,31.00,150.00,45.00,
11 = 85.75,131.50,0,1,80.50,123.50,91.00,139.50,
12 = 157.50,32.00,0,1,151.00,25.50,164.00,38.50,
13 = 187.50,164.50,0,1,170.00,150.50,194.50,227.00,
14 = 111.00,25.00,1,1,102.00,11.00,120.00,39.00,SHIP_EMMITER_THIN,(damage_sprite_sparks-111.00-25.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-112.00-25.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-114.00-29.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-113.00-33.00),
15 = 161.50,56.00,1,1,147.00,47.00,176.00,65.00,SHIP_EMMITER_LARGE,(damage_sprite_sparks-161.50-56.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-158.00-57.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-164.00-56.00),(damage_sprite_smoke-166.00-57.00),
16 = 101.50,106.50,0,1,87.00,95.00,116.00,118.00,(damage_sprite_sparks-101.50-106.50),(damage_sprite_sparks-98.00-103.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-104.00-102.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-98.00-109.00),(damage_sprite_sparks-90.00-103.00),
17 = 103.50,133.75,0,1,98.50,128.00,108.50,139.50,
18 = 90.50,61.00,0,1,78.50,53.50,102.50,68.50,

[slots]
0 = 128.00,39.00,TURRET
1 = 128.00,66.00,TURRET
2 = 96.00,71.00,TURRET
3 = 160.00,71.00,TURRET
4 = 114.00,101.00,STANDARD
5 = 128.00,128.00,TURRET
6 = 99.00,46.00,STANDARD
7 = 157.00,46.00,STANDARD
8 = 85.00,101.00,STANDARD
9 = 171.00,101.00,STANDARD
10 = 73.00,176.00,STANDARD
11 = 183.00,176.00,STANDARD
12 = 128.00,199.00,STANDARD
13 = 99.00,186.00,TURRET,(93.00-178.00),(108.00-172.00)
14 = 157.00,186.00,TURRET,(163.00-178.00),(148.00-172.00)
15 = 128.00,153.00,STANDARD
16 = 128.00,229.00,STANDARD
17 = 128.00,11.00,STANDARD
18 = 73.00,206.00,STANDARD
19 = 183.00,206.00,STANDARD
20 = 104.00,23.00,STANDARD
21 = 152.00,23.00,STANDARD
23 = 143.00,101.00,STANDARD
24 = 80.00,128.00,TURRET
25 = 104.00,128.00,TURRET
26 = 152.00,128.00,TURRET
27 = 176.00,128.00,TURRET

[explosions]
0 = 0,128,63,EXP_FRIGATE
1 = 120,87,69,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
2 = 130,127,175,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
3 = 170,181,213,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
4 = 200,78,189,EXP_FRIGATEBREAKUP
5 = 210,0,0,EXP_STARTBREAKUP
6 = 270,128,128,EXP_CRUISERDEBRIS
7 = 300,68,186,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
8 = 310,75,213,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
9 = 337,176,170,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
10 = 340,131,19,EXP_DESTRUCTION_PLACED
11 = 600,128,128,EXP_FRIGATEBREAKUP
12 = 600,128,128,EXP_PLUMES
13 = 600,128,128,EXP_BLASTGLARE
14 = 600,128,128,EXP_ANGLED_DEBRIS

[hulks]
0 = 134,292,246,468,(emit-198-380-hulk_emmiter),(emit-176-420-hulk_emmiter),
1 = 262,283,389,466,(emit-302-360-hulk_emmiter),(emit-299-339-hulk_emmiter),(emit-319-348-hulk_emmiter),(emit-317-381-hulk_emmiter),(emit-374-327-hulk_emmiter),(emit-335-353-hulk_smoke_emmiter),
2 = 129,2,397,279,(emit-185-124-hulk_emmiter),(emit-228-55-hulk_emmiter),(emit-228-55-hulk_emmiter),(emit-319-111-hulk_emmiter),(emit-313-163-hulk_emmiter),(emit-336-166-hulk_emmiter),(emit-213-193-hulk_emmiter),(emit-230-187-hulk_emmiter),(emit-268-232-hulk_emmiter),(emit-192-249-hulk_emmiter),(emit-211-248-hulk_emmiter),(emit-233-249-hulk_emmiter),(emit-296-248-hulk_emmiter),(emit-313-222-hulk_emmiter),(emit-288-138-hulk_emmiter),(emit-193-213-hulk_smoke_emmiter),(emit-309-248-hulk_smoke_emmiter),(emit-330-114-hulk_smoke_emmiter),[/code]
Time to talk about what the Buffalo King hull is, and is not

Even within this simulation game, my hull is, itself, a nested simulation. Calling this a “dreadnought” (thank you, Admiral Jackie Fisher :wink: ) is a sort of mental shorthand for a “simulated battleship”. In this case, it’s more than a cruiser (waaaay more) but perhaps less than a battleship. Let me explain:

Based upon the Federation’s famous “Buffalo”-class cruiser hull, the 'King is the fastest method I could whip up in my microscopic leisure time to extrapolate the performance envelope of a ship built within a true dreadnought-sized hull while not having to wait for the actual hull structure itself from the game developer. I hope that makes sense, and likewise hope that nobody feels cheated by this. Of course it isn’t a “real” battleship – that has to wait until either myself or one of the other intrepid modders creates a larger hull + graphic from scratch, or for GSB’s creator to do the same thing officially. In the meantime, the Buffalo King can let us experiment in a big way!

For those who just think of this as a Federation cruiser with nothing more than “a few extra bits bolted on,” please read further…

The most controversial aspects of my hull are the bonuses inherent to it. Again, for want of enough time to craft a far bigger ship with waaaaay more internal space, I took a conceptural shortcut. The 'King sports the ready-to-go equivalent of two reinforced type-II power cores as part of the “background”. Nonexistent module spaces in which I would have normally plunked down shield generators, engines and more ultraheavy armor layers are also simulated via the bonuses. Those “force multipliers” are actually very powerful indeed. They abstract the performance of vital machinery in a way that takes up no module-space, while letting the player leap ahead with the concrete and truly gratuitous business of cramming the hull full of weaponry!

When true dreadnought hulls arrive officially (and I feel confident that they will), I’d be relieved to actually fill empty modules on such a unit with the appropriate equipment that my hull’s bonuses simulate. The means that allow the Buffalo King to do a dreadnought-sized job with but a cruiser-sized hull are rather like wearing “beer goggles”…please drive responsibly! (lol)

Even after official DNs are available for GSB, the Buffalo King could still have a legitimate role to play. Consider it as a combat laboratory for advanced-tech versions of regular equipment, meant to be tested under the rigours of actual combat under the unpredicatable stresses of real conditions. It occupies a ship-equivalent niche lower than a battleship but much higher than a cruiser. Hopefully the careful use of performance bonuses will guide ship modders in weird new directions that will benefit all of us.

Two main points concerning my hull: I welcome any & all comments (pro or con), and whatever you do…have fun with it! This beast is the best combat vessel there is. From the Violet Abyss to the Stygian Abyss, there is no finer warship. Yes, I’m already thinking of new battles for this hull to participate in; detailed histories which I have not yet written for the game, but one day will write.

You need to change the third line down from “name = Federation Buffalo Cruiser hull” to “name = Federation Buffalo King Cruiser hull”, otherwise you just get errors. Besides that, good job! This looks fun.

Thanks, Tavar. I remember that mistake now, as I created it in the wee hours of the night as I sleepily finished the file at last. Sorry! Let me edit the code up above. And thanks for the compliment! :slight_smile:

it doesnt seem to work, when i open up the window that lets you design a ship (from main menu or battles or challenges) it gives me an error:

Failed to find race:…\src\SIM_Race.cpp 116

Works fine, looks like you deleted a mod without removing the designs for it.

what are you talking about? i copied and pasted the hull into the game folder, it was working fine right before that, when i opened the game, i got the error.

Does the game work fine if you delete the hull? If not, its not the problem. If yes, you copied it wrong or put it in the wrong folder.

yes. the game works fine without the ship. and i clicked “Code: Select all” in the original post, copied and pasted it into the GSB/data/hulls/Federation folder! I’m sure! I spelled everything right, just like this (except without the " marks): “Federation King Buffalo Cruiser.txt” Is there anything I’m doing wrong?!

‘code: select all’ used to break things horribly. open that file and a working one in a sensible editor, and if i recall right you’ll see spurious spaces or something like that. it’s brutally obvious what’s wrong.

I don’t know if i should be thankful or insulted… anyway, could you speak logically? like, how exactly do i fix it? after all, i did code select all, i looked the file before and after select all, i looked at the original buffalo cruiser, and i didn’t see anything wrong with the king cruiser.

It sounded to me like snowdrift didn’t remember exactly what the issue was, so he suggested a way for you to figure it out yourself. You seem to have misinterpreted it as a blow off, but I doubt it was intended as one.

If you’d followed his advice and opened up both a the non-working ship file and another one that is unmodded, you’d probably notice a bunch of spaces at the start of each line in the broken file that are not present in the working one. The spaces were added by the forum software for some reason when you clicked the “select all” link in the original post of this thread and copied out the text. If you delete the spaces (or recopy the contents of the code section, using the mouse to select the text this time), you should be able to get things fixed.

sorry. the ‘brutally obvious’ was me remembering finding a problem with ‘code select’ several weeks ago. but the reference to sane editors was because apparently in some editors it’s not as obvious.

and indeed, i was doing something else at the time - so i didn’t search for the previous explaination, or do the cut, paste, open working, compare dance myself.

@BlackKnight I looked at an unmodded one and this one, and they were, in terms of being able to work, the same. AND THE KING DOESN’T WORK! @snowdrift Is BBedit a “sane editor” in your mind? It worked with a BIG cruiser beam laser! (different mod)

never used BBEdit.
[firefox]
solaris :- ‘code: select all’, paste. works
windows :- ‘code:select all’, paste. fails (spurious spaces before every line)
windows :- drag-select copy, paste. works

editor used: notepad. spaces very visible.

i would note that at this stage, modding the game requires alterations to core data directories - where there is no error recovery, only reporting. most if not all of the mods people have posted are extremely old in patch terms.

hmm, i’ll try notepad. is it a fail or a success? EDIT: It’s a fail. I looked at it with notepad, looked all right, then tried to save it. WHen i tried, an error came up, saying that the file was already in use be another program. I don’t know what the hell it was talking about, since i wasn’t running any other text-editing applications. I’m beginning to think this mod hates me :frowning:

Ok. scratch ALL of my posts of this mod except for this one. It works! Finally! I don’t know what did it, but it works! Woo hoo! Now to tear the enemy ships to pieces…

Hybrinoid, I just came back to the Mod forum for the first time in a while and I see that you had some difficulties. I’m glad to see that you now have access to my Buffalo King dreadnought! Enjoy it, dude…that’s why I shared it with all of you manic spaceborne Napoleons. This hull is beautifully sick. :wink:

yeah. it’s awesome! thx for the great mod!

I tired using this, when I went to select the ship in the ship designed it looked like this.

Notice the text overlappying the OK button, it makes it impossible to click. Any ideas?

it should work, but i’m not gonna post for nothing, so why don’t you click the part that’s not covered?