It's been awhile since I've modded FL (getting back into it myself, actually, ) but I can agree with Xarian_Prime. To become better, you will first be broken. I remember many times booting FL only to have it either CTD immediately upon opening a new menu, or mid-game when I happened to actually do something. Makes you fear the CTD and cross-fingers.

But the more you fail, the more you learn. Yes, you learn with success too, but not in the same way. Learning when failing makes you more cautious and less code-happy until you gain what you consider enough confidence to dive into deeper ends, and from there, with confidence strapped to your belt you can achieve many things, .

Rather than purely listing my opinion on knowledge you need I will just give tips (albeit generic, still handy and from which I've learned):

Tip #1: Save a ton of tutorials and if some seem like they will fit in with your current mod, try to implement it. The more you implement things on the coding-side the more confidence you will get poking within FL's depths. There's quite a few here at The-Starport and there are more within their Freelancer Archived site (http://www.the-starport.net/archive/). From engine trails to making factions, try to archive anything and everything. Who knows how much longer the information will be around.

Tip #2: Rather than dive into a serious mod that you really want to make, make a mod you can use as a testbed. Try out tons of tutorials and see if you can get them working. As each works, implement into the mod you like. This helps avoid disillusionment and keeps your eventual goal alive, rather than having your ideal mod crashing constantly because of new, untested implementations.

Tip #3: Patience is a virtue. If you aren't patient, take breaks when your code isn't working (make a comment/file somewhere saying where you're at so you don't forget). Listen to music while modding to try and take some edge off, maybe. That way you are relaxed enough to tackle it again later, rather than getting so worked up that you throw in the towel.

Tip #4: Don't view failure as an issue. View it as a challenge, . Brainstorm ways to try and correct any issue, try them and cross them off as you go.

My post might not have been the most informative, but it's my limited insight into enjoying modding and hopefully it'll guide you to also enjoy it.

I will keep an eye out for it. In the meantime, does anyone have links to tutorial(s) on how to add NPCs to bases? I don't want to go full-force into my mod if something in it isn't going to really work. Any help you can provide is much appreciated. I tried accessing mbases.ini and copying a Base Faction from Manhattan (Ageira) and its associated NPC, changed the NPC's nickname and assigned it to the base (as far as I noticed) and it still didn't appear...

I know the IDs would have been duplicated as I copied an existing one but I don't know much of ID locating yet so I don't know which are empty and such, I just assumed it'd still add the NPC in with duplicated rumors and such (which was no problem as I was purely testing if the NPC appeared)... a tutorial on adding NPCs to bases and planets would be great. Tried the search function here, TLR and Discovery to no avail.

Thanks for the reply.

Does using custom directories affect the NPC placement maybe? My Freelancer is installed to the Desktop for ease of access (and avoidance of UAC stopping the .dll being created/updated) and the mod works but I wondered if it was maybe a deeper issue that isn't a visible error. I've made planets and bases without copying the NPCs and any that I make automatically assign themselves to the bar but are still not there.

I will try re-extracting in a bit. Do you have a link to a tutorial for adding NPCs? I've used the search here and found no tutorials other than an explanation of what's in mbases.ini. With that, I copied an NPC from Planet Manhattan and its associated [Base Faction] and altered some things but still to no avail. Should that have worked but I'd need to change the ID as it'd be shared, or should it still have worked even though it's a duplicate?

Thanks for the assistance .

Welcome to The Starport, .

Greetings, .

I am Valence (keleven/Anarchael in TLR), and am currently returning to FL modding after a five-year hiatus. I'm mostly here at The Starport to learn things I didn't know before and to lose my FLE usage (the horror!) in favour of editing .inis more. Mostly because I read that FLE adds a ton of problems, isn't compatible with the 1.1 patch Hopefully I get to meet a bunch of great people in the process, .

See you all around the forums!