Create / Mod files / Start roles for mods

Start roles for mods

A StartRole is one New Game start: the icon its row shows, the catalog hull the player flies, the kit it starts with, a sum of credits and a hold of items, the job mix its station boards lean to, and its goal, one finite milestone. Roles are content like ships and stations. Create a new id to add a role, or reuse a base id to replace that role. The New Game wizard lists the roles in merge order.

This page is the field-by-field start role reference. For general RON spelling rules, see RON spelling rules.

The StartRole item

[
    StartRole((
        id: "my_courier",
        name: "Courier",
        icon: Container,
        about: "A light freighter with no weapons. Carry cargo between stations.",
        hull: "light_freighter",
        kit: (
            credits: 2000,
            stock: {
                "Rations": 50,
                "WaterIce": 50,
            },
        ),
        jobs: Trade,
        goal: (
            title: "A courier network",
            kind: StationNetwork(stations: 4),
        ),
        lore: "Stations need what they cannot make. Couriers carry it.",
    )),
]

Every field is required.

A kit has two fields, both required:

The goal

A goal is one finite milestone the role plays toward, read off the saved world. Every role's progress opens with the same shared first line, Stations owned, which needs one station the player owns, live or kept in a sector left behind; the goal's own flavour line follows it. The Map's chart view OBJECTIVES block lists the next unmet line, station line first, until both are met, then reads Goal reached at the play time it happened. It is not an ending: the world is an endless sandbox, a met goal stamps the save and nothing else, and there is no completion screen. It has two fields, both required:

Every count is a whole number above zero. The base industrial role asks for six ore deliveries; the base scavenger asks for six recoveries; the base transport asks for a station network of four stations; the base bounty_hunter asks for a kill list of six hulls; the base military asks for a patrol record of six jobs; the base pirate asks for an outlaw's name (Outlaw): one civilization its own kills turned Enemy, then six more intact hulls of it neutralized while it stands Enemy.

Progress is derived from the saved world each frame: the stations you own, live or frozen in a sector you left, the jobs you handed in, and the civilizations your kills turned Enemy with the hulls you took from them since. The frame both lines are met, the save records the play time; the OBJECTIVES block then reads Goal reached at that time, and a Load brings it back. The world does not change on a met goal.

Overlay and lint

Overlay is last-wins by id, as for every content kind: a mod that defines a StartRole with a base id replaces it whole. Roles keep their load order, so a replaced role keeps its place in the list and a new role comes after the base roles.

content lint and the content check at load both report an error for a role that:

• names a hull no visible ship design has (the base ships, your own, and those of the mods you depend on);
• names a hull with no cargo intake section: an open-world ship jettisons and takes cargo in through one;
• names a hull whose cargo intake reaches as far out as a docking port's face, where a berthed ship parks;
• seeds its kit stock with an unknown item;
• seeds a kit heavier than the hull's hold;
• gives its goal a count of zero.

In the game

The second step of the New Game wizard lists the roles and selects the first. The details pane shows the selected role's name, about, the hull's design name, the kit, the goal's title as its milestone, and the lore. In the game the Map's chart view OBJECTIVES block lists the goal's next unmet line, station line first, until all are met. Create starts the base open_world scenario, whose SpawnStartRole action spawns the role's hull with its kit and binds its weapons, docked at the starting station: the nearest station of a civilization that begins as the player's Ally.

The world save records the role id. A Load refuses a world whose role id the loaded content does not define, with its start role '<id>' is not in the loaded content. The content check runs first, so a role that a mod change removed shows content changed.

Base start roles

A kit's worth at ask is its credits plus its items at their ask_cr per price_lot. Each unarmed kit is worth 3,000 cr. Each PDC-armed kit is worth 2,000 to 2,200 cr without its rounds. A PDC-armed hull also carries 1,000 PdcRound in its shared hold, not per mount. That is 10 whole lots of 100 at 10 cr each, so the rounds add 100 cr at ask and an armed kit is worth 2,100 to 2,300 cr. The rounds sell for 70 cr at their reference bid_cr.

The roles are generated into assets/base/roles/base.content.ron.

The proof is system_start_roles: for each base role, New Game spawns the role's hull with its kit and its weapons bound, the hull passes the post-build checks, docks at a generated station and jettisons an item through its cargo intake and takes it back in, and Load last save brings the role, the hull and the kit back from disk.