What defines the ship class? And the preference of weapons?

[Fluen]

Two not related things that puzzle me.

1. What is the determining factor for the class, a ship is sorted into? The strength of the hull?

2. When using the quick-equip-key, the game has a different preference of weapons, than I have. One thing is the choice of guns, but the blades?! I've had the game equip me with a dagger, when I had swords. And I normally use a Knights Templar sword, but at one point the game eqipped me with a Frech Court saber, even though all its statitics were lower than the Templar sword I had at the time.

Please enlighten me.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm answering for the latest modpack version, because I don't remember how it used to be or when it was changed.

1. Ship Tier is a direct relation on the maximum crew quantity

2. If I recall, the weapon "minlevel" has a large influence on that

 

[Grey Roger]

1: As @Pieter Boelen says, ship tier, also known as 'ship.class', is based purely on crew size, and has been since at least Beta 3. I can't say what Beta 2 did as I started on Build 14 relatively late and Beta 3 is the earliest I have. Look at "PROGRAM\Ships\ships_init.c", and search for a bunch of lines starting with a comment "Armada: Ship Tier Mod" which include things like 'if(sti(refShip.MaxCrew) < 900) refShip.Class = 2'. If they're present, that's where ship tier is set according to crew size. If not, it's probably set by the 'refShip.Class' line in each ship definition block.

2: The "minlevel" influence might explain some of the weird choices made by auto-equip, but the only dagger which I can imagine outranking swords is the gold and jewel encrusted one, which is minlevel 9 and very rare. All other daggers and knives are minlevel 1. Also, the French Court sword is minlevel 16 while the Knights Templar sword is minlevel 19, so something else is messing up if the French Court sword is being picked in preference.

 

[Fluen]

Thank you. I believe, that your reasoning must have been the same for each update and therefore determines the levels (of both weapons and ships) in every build.

Could the degree of wear have an influence on the preference of weapon? So a lowclass blade in a good condition would be preferable to a worn high class blade, even if the statistics for the highclass blade are better?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Could the degree of wear have an influence on the preference of weapon? So a lowclass blade in a good condition would be preferable to a worn high class blade, even if the statistics for the highclass blade are better?

Definitely possible, though of course to a limited extent.