Adding Imperials as a race

[navygrizman]

For as long as I have been a fan of Star Trek and Star Wars, there has always been the ST vs SW debate. Has anyone added the Imperials as a complete race in order to have a SW vd ST battle in instant game scenarios? I have seen other full race mods but not adding the whole "race" to include stations and ships and all that. I would love to do it but not proficient enough yet with the visual creation aspects.

 

[Chiletrek]

Hello:
The problem has always been balance, because you have changes in the lore (particularly Star Wars) and then people like FractalSponge talking of thousands of terawatts per blast... and that is me been humble because numbers get astronomical. So to come-up with a good way to represent them and have an accurate battle would be very hard.

But I am sure something could be done so everybody is happy.... I hope .

 

[navygrizman]

I did find one "demo" mod add on and it is okay. going to play with it and see.

 

[Chiletrek]

I did find one "demo" mod add on and it is okay. going to play with it and see.

Let us know how did it go!

 

[navygrizman]

I did not like how it over wrote everything that I had done to my game, so I restored what I had and then started adding it piece by piece manually. The only thing tripping me up now is how to get the Rebels and Imperials to show up in the race selection menu in the instant action menu. I added Vulcans and they showed up.

 

[Chiletrek]

Yes, that is a problem with most mods and that is it overwrites everything. I think there is normally a disclaimer about that possibility.
About the race selection menu, that is strange, maybe it was an oversight by the modder.

 

[Hath]

Hey Navy did you add the Vulcans as a fully playable race? Or did you add them onto the federation side?
Have you downloaded http://armadafiles.com/files/armada-2/tutorials/westworlds-big-book-of-modding/details I believe it covers adding a completely new playable race.

 

[Adm_Z]

I did find one "demo" mod add on and it is okay. going to play with it and see.

This wasn't mine, was it? I made one to add the empire/republic but it was more of a total conversion "demo".

 

[navygrizman]

This wasn't mine, was it? I made one to add the empire/republic but it was more of a total conversion "demo".

It was yours. I pulled out all the files and started putting them back after I restored my game. I have everything in but the rebels and imperials are not showing up as chooseable races in the instant action menu. I had to create new races so to not over write the borg and cardassians. I added Vulcans and they show up. I will get it figured it out. I am sure.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Yeah, installing mods always needs a bit of manual work to make sure you don't overwrite anything. Good readmes will give you instructions on how to add a mod into your game without breaking anything. Otherwise, check which files the mod adds and which ones it changes. A good rule is to never install a modded file over another one if you're not sure the latter is stock. If in doubt, compare the two. There are very good tools that you can download that make comparing two text files very easy. This is why you will find very few mods with an auto-installer, as they tend to break modded games.

The main exception to all of this are total conversion mods, since they're meant to be installed over a stock install, not a modded one. For this reason, many people in the old days had a bunch of different installs.

As for your problem, check the races.odf in the odf/other/ folder. It's the list of all the playable races. Make sure your custom factions are listed in there and that the numbering is correct. Also double-check your custom race files for typos - missing quotation marks are particularly easily missed and will cause problems.

 

[navygrizman]

Yeah, installing mods always needs a bit of manual work to make sure you don't overwrite anything. Good readmes will give you instructions on how to add a mod into your game without breaking anything. Otherwise, check which files the mod adds and which ones it changes. A good rule is to never install a modded file over another one if you're not sure the latter is stock. If in doubt, compare the two. There are very good tools that you can download that make comparing two text files very easy. This is why you will find very few mods with an auto-installer, as they tend to break modded games.

The main exception to all of this are total conversion mods, since they're meant to be installed over a stock install, not a modded one. For this reason, many people in the old days had a bunch of different installs.

As for your problem, check the races.odf in the odf/other/ folder. It's the list of all the playable races. Make sure your custom factions are listed in there and that the numbering is correct. Also double-check your custom race files for typos - missing quotation marks are particularly easily missed and will cause problems.

Yes, thanks. I have double checked those so many times but I will go again looking for punctuation that i might have missed.

 

[navygrizman]

This wasn't mine, was it? I made one to add the empire/republic but it was more of a total conversion "demo".

I do have a question about adding a race to the instant game menu. I added the vulcans as a race and I tried to duplicate those files with adding rebels and imperials but they dont show up. Is there a trick or some things that I can check? I can add the ships and stations to my fed builders and they are fine. Weapons causes crashes. The race does not show up in the drop down menu. I am at a lost. Thanks

 

[Adm_Z]

I do have a question about adding a race to the instant game menu. I added the vulcans as a race and I tried to duplicate those files with adding rebels and imperials but they dont show up. Is there a trick or some things that I can check? I can add the ships and stations to my fed builders and they are fine. Weapons causes crashes. The race does not show up in the drop down menu. I am at a lost. Thanks

I assume you are trying to add multiple single race add-on mods to a single install, and not create a new race from scratch? From scratch is a lot of work, but if you have a mod in mind, usually the strategy is... follow the instructions if they have you edit files, and if any mod replaces a file in the install you have, open both files up with notepad and see what is different between the two. Usually looking at those differences will give you the info you need. Most modders add their edits at the very bottom or top of a file, but you may need to check the whole thing to be safe.

If you happen to be using Fleet Ops as a base, the modding guide on their site actually has a section on adding a race.

 

[Terra_Inc]

If you happen to be using Fleet Ops as a base, the modding guide on their site actually has a section on adding a race.

For non-FO installs, I recommend this old Starbase 34 guide:

Server error

 

[navygrizman]

For non-FO installs, I recommend this old Starbase 34 guide:

Server error

That helped TERMENDOUSLY!!! There was one line that I did not know to change and boom. Still got some ODF work to go but I am on my way. Thank you!!

 

[Terra_Inc]

Happy to hear that it helped