![]() | Advanced Features |
This document describes PHost's advanced features, how to set them up and how to play with them. It is intended for players and hosts.
PHost allows any player to play any race in the game. This is accomplished with the PlayerRace config option. This option has 11 entries, with each entry specifying the race that the given player is to play. For example:
PlayerRace = 1,1,1,1,1,6,6,6,6,6,6 |
This has players 1 through 5 playing The Federation, and players 6 through 11 playing The Borg. A race value of 12 is also accepted, meaning that the given player will have no special racial abilities.
New v4.0: PHost 4 goes even a step further and allows to customize the special missions available to the player separately, using the PlayerSpecialMission option. This is intended for design games with custom races. By default, this option has the same value as PlayerRace.
In the client program, the special mission listed for each race will not change, so the player needs to remember that his special mission may be different, depending upon his race assignment. For example, if player 11 selects the special mission on one of his ships then the client program will show the mission as Build Fighters. But if player 4 has been assigned race 5, then the ship will actually perform the Rob mission. Using the Special Mission extended mission can bypass this confusion.
It is suggested that players edit the
mission.ini file to have the Special Mission
extended mission reflect their true special mission, and use
this extended mission instead of the usual one.
Some client programs may refuse to set your special mission. For example, the Build Fighters is only permitted for fighter ships, so a client program will not allow the Privateer-playing player 11 to set this mission on a torpedo ship. Using mission 31 instead also avoids this problem.
The following table summarizes the abilities controlled by these two options:
Value | PlayerRace | PlayerSpecialMission |
---|---|---|
1 | Fed crew bonus (if enabled, AllowFedCombatBonus):
Receive 25% shield bonus between fights; 50 kt mass bonus; all
weapons fully functional until end 90% run traitor when ship is tow-captured |
Super Refit mission |
2 | Takes up to 150% damage in combat, and related benefits Colonists are immune to Glory Device |
Hiss mission |
3 | Immune to NUK if ship has weapons but no fuel | Super Spy and
Standard Spy missions Immune to Force Surrender when doing Super Spy/Standard Spy |
4 | Immune to ATT/NUK
if configured so (PlanetsAttackKlingons) Support 60 clans on desert planets |
Pillage mission |
5 | Beams have 3X kill bonus in combat complete crew runs traitor when ship is tow-captured |
Rob mission Can tow-capture if allowed (AllowPrivateerTowCapture) |
6 | Beam aboard debris after destroying an enemy ship Assimilate natives |
Self Repair mission |
7 | Prefer desert planets (CrystalsPreferDeserts) Colonists are immune to Glory Device |
Can lay web mines (using the
standard/extended missions) Web mines owned by this race drain fuel Can tow-capture if allowed (AllowCrystalTowCapture) |
8 | 40% run traitor when ship is tow-captured Can't be found by bioscanners |
Dark Sense mission |
9 | Support 60 clans on desert planets | Build Fighters mission (RobotsBuildFighters) and lfm friendly code |
10 | Immune to ATT/NUK
if configured so (PlanetsAttackRebels) Support 9 million colonists on ice planets; 60 clans on deserts will find Empire using bioscanners can't be found by Dark Sense |
Rebel Ground Attack mission Build fighters on ships (RebelsBuildFighters; automatic, and lfm) |
11 | Support 60 clans on desert planets Can sweep web mines with fighters if configured (AllowColoniesSweepWebs) 70% run traitor when ship is tow-captured |
Build Fighters mission (ColoniesBuildFighters) and lfm friendly code |
12 | none | none |
For example, if a race has PlayerRace=7 and PlayerSpecialMission=7, he plays a "standard" Crystal. Giving him PlayerSpecialMission=6 instead, he'll still be like desert planets and be immune to glory devices, but will no longer be able to lay web mines or tow-capture. Instead, he'll be able to repair in space.
Not all of the possible combinations make sense. Unless you explicitly want to try out the new possibilities, we strongly recommend anyone to not have a PlayerSpecialMission option in his game, so that only the 11 standard races are used.
Many other racial abilities are configured by array options. When playing with non-standard race abilities, you have to change them manually. Options which fall into that category:
Each race can build a unique set of ships; this set is defined in a file truehull.dat. When playing with non-standard race assignments, host and clients have to agree upon a consistent (and sensible) interpretation of that file. This is what PHost's MapTruehullByPlayerRace option is for.
Normally, the truehull.dat is indexed by player number (MapTruehullByPlayerRace=No). All client programs can handle this interpretation. However, the host must modify the file accordingly; for the above example, it must contain five Federation ship sets, and six Cyborg ship sets.
In order to generate such a file, you need
Penguin (version 2 or higher) or its clone,
Peng
(version 0.2 or higher).
You can also freely edit the ship assignments if you wish.
In case all players use client programs which can handle it, you can also set MapTruehullByPlayerRace to Yes. This instructs the client programs to do the above remapping. The advantage is that you can use unmodified standard ship list files; the disadvantage is that it fails when someone uses a different client.
Programs that are known handle MapTruehullByPlayerRace as of
December 2002 are VPA and
Planets Command Center
.
The special ship abilities are sometimes considered racial abilities. However, it only depends on the truehull.dat file who can build which ships; if you allow the Fed player to build MCBRs, the Fed will have a gravitonic cloaker, although that is usually considered a Privateer ability.
Many people use programs which can read util.dat and
display it graphically. Examples of such programs are
EchoView, VPA 3.61
and
PCC
.
Since util.dat contains mostly the same information as the subspace messages, it is somewhat redundant to have both. In addition, player messages can become overwhelming, especially in the later stages of the game, when mine scan messages, sensor sweep messages, dark sense messages, etc. can leave a player with over 200 messages to deal with.
The idea behind message filtering is that the utilities mentioned above will display the information they got from util.dat, and present the information to you visually, so there's no need to read it textually.
Players can turn on message filtering themselves, without host intervention, using the filter command. When filtering is enabled, the following messages will be suppressed:
Last updated 02 March 2003.