Cruiser vs. Foil

[Geo]

So you would keep air domain for such hoovercraft? It would have movement on land and sea in that case. But what with the game applying air benefits/penalties for it?

Been too long since I played a SMACX game. Don't know if non-SAM units can attack gravships. Or if it benefits from say nanocells or the Cloudbase Academy.
If those air benefits apply, and if possible, I'd put it solely on the naval domain then.

There's always the option of adding something to units.pcx - provided turning and updating don't matter...

That only really helps for adding unique units with free/extra abilities working within the limits of an existing chassis.

[Buster's Uncle]

Assuming a bit of .exe modding - you'd be able to do several appearance upgrades...

[Geo]

I guess you need to use the more often.

[Yitzi]

Assuming a bit of .exe modding - you'd be able to do several appearance upgrades...

Adding a new chassis type would be more than a bit.

[Buster's Uncle]

I was talking about a static unit figure like the native life - no workshop or components, just enabling upgrades using the multiple slots a row...

[Mart]

I found this webpage:
Link
describing some designs of very fast boats - twin hull, that could achieve speeds 60-100 knots, and even 150 knots, as the designers mention, should be possible. It is like water-planes.

As I think about it, a true hoverboat would be an excellent chassis, unfortunately, present game engine does not allow for units of 2 domains: land and water.
It could be simulated in special only-human scenarios, where an air unit would pretend such hoverboat. Air units, however have disadvantages when used like that:
- cannot explore unity pods
- get air bonuses/penalties and not land or water
- tested foil as air domain with loaded scout over a unity pod made that pod vanish! This might be chassis slot effect, but it needs checking.

A player would need to restrict him/herself to move only over agreed tiles, e.g. water-shelf, flat without forest, maybe without mine/borehole too, ... no moving over rolling or rocky tiles.
It would be an interesting unit type.

[Yitzi]

I was talking about a static unit figure like the native life - no workshop or components, just enabling upgrades using the multiple slots a row...

I don't even know if that would require .exe modding; what are the filenames for the existing static unit figures?

[Geo]

They're refered to by the numbers 0 to 9 at some position in the #UNITS section of alpha(x).txt.
-1 on that position means the game will use .cvr parts.

[Yitzi]

They're refered to by the numbers 0 to 9 at some position in the #UNITS section of alpha(x).txt.
-1 on that position means the game will use .cvr parts.

In which case, has anybody tested if putting in a 10 and creating a file with the number 10 there will work?

[Geo]

Not that I know of.

[Mart]

Numbers 0-8 refer to icons in units.pcx file. Sealurk is 4, battle ogres are 6, etc.
The last one is a missile with "xx" on a side, which I also used some years ago. Darsnan was using it for a pre-designed nerve-gas missile.
Below that missile icons are mindworm flags, and maybe these coordinates are hardcoded?

[Yitzi]

Numbers 0-8 refer to icons in units.pcx file. Sealurk is 4, battle ogres are 6, etc.
The last one is a missile with "xx" on a side, which I also used some years ago. Darsnan was using it for a pre-designed nerve-gas missile.
Below that missile icons are mindworm flags, and maybe these coordinates are hardcoded?

Oh, so it's various icons in a single file?  In that case, there's a good chance that there is a hardcoded maximum, and in any case that changing the file would mess up all the stuff that comes after it.

[Mart]

Not necessarily a maximum. If you take a look into the units.pcx file, you will see, that number of icon can be a multiplier for getting pixels of a given area to crop from. With x coordinate being dependent on morale in some cases - sealurk or fungal tower, or just few units, like there are only three battle ogres. It looks like heavy hardcoding. And y coordinate is multiplied by icon number.
Pcx files have some unused graphics on ocasion, and I'm not sure, if these mindworm shields are used, but then, there would be needed hardcoding of their position, unless, they refer to position counting from bottom of the image (universal solution). If so, you could extend pcx in y direction with icons 9, 10,11, ...

[Yitzi]

Not necessarily a maximum. If you take a look into the units.pcx file, you will see, that number of icon can be a multiplier for getting pixels of a given area to crop from. With x coordinate being dependent on morale in some cases - sealurk or fungal tower, or just few units, like there are only three battle ogres. It looks like heavy hardcoding. And y coordinate is multiplied by icon number.
Pcx files have some unused graphics on ocasion, and I'm not sure, if these mindworm shields are used, but then, there would be needed hardcoding of their position, unless, they refer to position counting from bottom of the image (universal solution). If so, you could extend pcx in y direction with icons 9, 10,11, ...

Could be.