Modding Question: Starship Inventory Layout

[Unedjis]

Hi all,

 

I'm posting here in hopes this forum isn't as dead as it looks. After about 300 mod-free hours in No Man's Sky, I can no longer resist the urge to shape the game more to my liking - which goes in the opposite direction of what 90% of available mods do, and that is make it a bit harder while maintaining or increasing diversity.

 

My first major (?) project will be an overhaul of the ship inventories. I am aware that Slots Overhaul exists, and while it certainly sounds better than the Vanilla system, I would prefer to go in a different direction and use a different approach. As far as I understand Slots Overhaul (without having tested it ingame because apparently it doesn't work with the latest update and I can't extract the .pak either - gives me an error), it gives every ship the maximum possible Slot Layout (I'm guessing the one from the Large Freighter/Fighter/Explorer - doesn't really matter) and then handles how many slots a ship has unlocked through the class of the ship (C has the smallest amount of slots, S the largest, no matter which ship model). While this is cool because you can get a 48 slot variant of your favorite design (even a small Fighter), it is not what I want.

 

What I do want is the following:

1) Each ship type has its own inventory:tech ratio, so for example Haulers have a lot of regular inventory slots but fewer tech slots, while Explorers can't get up to 48 inventory slots but might have more than the Vanilla maximum in tech slots (i.e. more than 14 when fully upgraded).

2) The number of starting slots of each ship that spawns isn't much different from Vanilla, i.e. small Fighters/Explorers start with 15-19 slots, medium variants with 20-28 or so, and so on.

3) BUT no matter if the ship is small, medium or large, it should be possible to upgrade it to the maximum number of regular and tech slots that I will assign for that ship type.

 

I know how to do 2), that is pretty straightforward (in INVENTORYTABLE.EXML). However, 1 and 3 involve a component called LayoutSizeType - at least that's what I think. If I interpret that correctly, this determines which slots lie within the white outline that indicates the maximum upgrade size. What I believe I could do would be to just take one of the existing LayoutSizeTypes, i.e. DrpLarge for a 48 slot Hauler, and possibly ShtLarge for a 40 slot whatever (taken from the Large Shuttle that never spawns ingame). However, I would like to have the option for more variation there, and I don't know if that LayoutSizeType goes for regular slots AND tech slots combined or if it's separate (I assume it's combined).

 

Essentially I want to create new LayoutSizeTypes that define new areas on the 8x6 inventory/tech grid, but I have no idea if that's even possible or where to look. Would it be in art files because it requires special textures or whatnot? How would that art file be integrated? And in that vein, would it be possible to give a larger layout than the 5x5 one to the Exotics? (Exotics' disappointingly small inventory sizes are what gave me the idea in the first place. I am not swapping out my 48 slot Fighter with a tiny Exotic that would be completely filled with Tech to be able to compete. I know I could just edit that in the Save Editor, but that feels like cheating and I don't do that.)

 

I hope I've made myself somewhat clear to more experienced modders - I know you're out there, somewhere within the 700,000 LY radius from the Galactic Core. ;)

 

Cheers and thanks in advance for any replies,

Unedjis

[Unedjis]

Nevermind, I just found out in game that the white outline around inventory slots doesn't mean anything because you can still add more rows to a maximum of 48+21 for large variants and Exotics, so now all I'm gonna do in my mod is increase the slot maximum for small and medium variants so you can upgrade any ship you like to 48x21 if you so please. That should be a LOT easier than I originally thought.

 

Edit: Turns out it's not and I have no idea how to do it.

Edited May 10, 2020 by Unedjis

[Stormenrgy]

If you figure this out please let me know. Ive been playing for quite a while now and have yet to come across a S class ship with even 40 slots in it... its extremely frustrating... at this point Id even take a 48 slot C with those 21 tech slots!