Modifying any ship into being recognized as a flagship

This simple guide will explain how to edit ship design files so that your design is being recognized as a flagship (your main ship) of your squadron.

Brief introduction

As of today, 31.07.2021, in the current game version, only Sevastopol strategic heavy cruiser (actually a heavily armed tanker with powerful sensor suit) can be used as a flagship of your small fleet. While powerful and useful, you may for several reasons desire to go for something else when choosing your new flagship.

Where do I find files I need to modify?

The game saves ship designs in your steam game folder. You can find it manually in "\steamapps\common\Highfleet" in your steam folder or just rightclick with mouse on the Highfleet game in your steam library and then choosing "Manage" and "Browse local files"



All the designs created in the Shipworks editor are stored in the Ships folder.



Information regarding your design is being stored in files with .seria file extension where the name of your design is the file name. So if you design something called "Kirov", the file will be named Kirov.seria.

Also a .png image file with be generated with same name, which we in this case will ignore.

Modifying seria files

Warning:

I strongly advise you to take a copy of Sevastopol seria file (original designs can be found in Objects>Design folder) and work on that, since Sevastopol seria file contains few differences to ordinary ship design files and as of today I am not sure of what ramifications will be of leaving these different lines out

Following are steps for modifying seria file of the ship design you want as your flagship:

• You need to open seria file of the ship you want as your flag ship in a text editor like Notepad or Notepad++ (notepad comes free with every Windows iteration since 90s).
  
• Scroll down to "m_classname=Creature"
  
• Under it enter NEW following line: "m_flagship=true"

The end result should look something like this:



Before any changes you did of files are reflected in the game, you NEED to restart the game itself.

Next time you start up your game and start a new campaign you will see your design with a star on it, indicating it can serve as a flagship.

[Minimum Gorky]

As of 1.163, this doesn't seem to work. I've added m_flagship=true in various positions as per the recent discussions, but none of them actually set the flagship status. Prior to 1.163 I did have this particular ship working as my flagship, so it's odd.

[Jaginun]

@st1nc1
the developer also expected players to edit and customise their ship throughout the campaign; considering it only takes a few runs to start with plenty extra starting cash, the only 'cheat' here is saving time having to meticulously redesign the Seva every run

Also, considering the ship files have a line to make any ship a flagship, it seems indicated in the code that alternative flagships are absolutely intended at some point in development

keep in mind though that it's not exactly that easy considering the sole main developer is probably in a trench in ukraine.

[stnc1]

if the developers did not add the oportunity to make your ship a flagship, then it was intended and it is part of the challenge. this guide is cheating

[SJ]

This still works at the time of posting.

The star would disappear if I made changes in the ship editor, I guess it rewrites the .seria after the making changes to your ship design...

After I was done editing my ship design I saved it, closed the game, added the m_flagship=true line again and then relaunched the game. My custom flagship works.

[Letnemip]

It worked!
Thank you my friend!

[WiseArkAngel]

They need to add a button that enables a ship to be a "flagship" instead of having to do all this techno wizardry.

[Ziggurt]

Strange that some people have issues with this while other do not. I have two steam friends who have done same changes as those in this guide and none of them had any issues. I did total reinstall several times and could not reproduce the problem

[KocLobster]

Can confirm what @eawamp said. "m_flagship=true" must now be entered further down (as a new line) and this still works. Easiest way to do this is using a text editor. Enter the "m_flagship=true" on line 5811, right after the "m_alignment=1".

[Ziggurt]

I have taken a break from gaming due to professional obligations but will reinstall this game to see what changes have taken place. Will update the guide if needed.

[Eric W]

It does still work--you have to enter m_flagship=true as a new line. For the Sev it now appears right after m_alignment=1, 28 lines after the m_classname=Creature. I don't know coding to know if the precise order matters.