Shiplibrary.plist

The shiplibrary.plist file places ship information on the View Ship Library page when Oolite starts up, in version 1.79 or later.

It is a list of dictionaries, with the following keys. Strictly, only the 'ship' key is required, but setting at least the 'class' and 'summary' keys is also recommended. All keys which display text to the end user will be expanded via descriptions.plist and the usual expansion rules.

In general, entries should only be included in this file if:

• no other near-identical variant is included (e.g. the core file includes the cobra3-trader but not the cobra3-pirate which is essentially the same ship with different equipment and maybe different paint; the description covers both subtypes - or the core file includes one asteroid entry to cover all asteroids, boulders, splinters and cinders)
• the entry is not a player ship (i.e. include cobra3-trader not cobra3-player)
• the ship is public knowledge (e.g. certain secret mission ships are not included in the core game)

Keys

class

This can currently take one of five values: 'ship' (the default, including large ships with docks), 'station' (stationary dockable objects), 'weapon' (mines and missiles), 'thargoid', and 'misc' (asteroids, navigation buoys, cargo, etc.). Other classes may be added if requested.

class = "station";

description

A short text description of the ship summarising its purpose, strengths, weaknesses and NPC preferred uses. Descriptions longer than 200-300 characters will probably start to look too long if ship_data is true.

description = "[myoxp-ship-description-myship]";

ship

The data key in shipdata.plist of this ship.

ship = "cobra3-trader";

ship_data

Whether to display a mostly-automated 3 line data block assessing standard capabilities (speed, turn rate, energy, weapons, etc.) between the ship's name and its description text. This defaults to true if the class is 'ship', and false otherwise.

ship_data = true;

If it is set to or defaults to true, then additional keys listed in this section may also be specified to modify the display of each entry in the data block. Each modifier entry can be:

• unspecified - the data block entry will get a default value. In most cases this will be sufficient. The default values will be consistent in scale with the core ships, so only set a value if you have something different to say.
• a non-empty string - the data block entry will get this expandable string as a custom value
• an empty string - the data block entry will be completely absent, not even the title.

Rather than using an empty string, the descriptions.plist entries oolite-ship-library-classified and oolite-ship-library-unknown may sometimes be more appropriate.

cargo

The cargo capacity of the ship. Defaults to its real capacity in TC.

cargo = "20/35 TC"; // gives "Cargo: 20/35 TC"

generator

Defaults to an approximate string description of the energy recharge rate of the ship.

generator = "[oolite-ship-library-classified]"; // gives "Generator: Classified"

shields

Defaults to an approximate assessment of the ship's energy banks.

shields = "Impenetrable"; // gives "Shields: Impenetrable"

size

Defaults to a description of the size of the ship's bounding box (in x, y, z order), rounded to the nearest metre.

size = "Variable"; // gives "Size: Variable"

speed

Defaults to an approximate assessment of the maximum non-injector speed of the ship.

speed = "[oolite-ship-library-speed-stationary]"; // gives "Speed: Stationary"

turn_rate

Defaults to an approximate assessment of the ship's combined roll and pitch rates (yaw is not considered)

turn_rate = "Slow roll, fast pitch"; // gives "Turn Rate: Slow roll, fast pitch"

weapons

Defaults to a count of the ship's fixed laser mounts and pylons.

weapons = "6 plasma turrets"; // gives "Weapons: 6 plasma turrets"

witchspace

Defaults to 'yes' or 'no' depending on whether a ship has a witchdrive.

witchspace = "Mk 2 only"; // gives "Witchspace: Mk 2 only"

summary

A very short summary of the type of ship this is, e.g. "Heavy Fighter" or "Research Installation". Some common ship types are defined in descriptions.plist with keys beginning oolite-ship-library-summary- - if you wish to use one of these keys, then using the descriptions key will make it consistent with core entries if there is a translation OXP installed - e.g.

summary = "[oolite-ship-library-summary-HF]";

rather than

summary = "Heavy Fighter";

Ship summaries not used by any Oolite core ship can be requested for addition to the translatable list if they have general applicability.