Is it possible to IMPORT ship designs into CAMPAIGN?

[ulisse31]

The in-game ship builder is not appealing to me, so what I would like is to download a particular ship design, import it into the vanilla campaign, and then -if the fleet resources permits it- build or modify standard ships as I find them into their custom counterparts while in the city shipyard using their one button templates (i.e. Skylark v1, v2, etc).

I searched the forum but couldn't find a real answer to this one. There is no official in-game support for this, so it's obvious I don't mind getting my hands dirty on the filesystem.
thank you

[Uncle Dolan]

Yes, it is possible.
It is complex to manage but when you do everything right, you can fight against your own designs.

All you need is the game at v. 1.1, everything up is not working for that.
Once you have 1.1, go and design your ships and save them.

The key why 1.1 is needed, it creates a .png file from your ship while newer versions dosnt support that feature anymore.

Once you have that done, you also need to edit some entries in the .siera file of your ship.
1st edit: In the file, look for "m_name="your ship name" and replace it with a name of an already existing ship in the game.

2nd edit: here you have to do a little reseach by yourself or do a little experiment.
I used the "Longbow" for my replacement target and had to edit the following line.

m_card_caption={align=2}{font=courier_28}Longbow@{font=myriad_10}CARRIER HV FRIGATE

This is different when you look for another ship but the line should be the same you have to edit.


There is also a line "m_ship_name=" its for showing the name in game ... here is mine for example "m_ship_name=Ferdinand Mk5"

I hope this helps you out somehow sicne its a while I have done that.

[Uncle Dolan]

Afterword!!!!

Once you have all that done, you can take your build ship from 1.1 and use it in the newest version of the game.

You have to backup the ship files you want to replace with your creation in case of messing up and I highly rec this step.

[ulisse31]

thank you, much appreciated, I will give it a try

[Uncle Dolan]

Hey there, I took a view into the game and checked how to do it correct so if you didnt managed to get it to work yet, I made a video and a quick step by step.

Also good to know, you dont need any old copy of HF since 1.163 creates png images again which comes in very handy.

[Uncle Dolan]

ALWAYS BACKUP THE ORIGINAL SHIPS AND YOUR OWN DESIGNS

How to replace a ship in HighFleet

1. Pick your build ship and copy it into a new folder
...\HighFleet\Ships
2. Look for the ship you want to replace
...\HighFleet\Objects\Designs
3. Open both .seria in Notepad
4. Search for the 2nd ship name
5. Change m_alignment in your designed ship from "-1" to "1"
6. Copy the m_card_caption... line from the original ship under m_alignment
7. Change the 1st name in the .seria into the name of the original ship
8. Save and change the name of your copy into the original ship designed
9. Drag and drop your ship into ...\HighFleet\Objects\Designs and replace the original

Optional

If you want your design be the flagship, add m_flagship=true between the shown example.

m_ship_name=Ferdinand Mk7
m_playable=true
m_flagship=true
m_alignment=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smtIR_Oq3i0