Extra ships/races?

[Cmdr_Shaffer]

Hey all, Commander Shaffer here, long time gamer, fairly new to Nexus. I actually got it because of the mods available, then fell in love with the standard gameplay. But my question for the gamers here is this: Any way to add more than 10 ships or 2 teams to a battle in Nexus Skirmisher? Maybe I'm just dense, But I haven't found a way to do that, and I want to re-stage some epic skirmishes, cuz I have some hardware I want to max out and it looks like Nexus is the game to do it. Any help? Thanks in advance! 
-Shaffer

[Arparso]

In short: no.

In long: not by simply using the Skirmisher. First things first: additional fleets won't work, as the Skirmisher's mission scripts will completely ignore any ship not belonging to one of the two races set in the Skirmisher. You'd have to edit the mission script for that, which isn't simple at all.

Adding additional ships beyond the 10-ship limit is easier, if you don't shy away from using the official mod tools or alternatively use a text editor to manually edit the mission file. Keep in mind, though, that Nexus wasn't built for managing large numbers of ships - it usually crashes around 28 ships total, so you won't be able to go much beyond the 10-ship fleet size.

Using the mod tools:
The mod tools should be installed in the "mod_tools" subfolder of your Nexus installation. If not, you can download them on moddb.com. Fire up the mod tools, select the right mod, click on mission editor, load the mission and click on "add object"... select the correct shiptype, race, etc. and place it somewhere in the map (hold down SHIFT to move the ship around and R to rotate it). Make sure to only use one of the two races you selected in the Skirmisher (usually #race_player and another one).

Save and you're good to go.

Manual editing by using a text editor:
If you go to the mod's universe\mod_missions folder, e.g.:

<your_path_to_nexus>\mods\NEXUS Skirmisher\universe\mod_missions

... you can open one of the .mission files and scroll to the end. There you might find entries like this:

Code: [Select]

SHIP
Name "Nightingale"
Race #race_player
ShipType #styp_battlecruiser
Position 500 0 500
Orientation 0 0 0
END
You can copy and paste that block of text to add additional ships. You might need to change some details like the ship's name, the class, shiptype or position accordingly, of course, and make sure to only use one of the two races you selected in the Skirmisher (usually #race_player and another one).

-------------------------

Sorry about this not being easier. I coded the Skirmisher quite a long time ago, back when I didn't knew much about programming. Because of that, it's somewhat limited in functionality.