Station attributes

[LordSutekh]

What do the entries on the attributes tag in StationType actually do? I mean, it's nice to know that a Ringers Shipyard is populated, but does that actually do anything?

[Arisaya]

Yes; its used to determine stuff like station positions, and various other scripts

[LordSutekh]

I thought station positions were defined in the levelFrequency and locationCriteria. Stars are actually a StationType and their attribute tag just says "star." Is there really a script somewhere that looks for every station with "star" in the attributes and does something with that information? Or could I change the attribute to "one-eyed monster wearing purple dress?"

[Arisaya]

well, they location criteria use the attributes to help determine position relative to planets & other stations, from what I can tell.

[LordSutekh]

Well, then, I guess my question is- how? If I make an extension replacing stO-TypeStar and change

Code: Select all

attributes= "star"

to

Code: Select all

attributes= "planet"

what will happen?

[Arisaya]

You'd likely have some +InnerSystem stations spawning nearby to the star

[LordSutekh]

Ah ha!

So if I made up my own attribute, it would have no effect, because the game wouldn't know what "one-eyed monster wearing purple dress" meant, right?

[Arisaya]

yeah; you would have to have a station who's location criteria specifically asks for a preference or aversion to "long thingy that you said"

[alterecco]

In general the attributes can be used to associate some data with a station. This data can then be used to filter out anything but those stations later (in different ways. You can use scripts or some built in facilities for this)