[HELP] Retrofitting/Conversions?

[Larkas]

Hello, everyone! So, a very common thing to do in the real world is to take some military apparatus that's at least partially obsolete, make some modifications to it and put it right back to work. A good example is the Handley Page Victor, which was designed as a nuclear bomber, entering into service in 1958, modified for strategic reconnaissance when that mission was no longer relevant and eventually turned into tankers before finally being retired in 1993. Heck, that also happens in the civilian world, with older passenger aircraft being converted for cargo transport.

It would be nice if that was also possible in X4. A good basic example would be to turn a Sentinel into a Vanguard or vice versa, or a Raider into either. Taking things a step further, maybe an old military craft could be turned into a miner, or a Boron ship could be modified to accept Commonwealth ordnance. Is there a mod that enables something like that? If not, how feasible would something like that be?

[Vovadrik]

I think the problem here is that those modifications belong to different factions which means they have different technological approach and most likely it is incompatible. It is basically changing whole hull (because other components are the same) so that it is lighter or heavier or whatever that mod has comparing to other. And changing hull is basically building new ship therefore there is no reason in changing from one mod to another. They cannot do it in their wharves because they don't have technologies of other factions and doing it in your wharf is not worth it, because as I mentioned above it is basically building from scratches.

[Larkas]

That might make sense for the Boron example, but wouldn't apply to the rest of them. Sentinel/Vanguard/Raider are clearly the same ships with slightly different specs, all in the same "tech continuum", as it were. Same thing for the miner example, you'd just be trading a regular weapon for a mining laser (of course, it would only make sense for ships with a big enough cargo hold).

[Rothank]

Sentinel and Vanguard variants are two entirely separate ships on xml level. It is not possible to "switch" their hardpoints or stats ingame, as those are hardcoded in their macro & component files.
The only thing you can do is to create an entirely "new" ship with alterations (look how SVE changes, for example, Split Buffalo (trader) into Taipan (destroyer) by simply adding more hardpoints and modifying stats). With this approach - sky is the limit.

As for Borons - Boron equipment is approximately 50% physically smaller than CW counterparts. Non-Boron equipment looks ridiculously large on Boron ships and clips into their geometry a lot.

[Larkas]

Oh, that makes sense! I’ll take a look into how modding X4 works. Who knows, maybe that’s a viable project!