File overview: variant

.Variant files

A variant file is a special file that determines the loadout of the ships you see inside the game. It dictates the weapons, the amount of vents, capacitors and hullmods. When creating a variant file, it is highly recommended to use a tool in assistance as it allows variants to be consistent and less buggy. Examples of said programs are Trylobot's Ship Editor or Redbull's Online Editor.

Variant files in depth

Starting with the frequently seen Hound and its most often seen variant.

{

    "displayName": "Assault",

    "fluxCapacitors": 0,

    "fluxVents": 9,

    "hullId": "hound",

    "hullMods": ["auxiliarythrusters"],

    "variantId": "hound_Assault",

    "weaponGroups": [

        {

            "autofire": false,

            "mode": "LINKED",

            "weapons": {"WS 001": "chaingun"}

        },

        {

            "autofire": true,

            "mode": "LINKED",

            "weapons": {"WS 002": "lightdualmg"}

        }

    ]

}

DisplayName: This is where you enter an appropriate prefix that will end up being placed in front of the designation found in the ship_data.csv.

Example: Assault Frigate

displayName: Assault

designation: Frigate

HullId: This must match what is found in the ship_data.csv , it is the unique identifier within the game for each ship.

HullMods: These are the mods that will come pre-installed on the ship. You can find the lists of available Hullmods and their specific id.

Quality: Quality is used a bit currently, but it's rather obfuscated. Essentially; a market which is "richer" (guess is that it's mostly stability-based) gets higher-rarity variants on average than "poorer" markets. One important exception is the [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], who seems to have a fixed quality, and adding a variant with another quality messes up fleet generation.

VariantId: The id used when you want to call this ship out for use, such as missions or in the campaign.

WeaponGroups: This sets up your weapons into default corresponding groups and specifies its initial weapons. When manually inputted, it is possible to fit weapons of different types into a mismatching weapon slot.

Autofire: Specifies whether or not the weapon will be switched by default to AI control when manually piloting the ship.

Mode: Sets the fire mode of the weapon from either Linked or Alternating. AI piloted ships will often ignore Alternating.

Weapons: Here is where you place specify the weapon ID from your weapon_data.csv

WS: An Id for the weapon system, matches up with the Ids specified in the .ship file.

goalVariant: Boolean. True enables this variant to show up in the autofit section of the refit screen. False still allows this variant to be called in scripts or faction fleet setup; it only impacts autofit. Defaults to false

Extra Notes

Potentially illegal fits

Variants are not sanitized with normal refit screen restrictions such as exceeding max number of flux vents / capacitors or fitting weapons in otherwise incompatible slots.

Dev mode additional options

Setting devmode to true in the settings file will enable additional main menu options to directly view & edit variants. Very helpful.

At least two versions out of date. Last verified for version 0.8.1a. Please refer to Version History and update this page.

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