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define_ship doesn't sanitize values. I was trying it with negative values.
negative trust and hull_mass values are fun.
(I believe large negative hull_mass values let you go back in time)
negative fuel_tank_mass and capacity just crashes
negative trust values may also crash if you use autopilot

mld wrote:define_ship doesn't sanitize values. I was trying it with negative values.

It does, just not as well as it perhaps could.

negative trust and hull_mass values are fun.
(I believe large negative hull_mass values let you go back in time)

:D

I played with them while trying to make a random ship generator
unfortunately ...
1) It looks like I can't define more than one ship in a single file
2) I wanted to generate random ships unique to each station/base (using station name as the seed value). But the ship files are read at the start and not at every station/base (perfectly logical unlike my intentions) I just realized this just wouldn't work anyway since there would be no ship definition after a restart
Currently I am settled with ship of the day, random ship every day.

Maybe not but I had an idea a while ago for customising ships.
So you'd buy a ship and it would have it's default thrust values and things but then you might be able to pay extra to "tune-up" or upgrade components like the maneuvering thrusters or the main engines.

How much exactly were you hoping to generate of a ship? What kind of things were you changing?
Basically what did you have in mind? :)

I had this in my mind

Second Hand Ship Market where everything is just gamble: you can see the price and specs of the base ship. Some ships are over used and in bad condition. But some are tuned/modified by their previous owners to perform better.

mld wrote:negative trust and hull_mass values are fun.

Oh, we have something like that in game ;) #1610 anyone?

mld wrote:Second Hand Ship Market where everything is just gamble: you can see the price and specs of the base ship.
Some ships are over used and in bad condition. But some are tuned/modified by their previous owners to perform better.

Well if we can work up a rough design of an upgrade/tuning system here then it gives us something to start with.

Upgrading ships seems to be, logically, a function of the equipment system.
Perhaps we could leverage that for the thrusters and main engines.
If they were just equipment then you could just buy new ones at a shipyard.

However this is probably quite complicated because you can imagine that each ship will use varying kinds of thrusters. Probably wildly different sized ones at least between a small ship and a massive one.

One idea might be to define, in the ship definition, the maximum power for the engine/thruster, it's default value, and the equipment type of thruster. Then when you buy that ship you'll see that it has the particular kind of thruster, it might be the best, worst or mid-range kind available. You might buy a better thruster, if it's the best the it will take it upto the maximum thruster value specified, if it's worst then it takes it down the scale... but maybe it ways less, or uses less fuel or something.

There are other upgrades, perhaps you could emulate the car/bike modding scene today where you replace body panels to reduce weight (or add pointless neon!). That would certainly help a ships characteristics. Others might increase internal capacity by a small margin/percentage.

Each upgrade could effect the longevity or maintenance of the ship too, but this is already getting quite complicated :)

That's exactly the kind of thing #1719 will allow. Equipment can define arbitrary characteristics, and the engine can use them. So we look at the currently-installed thruster, pull out its power value, and apply it. Really simple.