Creating Levelable 'Crews'
(Or how many different ways are there to solve a problem?) :)
Sins Forums
I have had this idea in my head for the last few days, and wondered how to accomplish it. Basically i would like to create crews, that are moveable from ship to ship, and carry their experience with them from game to game.
1. If i rename the ships, from CapitalBattleShip to something like Captain Faragate, link them to the a player.entity file, then i could make 10+ copies of the ship and drop them in the game folder, each time i play a map i could choose a different Captain level Name, like say, Captain Faragate1, Captain Faragate2, etc... The playerfile would load a different set of ships, say frigate first level, then on to the capital battleship second, etc... frigates of course would not be levelable, but would serve the purpose of getting the gamer used to the captain and his crew, we could load a small, say 5 man crew listing in the ship description: 1st Mate Connors, Leutenant Luellin, Ensign Kurtis, Navigator Torres, Engineer Parks.
Then, choose Captain Faragate1 for the first map, Captain Faragate2 for the second map, etc... the experience could be hard coded, assuming Captain Faragut survives and goes to the second map, we could assume he starts at level 2, we could then pre-load the CaptalBattleShip to level 2 to start. Hmmm... trying to think how to do this. Exp levels for the ships are built on... battle experience, or bought. Hmmm... i wonder if there is a control or value somewhere to change that would reflect this, so we could 'start' a ship at level 2 immediately on creation? This may be the crux right here, how to do this.
If it is workable, then we load the 3rd map with our choice of Captain Faragate3, like choosing a race name, and start our good captain at level 3, and so on...
It is a 'manual' way of accomplishing it, if we can indeed somehow start at a level other than 0, but workable. It also means the gameinfo folder becomes something like 4 or 5mb in size as opposed to the 1.5 it normally is.
The stats on the ships of course reflect this new experience level, but i will try to keep it close to what is really level 2 or 3, or ... whatever the level is, so that it doesn't throw the game too much out of whack. Of course we could start with Captain Faragate10 and cheat, but that wouldnt be really fair to the idea, and may not be possible as it is, much less without dev intervention to keep the levels in some pre-ordained order.
2. Would it be simpler, or more realistically possible to 'create' maps, with pre-set fleets, like the 'Balance of Power' map? And in that way, simply create a set of maps that take our good captain from level to level?
3. How else? Any suggestions? I know i am guessing at a lot here, but i am trying to see how one might do this without re-coding, or without having the devs re-write the whole game.
4. Hmmm.... still thinking... haha.... well... i never seem to run out of ideas. 
Take care and thanks for listening.
Keep Modding!!
-Teal
Hmmm....