Excellent guide.  However, after having the designer crash twice in a row at the group part save stage, losing several hours of work, I don't think I'm going to use this tool again until it's been fixed - the risk of wasting my time is just too great.

Ticket: #YZY-975-80249

...and when a group part save does work it doesn't show up in any of the lists and neither is there a file of the same name.  This tool is too buggy to invest time in.

Thanks for the advice, G. 

I've had the save fail silently several times now yet all parts do at least group up, not connected to the cube.  As long as you're not attaching to the starter cube I don't see how a part can't be attached to anything at all.  I've had the save fail violently twice, which is the ticketed instance.  I don't know why it fails in this way, perhaps a bad part - which bodes ill for trying to find out which one it was. 

I love your humanoid styles. I am not a big fan of organic ships but you do a good job of not going overboard on most of them. I will definitely be grabbing these when they are available.

What is the faction related to the TR showcase. Some of those ships are breathtaking. 

Hey there!

Thanks a lot everyone! And guess what! More progress!

The KR set is not complete. This one required "repairs" due to the old light bug, and as it was a older set (my 2nd), it wasn't up to par with the newer stuff, especially the fighters and turrets (can you believe I was manually building EVERY TURRET on these? YAY Grouped Parts!).

Now I'll admit, this set doesn't have the same level of additional models that the Terrans had, but it does have a unique turret setup for every ship role, and some of these are just worth repeating lol.

PS: The TR set is for the Turani Raiders, my pirate faction. They are actually up next for completion. While they have some great ships already, I'm planning on giving them a couple of special ships:

1) Several mediums that have been hijacked from other races and had new weapons installed.

2) At least a few large comprising of several mediums from #1

3) If there is time, the first attempt at a custom starbase.

Nope! Just through the group part feature, basically, construct your item as a ship, and then you can save it and use it as a part. None of those turrets are "functional". Watch my tutorials, they go over group parts!

Thanks!

Hey guys! A little update for you... 

So for one, I've run into a few kinks with that last ship set... because I actually sat down and played for like 6 hours! I noticed some clipping on some parts that seemingly only appears when zoomed out at a specific level, and someone pointed out that my starting cubes are not invisible on several of the cargo ships, so I have to reposition them so that they cover that up...

Point is that means some re-work on the files and such.

and speaking of files...

A few thoughts occurred to me... 

1) I have no idea if Version 1.1 will change up the ShipDefs, add new blueprints, or change up fighters/etc.

2) Some of this is quite likely, so it means all my file work to date will likely have been a waste of time... grrrr.

I've also decided that my ship nomenclature isn't as nice file wise as I had thought... for example, a template is usually named like KR-Large 01A.

KR=The Set, Large is the size, then a number/letter to denote the model. But now that I am actually denoting ships by their weapon systems this is esoteric and not useful in game. Furthermore, the use of letters in the beginning, means that other ship names like "Kortian Striker" get mixed with the template files... grrr.... (unless SD starts putting templates in a new folder).

So ... yeah, going to have to re-save every single template... (that is a lot) as...

0-KR Large Beam 01

0-KR Large Missile 01

0-KR Large Kinetic 01

0-KR Large Balanced 01

0-KR Large Support 01

0-KR Large Carrier 01

This will make making the files easier, but it will also make it clear which ship is meant to be what weapons... is that good or bad? In some cases, it might be very desirable for someone to use 0-KR Support 01 as the base for a special carrier... 

So generic template names or labeled, anyone have an opinion on that?

Oh well... these are template names, you will find the AI/default ships all named very default things as it speeds up file creation and makes it dead simple to understand what the ship does.

Such as "Beam P Destroyer" because the AI ship is the Beam P Large hull blueprint.

I WAS thinking of adding unique ship class names in the Descriptions though!

For example, my Terrans use Greek nomenclature "Athena class bomber" and such.

The Kirani, are likely to use a roman theme, while the Jun-Jilar will call everything a play on education "Enlightened Despot" for a battleship for example.

I also can make ALL the AI/Default ships AI only... which means they won't appear in your list when you play, and you'd have to make every ship from scratch using the templates (which a lot of us do anyways)

Any interest in that?

Noticed your work in the custom ships thread, and I must say great job.

Everything looks really nice.

Definitely looking forward to using this mod when you decide to release it. (Hopefully steam workshop isn't too far off).

Hey there! The Turan Raiders are now complete! This is my pirate faction!

I get a little long winded and random in this video, sorry about that!

I would like to invite to the GC3 Modders Association.

We are a group of modders dedicated to helping each other by providing resources, troubleshooting, ideas and more!

DING

The Veygar Horde