Just to clear it once and for all - no hull modding?

Yes, existing hulls can be modded and you can mod in new hulls.  Former is pretty easy, latter is a bit more involved. Hull ststs are defined in ShipHullStatDefs.xml

While any modding is potentially game breaking, it is relatively safe and easy.  While i agree modding/xml info is almost nonexistent,  there are many smart helpful folks in the modding forum that are happy to answer specific questions from non flamers (not that you are ... just saying)

SD has put a tremendous effort into making the game mod-able (as is evident for some of the great mods out there already; GRM,IAB are two).  Few things are hard coded

You might reconsider your arguments if you don't know what you're talking about.

Creating new hulls will create the enumerant error. Editing the ShipHullTypes.xsd to add new enumerations doesn't work out, even when trying to modifie the file with Microsoft Visual Studio.

The hulls will not show up in the game no matter what...;)

Your 100% correct, i was thinking of something else, fingers were in gear, brain not so much. 

Only the existing hull types (tiny...Cargo) can be used,  but those hulls can all be modified

Make a new hull, have it have an existing hull TYPE but unique name. Are you saying that doesn't work?

Edit: well it works in that it completely replaces the existing hulls of that type. Not particularly useful.

LOL ..I did that with tiny hulls thinking (actually not) i would turn it into a mega hull.  Well it did and it it sure made for a very strange but interesting early game

Yeah, it's regrettable that some of the more obvious modding possibilities are artificially constrained like this. Adding new resources is impossible for the same reason. 

Learning the xml is just a matter of reading the schema. Every xml file has it's schema location listed at the top of the file; read through that file (you can open it in notepad, it doesn't need Visual Studio) and in particular read through the enumeration references listed at the top of it.

The enumerations are basically a list of 'correct' answers for fields like <ShipHullType> - if it's in the shuphulltype enumeration, then it's the name of a class of hull, if it's not listed then it's not usable in the moddable xml document.

This fairly simple process allows you to work out about 99% of the moddable things in the game yourself without needing to ask questions, which is why there's no guides. The files themselves tell you where to get all the information you need.

The fairly simple process of learning from the files is already learned, no problems with this. I've made a huge Mod for GalCiv2 as GalaxyCreator(unfortunately can't find my old E-Mail, so can't get access to this account). I know my way around .xml hacking. I also have the available tools to modifie the script files (.xsd), and I'm comfortable with the dev tools, but this doesn't help in getting those custom hulls working.

I just basically want to recreate my old Mod, and one of it's base features was customizing hull types for more variety, so you wouldn't get only 1 option for every hull size. The problem is, importing new hulls will not work out no matter what I'm trying, hence the brazen tone of my initial post.

I'm not stupid around modding, but if things not working even though they are supposed to be working, then there has to be hard coded restrictions?

I can't even mod in a background for the galaxy map in a decent way, not in a hacky way either. Why put so much restrictions on modding this time around?

Take a look around for Mod content of Galciv2, then compare it to Galciv3...what do you see? Right. Maps, designs, balance and factions. You don't even need to mod them, because the ingame tools are capable of properly doing it.

I just need this question answered, anyone made new hullls, in either a hacky or decent way? And if, how? You see, I don't wanna die trying, there's more important things in live trying something that is restricted by the devs?

There are a lot of things that aren't in GalCiv3 that were in GalCiv2 that should be. One thing that really annoys me is the fact you can't have your own custom faction's logos on the ships/stations that you've created! 

No worries. But yeah, the schema does not respond well to attempts to alter it, regardless of whether you have Visual Studio or IntelliJ or whatever. 

Yes, I'd suspect the same (as I did with resources).

GC3 is designed to be very mod-friendly... for a very narrow definition of the word 'mod'. There's a pretty small selection of things which have amazing, tightly-integrated Steam Workshop support (ship and race designs), a few thing which have mod folder support (game data, campaigns, UI text, and for god knows what reason particle effects) and a lot of stuff that doesn't seem to have any support at all (schema modification, UI changes). 

A lot of the way data has been organized and suchlike is more accessible (since it's just xml and you can make a substantial number of changes just using notepad) but the price of that accessibility appears to be some more complex functions being locked away from us; in a lot of caes, we are able to change the dimensions of a given class, but are unable to add another type of class. Hulls appear to fall into that group, along with component types (some guy tried and failed to add big and small versions of the weapons) and resources. These are all strictly one-in, one-out.

Hence my initial point.

Believe me, there is no "price" to be payed, they did this in purpose. I know my way around modding in a lot of games, and I do figure how easy the code structure of GalCiv 3 appears, It wouldn't do any harm to liberate the responsible files, nor would it be to "complicated" for modders to mod them. They just don't want us to Mod them for reasons of control.

It's a serious bummer, and I wish they would reconsider giving access to hull and UI files, because as far as I can tell they are essential for "real" modding. But I think in times of mass DLC's, companys supposed to make more and more money, this is just wishfull thinking. Another company that cuts short a community that was responsible for its initial success...thank you!

Hi,

modding:

- ShipHullDefs.xml

- ShipHullStatDefs.xml

- ShipHullTypes.xsd

Is enough to show up a new hull in the Ship Designer! But it is located under Cargo hulls. I think this is because there is no GUI defintion in the ship designer for the new hull. Possible there are other files to add the new hull correctly to the ship designer but i did not find them till now.

The question is: Why it is a game breaker by editing the ShipHullTypes.xsd file??? Why should be the number of hulls limited?

But another solution for Extreme (super large) ship hulls could be an modded (overpowerd) hyperion shrinker - call it Precusor shrinker - possible with the flag "once per galaxy". The super large ships itself will be very expensive because of all the stuff you can add into the hull

Or how about a component that provides - capacity.... IE grants space on the ship. Then it can be tech locked. Just a thought.

I was able to create additional hulls, which was fun, but it caused issues where the ships you'd design would transform to the default hull types as soon as you saved and reloaded. Absolutely useless as a result.

Because you can get some sweet effects if you mod them. That's how I made my pulsars, magnetars, and protostars. I don't recommend trying to figure out what everything means in the xml, but if you play with it for a little while you can figure out some cool stuff (pics below).