Modding Crew. What's possible?

[iantlopp]

There's not a lot of information I've been able to glean from doing searches here and on the wiki about modding the built in races, so I was wondering just what is possible. The basic things I've seen from other mods are fairly obvious (adding or changing crew member names, changing portraits, changing the sprites used to show the races on the ship - only ones I've found), but I'm wondering if any of the following list is possible:

1) Make male and female sprites for the crew/races, i.e. add gender diversity to all the races, not just the humans?

2) If so, make events based on gender?

3) Also if so, make events based on gender work on all races?

4) Make specific new characters (like Ruwen or Ariadne, etc... but have specific stats for those characters so that when found, they conform to a developing storyline)?

5) If so, make the new characters have specific traits like 1 point in Repair, 2 points in Shields?

6) Also if so, have more detail behind the points other than 1 or 2 points, have the new character appear with 1.5 points to a stat.

7) Also if so, make the character's experience take MUCH longer to accrue? (instead of, in a single battle, having a character get 2 points in shields as previous battles have been for me, have it take multiple sectors and dozens of battles before the character/race can go up a single point in that stat)

8) Rename the races to other race names, i.e. Engi are no longer called Engi, but are instead, called in the game Flubarb (or whatever else)?

9) If so, rename the races in the resources so that instead of writing a mod that shows the new Flubarb race, but in the .xml you no longer have to call them Engi?

10) Significantly modify what the races are capable of (Instead of Engi reparing at 1.5x, the new Flubarb race repairs at .5x but is 2x faster and has 4x attack damage, but only .25x health - as an example)?

11) Modify the chance of finding a specific race or character?

12) If so, have the chance to find a specific race or character not be dependent upon a sector, but upon other events? (you killed the Dread Pirate Tuco, now a survivor of a Tuco attack, Flubarb "Bob" is looking for you to join your crew, the only crew able to defeat the Dread Pirate Tuco. And with each jump the percentage chance of meeting Bob increases - or with each sector, etc.)

13) Limit the maximum level a character/race can gain experience to? (Flubarb's are naturally Intelligent folk but are cowards and can never get more than level 1 Melee skill level).

I will have another list like this shortly asking about other parts of the engine/modding ability, but these were the most pressing questions I had.

***edit, added a thirteenth question, yay!

[stylesrj]

To answer all that...

No. You can only really change what they look like and their names.

But there is some hope. You can rename Engies to Flubarb and make events for them. But you can't have both Engies and Flubarb and events still have to be scripted for to "engi"

See Gencool's Christmas mod on that one. Crystals were replaced with Santa and Engies were replaced with Elves. He also scripted out the Santa and Engi events and put in new ones pertaining to them.
Strange New Galaxy by Metzelmax also does the same thing. Zoltan are Antarians, Slugs are something else but they look like the original race but some events call them something else.

Also, you can script events where you gain specific crew members with a name and skills in thing. For example, when you rescue Charlie, you might get one who's a soldier, an engineer, pilot, etc and they'll have the skills up to green level for it.
In fact in my Christmas Flagship mod, I did exactly that for some of the choices. You can get a Rock skilled in weapons and combat.

So yeah, not much you can do when it comes to modding crew. It certainly killed my plans for an FTL mod where I'd have a band of heroes with powers (like a Human who was as tough as a Rock, could perform Lockdowns and was immune to suffocation like a Ghost. Or another Human who was able to power systems and have the movespeed of a Mantis with the combat power of an Engi)

[iantlopp]

To answer all that...

No. You can only really change what they look like and their names.

But there is some hope. You can rename Engies to Flubarb and make events for them. But you can't have both Engies and Flubarb and events still have to be scripted for to "engi"

See Gencool's Christmas mod on that one. Crystals were replaced with Santa and Engies were replaced with Elves. He also scripted out the Santa and Engi events and put in new ones pertaining to them.
Strange New Galaxy by Metzelmax also does the same thing. Zoltan are Antarians, Slugs are something else but they look like the original race but some events call them something else.

Also, you can script events where you gain specific crew members with a name and skills in thing. For example, when you rescue Charlie, you might get one who's a soldier, an engineer, pilot, etc and they'll have the skills up to green level for it.
In fact in my Christmas Flagship mod, I did exactly that for some of the choices. You can get a Rock skilled in weapons and combat.

So yeah, not much you can do when it comes to modding crew. It certainly killed my plans for an FTL mod where I'd have a band of heroes with powers (like a Human who was as tough as a Rock, could perform Lockdowns and was immune to suffocation like a Ghost. Or another Human who was able to power systems and have the movespeed of a Mantis with the combat power of an Engi)

So to answer my own questions in the list based on what you stated (for posterity's sake, as well as organization for workarounds and the like.

1) Make male and female sprites for the crew/races, i.e. add gender diversity to all the races, not just the humans?

Possibly? (don't quite know if you answered this one specifically)

2) If so, make events based on gender?

Apparently not, though I may have misinterpreted.

3) Also if so, make events based on gender work on all races?

A definite no, as this works into modifying the individual races on a scriptable level, which, as I understand from you, does not work.

4) Make specific new characters (like Ruwen or Ariadne, etc... but have specific stats for those characters so that when found, they conform to a developing storyline)?

Yes, though I'm not sure how completely this is possible? I'll delve into it in the lower questions.

5) If so, make the new characters have specific traits like 1 point in Repair, 2 points in Shields?

Yes, apparently.

6) Also if so, have more detail behind the points other than 1 or 2 points, have the new character appear with 1.5 points to a stat.

I don't know as you weren't specific on this.

7) Also if so, make the character's experience take MUCH longer to accrue? (instead of, in a single battle, having a character get 2 points in shields as previous battles have been for me, have it take multiple sectors and dozens of battles before the character/race can go up a single point in that stat)

From my understanding no, at least not on a character, or race level, but could this be done as a global thing? i.e. each action that normally gives 1 point experience would require 10 times as many actions to get that point of experience? or require 10 times as much experience to go to level 1?

8) Rename the races to other race names, i.e. Engi are no longer called Engi, but are instead, called in the game Flubarb (or whatever else)?

Apparently completely possible. You mention that we can't add races (i.e. add Flubarb, based on Engi, and also use Engi), but I don't really care about that. My intention was to completely replace all the races with completely new races, with no previous races from FTL in it.

9) If so, rename the races in the resources so that instead of writing a mod that shows the new Flubarb race, but in the .xml you no longer have to call them Engi?

No, though maybe possible through heavy scripting and referencing? i.e. create new variable, the variable's name is Engi, and has a value Flubarb, then reference the variable? This is actually quite important to me, though may not break my idea entirely if not possible.

10) Significantly modify what the races are capable of (Instead of Engi reparing at 1.5x, the new Flubarb race repairs at .5x but is 2x faster and has 4x attack damage, but only .25x health - as an example)?

This is apparently a complete no, sadly. I'm assuming they're hardcoded? Probably a longshot, but would it be possible to give characters greater than 2 levels of skill in any given arena (this might have my intended effect in the long run), i.e. Flubarb Bob starts off at level 1 Repair, and level 0 shields (base level), then through work, develops shields to level 2, but repair to level 3, increasing repair speed beyond normal vanilla levels?

11) Modify the chance of finding a specific race or character?

Somewhat? I really didn't understand from your reply how in depth this is.

12) If so, have the chance to find a specific race or character not be dependent upon a sector, but upon other events? (you killed the Dread Pirate Tuco, now a survivor of a Tuco attack, Flubarb "Bob" is looking for you to join your crew, the only crew able to defeat the Dread Pirate Tuco. And with each jump the percentage chance of meeting Bob increases - or with each sector, etc.)

Unknown until I get further information from you.

13) Limit the maximum level a character/race can gain experience to? (Flubarb's are naturally Intelligent folk but are cowards and can never get more than level 1 Melee skill level).

I'm guessing no, as this seems a bit too in depth, but my hopes are up, as I hadn't asked this previously.

[stylesrj]

Right... so I'll answer the points I didn't cover then.

1) Nope. Only those foolish Earth meatsacks have different genders.
2) I'm highly unsure myself though if that'll work. Any Human will do in a Human event. If it's set to Female... would it change? Someone may have tested this.

4) Look at the event scripts for things like the Desolate Moon (under events.xml) and see how they've done it. Or the Zoltan Envoy Quest. Envoy's skills are something like skill_all="2"

6) Level 1 or Level 2. No halfway points.

7) Experience gain is hardcoded unfortunately.

9) Yes. They're called Engi in the files but the name can be anything (Strange New Galaxy for example again... Faster Than Christmas...)
10) Hardcoded. No more than 2 levels. No more, no less.
11) When you say race="random" it's random on what you get. Captain's Edition adds Lanius and Ghosts to the mix (which is rather annoying when I get boarded by pirates but hey, Lanius outside of their sectors). If you make it specific, then you'll get that race. Otherwise, random.
12) Events don't work like that UNLESS you set a quest chain. So you defeat Tuco, a Quest appears where you can pick up Bob or Bob asks to meet you at another Quest Beacon. Captain's Edition's got this really fun event chain that's like 6 or 7 beacons before you get a Ghost crew.
13) See 10

[NarnKar]

All characters have genders in the code, I think, but they're hidden values that don't mean anything. Male/female appearances are only because of the crew spriting sheets I think.