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, (version 0.2 or higher).
- Decompile the ship list (penguin -d);
- Copy the PlayerRace assignment from pconfig.src into truedat.txt;
- Recompile the ship list (penguin -r);
- Send the newly-generated files to your players.
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 and .
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.
