[Insomniac34]

is there any somewhat easy way to enable shivan fighter weaponry to be used on player ships? I have tried going into Weapons.tbl and copying every setting from the Shivan Heavy Laser into the UD-8 Kayser section, but the only thing that works is the sound and rate of fire. The visual is still the same old mediaVP Kayser effect. Basically I want to know how to make player weapons look like the red lasers the Shivans use...

[blowfish]

You are probably using mediavps, which means that there is a modular table that is overwriting everything in ships.tbl (that's just the way it works).  I would not recommend changing existing weapons.  Instead, you should either make a new weapon or just add the "player allowed" flag to the shivan weapons.

[Snail]

You could create a duplicate of the UD-8 Kayser (copy+paste the entry under it) and replace the settings of the Shivan Heavy Laser to the duplicate.

[Insomniac34]

OK thanks, I just got it to work.

NEW QUESTION: How do I make Shivan ships on my own team? When i try to change the Shivan team in the Ships editor in FRED, it is set to "friendly" which I dont understand. And the players ship does not allow its team to be changed. How do I set it up so I can fight alongside shivans?

[Snail]

What don't you understand? Setting the Shivan ships to friendly should make them on your team.

[0rph3u5]

Snail, he wants to fly shivan craft...

@Insomnaic:
making shivan ships avalible to you is nearly the same as the with the shivan laser above.... just there the new flag is "player_ship" (or "player ship" - but I think it was the first one)
only the thing is that you also have to add is

Code: [Select]

$Allowed PBankand/or

Code: [Select]

$allowed SBackjust above

Code: [Select]

$default P(S)Bank
in the .tbl

[Snail]

An even better way would just to make it a red alert mission in Shift+N Specifications Editor. Quick and easy. But a crappy briefing.

[blowfish]

*snip*

You got the names wrong (slightly).  It should be:

Code: [Select]

$Allowed Pbanks: ( "Weapon 1" "Weapon 2" "etc" )
$Default Pbanks: ( "Weapon for bank 1" "Weapon for bank 2" )
$Allowed Sbanks: ( "Weapon 1" "Weapon 2" "etc" )
$Default Sbanks: ( "Weapon for bank 1" "Weapon for bank 2" )
And for shivan missions, set all the Shivan ships to friendly and set all the Allied ships to hostile.  Its more work than just changing the player IFF but that's the way it is.

[DarthWang]

~www.freespace.com `0 until you get it

[Snail]

That won't work for ships though.

[Flaming_Sword]

This brings me back. 

Depending on how far you want to go with this idea (this is exactly how my mod got started), you can make a species_defs.tbl and have shivans default to friendly and the others default to hostile, which can save some work in fred if you're going to be flying alongside shivans (or as shivans) in most of your missions.

[nubbles526]

What don't you understand? Setting the Shivan ships to friendly should make them on your team.

Well, it could affect the main campaign for sure, but if you want to play custom made missions, just set the AI to enemy.