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Advanced Features
The Portable Host
Version 4.0

Index

Introduction

This document describes PHost's advanced features, how to set them up and how to play with them. It is intended for players and hosts.

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Non-standard Race Assignments

PHost allows any player to play any race in the game. This is accomplished with the PlayerRace config option. This option has 11 entries, with each entry specifying the race that the given player is to play. For example:

PlayerRace = 1,1,1,1,1,6,6,6,6,6,6

This has players 1 through 5 playing The Federation, and players 6 through 11 playing The Borg. A race value of 12 is also accepted, meaning that the given player will have no special racial abilities.

New v4.0: PHost 4 goes even a step further and allows to customize the special missions available to the player separately, using the PlayerSpecialMission option. This is intended for design games with custom races. By default, this option has the same value as PlayerRace.

Missions and Racial Abilities

In the client program, the special mission listed for each race will not change, so the player needs to remember that his special mission may be different, depending upon his race assignment. For example, if player 11 selects the special mission on one of his ships then the client program will show the mission as Build Fighters. But if player 4 has been assigned race 5, then the ship will actually perform the Rob mission. Using the Special Mission extended mission can bypass this confusion.

==> It is suggested that players edit the mission.ini file to have the Special Mission extended mission reflect their true special mission, and use this extended mission instead of the usual one.

Some client programs may refuse to set your special mission. For example, the Build Fighters is only permitted for fighter ships, so a client program will not allow the Privateer-playing player 11 to set this mission on a torpedo ship. Using mission 31 instead also avoids this problem.

The following table summarizes the abilities controlled by these two options:

Value PlayerRace PlayerSpecialMission
1 Fed crew bonus (if enabled, AllowFedCombatBonus): Receive 25% shield bonus between fights; 50 kt mass bonus; all weapons fully functional until end
90% run traitor when ship is tow-captured
Super Refit mission
2 Takes up to 150% damage in combat, and related benefits
Colonists are immune to Glory Device
Hiss mission
3 Immune to NUK if ship has weapons but no fuel Super Spy and Standard Spy missions
Immune to Force Surrender when doing Super Spy/Standard Spy
4 Immune to ATT/NUK if configured so (PlanetsAttackKlingons)
Support 60 clans on desert planets
Pillage mission
5 Beams have 3X kill bonus in combat
complete crew runs traitor when ship is tow-captured
Rob mission
Can tow-capture if allowed (AllowPrivateerTowCapture)
6 Beam aboard debris after destroying an enemy ship
Assimilate natives
Self Repair mission
7 Prefer desert planets (CrystalsPreferDeserts)
Colonists are immune to Glory Device
Can lay web mines (using the standard/extended missions)
Web mines owned by this race drain fuel
Can tow-capture if allowed (AllowCrystalTowCapture)
8 40% run traitor when ship is tow-captured
Can't be found by bioscanners
Dark Sense mission
9 Support 60 clans on desert planets Build Fighters mission (RobotsBuildFighters) and lfm friendly code
10 Immune to ATT/NUK if configured so (PlanetsAttackRebels)
Support 9 million colonists on ice planets; 60 clans on deserts
will find Empire using bioscanners
can't be found by Dark Sense
Rebel Ground Attack mission
Build fighters on ships (RebelsBuildFighters; automatic, and lfm)
11 Support 60 clans on desert planets
Can sweep web mines with fighters if configured (AllowColoniesSweepWebs)
70% run traitor when ship is tow-captured
Build Fighters mission (ColoniesBuildFighters) and lfm friendly code
12 none none

For example, if a race has PlayerRace=7 and PlayerSpecialMission=7, he plays a "standard" Crystal. Giving him PlayerSpecialMission=6 instead, he'll still be like desert planets and be immune to glory devices, but will no longer be able to lay web mines or tow-capture. Instead, he'll be able to repair in space.

Not all of the possible combinations make sense. Unless you explicitly want to try out the new possibilities, we strongly recommend anyone to not have a PlayerSpecialMission option in his game, so that only the 11 standard races are used.

Many other racial abilities are configured by array options. When playing with non-standard race abilities, you have to change them manually. Options which fall into that category:

Ship List

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[Remote] (version 2 or higher) or its clone, Peng[Remote] (version 0.2 or higher).

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 VPA[Remote] and Planets Command Center[Remote].

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.

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Message Filtering

Many people use programs which can read util.dat and display it graphically. Examples of such programs are EchoView[Remote], VPA 3.61[Remote] and PCC[Remote].

Since util.dat contains mostly the same information as the subspace messages, it is somewhat redundant to have both. In addition, player messages can become overwhelming, especially in the later stages of the game, when mine scan messages, sensor sweep messages, dark sense messages, etc. can leave a player with over 200 messages to deal with.

The idea behind message filtering is that the utilities mentioned above will display the information they got from util.dat, and present the information to you visually, so there's no need to read it textually.

Players can turn on message filtering themselves, without host intervention, using the filter command. When filtering is enabled, the following messages will be suppressed:

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This document is maintained by The Portable Host Project[Remote] (support@phost.de).

Last updated 02 March 2003.