Tutorial: How to add new ships to the game
In this tutorial I will show you how to add new ships to the game.
First of all you'll have to create a new ship following the tutorials included with the game.
Once you have your new ship, you can add it to the playable ships, add it to the store or to a faction.
Adding a ship as playable
To add the ships to the playable ships, the ship file has to contain the power attributes (see the section 5 of the "Vehicle Editor Tutorial part 2"), otherwise the game will crash when trying to use the ship as playable.
Open the file "ships.xml" located in the "data\config" folder. This file contains the playable ships that the menu will allow you to choose. The content of this file is the following:
<config name="Ship Selection">
<var key="alliance" value="alliance1"></var>
<var key="cerberus" value="cerberus1"></var>
<var key="geth" value="geth1"></var>
<var key="turian" value="turian1"></var>
</config>
To add a new ship you'll have to add a new "<var>" element with both "key" and "value" attributes, "key" is used to reference the ship in game and "value" is the name of the ship file without the ".xml" extension.
For example if you have created a new ship and saved it as "myship.xml" the element you'll have to add is:
<var key="myshipid" value="myship"></var>
So the final file will be:
<config name="Ship Selection">
<var key="alliance" value="alliance1"></var>
<var key="cerberus" value="cerberus1"></var>
<var key="geth" value="geth1"></var>
<var key="turian" value="turian1"></var>
<var key="myshipid" value="myship"></var>
</config>
The key "myshipid" is the text that will be shown in the ship selection menu, the game will try to locate the key in the language file and if it can't find it then it will show the id as is, so you can put the "My Ship" instead of "myshipid" and that will be the text shown in the menu.
Adding the ship to the store
If your ship isn't a playable ship and you want to add it to the store, then instead of changing the "ships.xml" file you'll have to open the file "store.xml" in the folder "data\savegame". This file contains the status of the store and the available ships and consumables. The file is composed of a set of "<var>" elements each with a unique "key" attribute with three parts separated by ".". This three parts are:
id.type.level
The id can has these values: ship - consumable - unlocked
If the id is ship or unlocked, type can has the values: fighter - frigate - cruiser - dreadnought - hero
If the id is consumable, type can has the values: armor - weapon - ammo
And level can has the values: common - uncommon - rare - ultrarare
So if you want to add a new rare fighter to the store you'll have to find the key="ship.fighter.rare" and add a new <value> element with the name of the ship's XML file (without the ".xml" extension) as content.
For example the default value of the <var> element with key="ship.fighter.rare" is:
<var key="ship.fighter.rare">
<value>turian</value>
<value>geth</value>
</var>
So to add your new ship (myship.xml) you'll have to add the element:
<value>myship</value>
And then the ship.fighter.rare list will be:
<var key="ship.fighter.rare">
<value>turian</value>
<value>geth</value>
<value>myship</value>
</var>
Adding a ship to a faction
The default factions available are Reaper, Cerberus, Alliance, Turian and Geth. Each of these factions are defined in its own XML file located at "data\config" folder. The files are "reaper.xml", "cerberus.xml", "alliance.xml", "turian.xml" and "geth.xml" respectively.
For example, if you want to add your ship to the Reaper faction, you'll have to open the file "reaper.xml" which content is the following:
<config name="Reaper">
<var key="cruiser">
<value>smallReaper</value>
</var>
<var key="fighter">
<value>occulus</value>
</var>
<var key="frigate">
<value>destroyer</value>
</var>
<var key="dreadnought">
<value>reaper</value>
</var>
<var key="hero">
<value>marauder</value>
</var>
</config>
This file is similar to the store file but in this file the keys are fighter - cruiser - frigate - dreadnought - hero. So if you want to add your ship as a fighter of the Reaper faction you'll have to add a new <value> element with your ship's file name (without the ".xml" extension) inside the <var> element with the key="fighter".
<value>myship</value>
The final <var> element will be as follows:
<var key="fighter">
<value>occulus</value>
<value>myship</value>
</var>