For each hull (105) a record of 60 bytes:
+0 30 BYTEs Name +30 WORD Number of picture in RESOURCE.PLN Some pictures are used more than once, but with a different palette (e.g., Super Transport Freighter + Merlin Class Alchemy Ship + Neutronic Refinery Ship). I don't know where this information comes from, it seems to be hard-coded in PLANETS.EXE. Winplan automatically uses different pictures for hull numbers 104 and 105 (see below). +32 WORD =1. In VPCPLAY.BAS this field is identified as "image of a heavily damaged ship", though it seems to be unused. +34 WORD Tritanium needed +36 WORD Duranium needed +38 WORD Molybdenum needed +40 WORD Fuel tank size +42 WORD Crew size +44 WORD Number of engines +46 WORD Hull mass (empty) +48 WORD Tech Level +50 WORD Cargo room +52 WORD Number of fighter bays +54 WORD max. Number of torpedo launchers +56 WORD max. Number of beam weapons +58 WORD Cost (mc)
A "hull number" is the number of the record in this file, where the first record is hull number 1.
Information whether a hull has a cloaking device is hard-coded in PLANETS.EXE / SHIPS.EXE / HOST.EXE. The following hulls always have a cloaking device: 21 22 25 26 27 28 29 31 32 33 36 38 43 44 45 46 47.
Information on Gravitonic Accelerators and other "bells and whistles" is also hard-coded and can't be changed in custom ship lists for THost. For PHost, see HULLFUNC.DAT and the PHost documentation about SHIPLIST.TXT / HULLFUNC.TXT.
The number of possible starship hulls needs to be 105 or less, although the game concept would allow up to 220 different hulls (20 slots for each of the 11 players). The host simply refuses to build ships with a higher hull number, and the PHost PDK also hardwires the maximum hull Id to 105.
Winplan automatically "corrects" this information (though not the disk file): hull 65 gets the name "TOPAZ CLASS GUNBOAT", hull 88 becomes a "GUARDIAN CLASS DESTROYER". Hull 104 (Neutronic refinery) is assigned picture 152, hull 105 (Merlin) gets picture 153. This removes typos in the original ship list, and ensures that the alchemy ships look different from the normal Super Transport Freighter -- but it can lead to confusion if an alternate ship list is used where slot 65 has nothing to do at all with `Topaz'. In addition, it does not correct the pictures of ships on the VCR and the ship build screen.
For ship list designers, it may sound tempting to set the picture numbers for Merlin / NRS to 153/152 directly so that the ships look the same everywhere in Winplan. I do not recommend that; although this will work with Winplan, PCC and VPA, it will crash PLANETS.EXE and older PVCRs.
