This is still alpha man, old savefiles are not supported but could be converted if someone write script.

You can get money with Ctrl+M.

Yes it's a problem that every release currently breaks the previous save games because they're just stored as a binary blob.

I guess we could (in theory) switch to using a plain text/xml/etc save file and add some versioning but it's a lot of work and would probably still be a constantly moving target.

You're a sick, sick man Brianetta

iWhy, thank you very much.:wq

I am wondering if there is any way to 'hack' hyperdrive range. I have tried some alterations in ship's lua or something but it made things worse ;p

And by hacking I mean changing it to some enormous range, like thousands of lightyears - I would like to go somewhere really far away and explore things 🙂

Actually, I agree that you should be able to explore far and wide in the game, although I also think it is right that jump drives do need servicing. Perhaps a special (highly expensive) "Explorer Ship" could be availble that could reach the parts other ships cannot reach. Call it a Heineken 😆 For balancing though, it should be good for not much else, otherwise everyone would be using it.

Remove BreakdownServicing.lua and your drive will never break down. That whole feature is written in Lua.

I hear that it's possible to hack a saved game, and to fit a large plasma accelerator into the drive bay. It has enormous power output, and requires no fuel. I don't know the details.

Good call 😛

So, if I understood you correctly - there is no easy way to change ship's hyperspace jump range?

Save files seem to be encoded, or do they need to be edited in hex mode?

You can buy a higher class of hyperdrive, carry less cargo, equipment or weapons, switch to a military drive - all of these things will increase your ship's hyperspace range. The right ship makes a huge difference, too. The power to mass ratio really matters.

I don't know how the saved games are coded. The best way to find out is to read (and understand) the source.

What you want isn't in the save file anyway. You can't arbitrarily change you hyperspace range. As Brianetta said, its calculated from a bunch of things.

So, the only way to do this is making new type of ship, which uses max military hyperspace engine which has almost (or exactly) 0 mass (don't ask me, what happened when I changed ship's mass to below 0 😆 ) with enormous power resources and cargo hold big enough to fit autopilot, atmosferic shielding engine and fuel? Right?

How to add military engine etc. I think I can work out but I really don't know how to add more 'power' to ship?

I haven't seen anything like that in ship's files...

Some time ago I added military drives up to Class 9 on a personal branch. Just for exactly this kind of galaxy hopping fun.

It requires some simple code changes as well as Lua (or it did at the time anyway), if the idea is popular I could update it for the current build?

Some things to consider would be the cost and mass of the drives. In my personal version everything up to the Class 8 followed a curve I'd plotted against the standard hyperdrive vs military equivalents which seemed ok... the CLass 9 weighed 1 tonne and cost $1 though 😆 put that in an interplanetary shuttle and you could go FAR 😀

The other option is for there to be other types of drives, such as those supposedly used by the LRC & Lynx bulk carrier.

What would people prefer?

If I understand this correctly, LRCs and the Lynx could possibly use something like "stutter drives", in that they only have a short jump range, but can do lots of simultaneous jumps to cover very large differences. Obviously these ships would have to use standard hydrogen fuel for re-fuelling requirements from Gas Giants (or stars if they are desperate). Or perhaps having "tender ships" do this for them. This is good because it still maintains the games mechanic and remains a plausible way to explore, in that, you need a massive ship that is super costly to own.

There is a problem with this though. How would such a ship be able to reach a star system, if despite getting as close as it could to it in a neighbouring star system, the distance was still greater than the ships range? In effect, it could not lock on to that star system to plot a jump.

A way around this problem could be to introduce the possibility to plot "intra hyperspace jumps" deep within the interstellar space between star systems. This would allow the ship to reach not only the edge of the galaxy, but go beyond the rim too.

Another way is to introduce advanced second generation ships (like for example Gernot's Orion) which could reduce their mass to zero for massive gains in hyperspace range. However, this would mark a break in the game mechanic and could cause balancing issues as they are (to use Gernots words), "cheated".

Another thing, servicing requirements. Perhaps the larger the class of drive used, the less it needs servicing because they are larger and more sturdily built. Smaller drives would need more servicing because they must work that much harder to do jumps. Military drives should require the shortest servicing intervals because of their high performance.

I would prefer the first option of fluffyfreak - Interplanetary Shuttle with military drives of class 9 and 1t weight seems to be l33t 😛 The cost is not important since money can be cheated easily and I only wonder how far I could go in Pioneer and that is just the simplest workaround here I think.

fluffyfreak, could you please tell me what files I need to change to make a new build with this 'cheat' ? (idea here: maybe programmers would put in game some kind of cheat mode - like ctrl+m for money, so everyone who bother could play around?)

It's a fun little hack, especially as I had it set up with something a bit more reasonable.

Basically I hacked everything for "testing" so that I had a much nicer ship with that Class 9 drive, weapons, scanners etc.

The game itself is fun when you're playing from the ground up, but a nice "debug" ship for testing is awesome 😀

To do this hack locally; on the Lua side you'll need to add them to at least:

"/ data / pienums.lua"

By adding entries like DRIVE_MIL1=56 for the military drives, but you'll have to also re-number ALL of the entries which follow it.

THEN you'll have to find that same enum within the cpp source code and add them there and anywhere they are used, making sure that you maintain exactly the same order as the Lua files.

SOME of that appears to be in:

"/ src / EquipType.h"

and

"/ src / EquipType.cpp"

Where prices and mass etc are defined.

Then you'll have to compile it yourself, this is pretty easy and we can talk you through any problems on here if you like.

If you like I can do this when I next have access to one of my own PC's and I can create a branch that you can look at/get with all of the changes done but that won't be until um... almost midnight tonight when I get home from working in London :ugeek:

Andy

Hi , Brianetta already told you this, but I'll repeat:

The real only way to give yourself a super ship is to equip it with a large plasma accelerator as a main drive. It will use no fuel and will have a power magnitudes larger than any class 9 drive. There are two ways you can do this:

1. Hack your savegame,

2. Hack the source to start you in a ship with that drive.

Possibly 3.. Might be able to use the lua console to equip one to the ship, although that might not work as it may be restricted by the fact that its not a hyperdrive.

So your large plasma accelerator will have an equivalent power to a class 100 hyperdrive !

You can fly anywhere with it! 😉

This is the minimal effort way, you can edit drive powers or add in new drives like Fluffyfreak mentioned, and thats probably the best way but its quite fun using a giant weapon as the hyperdrive 🙂

Oops duplicate post 😉

I would very appreciate that, not because I am lazy, but mostly because I am not much into programming and compiling thing, so I can create a nasty blackhole instead of debug ship 😉 (however I could try, if I had to)

s2odan, what you write is very interesting but it seems far beyond my understanding. I am not that good, unfortunately 🙁

pienums.lua is gone (FINALLY)

Chain drives, they were called. They were only class 1!

The key here is a large crew, including a map room full of experienced navigators.

Again, large crew. Surely a ship that size can carry a few engineers and spare parts? Certainly everything that a space station might have handy.

I'll give it a go 🙂 just got home, unfortunately bumped into my old boss and had a bottle of wine.. each, so lets see when I next post 😆

Does that mean they're automatically reflected somewhere so still accessible via Lua or are they just _gone_ completely?

From alpha 16 (and in the current nightlies) models use EquipType strings instead of raw numbers.

Thank you soooooo much 🙂

Ah yes I see what you've done 🙂 Ok that's easy enough to work around.

I've just done the engine masses as a simple sequence expansion so they'll probably want tweaking if we ever wanted to have military drives up to Class 9 within the game proper. Prices would also need some serious attention.