So I know that things like speed, armor, and even weapons on ships can be affected by research, but are there other ways for ship stats to be modified in-game?
For example, lets say I wanted certain variables of a ship to only apply during certain actions. Would it be possible to have a ship that moves very fast when out of combat, but when it is firing at something then its movement speed slows drastically?
The game already does this with stances I think. Passive stance gets a boost to engines, aggressive stance a boost to weapons.
True, but I’m talking about specific on-the-fly modifications to a ships stats, that aren’t controlled by the stance system. These would be inherent effectors to the specific ship.
A few good examples would be a ship whose movement speed is greatly increased when not in combat, a ship whose armor goes up greatly when capturing, or a ship that repairs much faster when standing still vs. moving.
Take a look to, let’s say, the Defender fighter or the Swarmer and you’ll see in their .ship files a “addCustomCode” line that actually allows you to do quite a number of new things for your crafts. I’m using a modified code from Krnt_13 to have fuel and ammunition in some of my strike crafts, for example, making them automatically return to base after having moved a certain distance or shot a specific number of torpedoes. You can define conditions which will cause specific ships to indeed gain or lose speed, that kind of things.