[DIY]change crew member models and faces

[cosmo666]

this isn't really a mod, since it involves editing, but it's easy to do, and pretty safe from what i can tell. this presumes you have the crew member onboard your ship already, but if not, you can save the needed data in notepad and do it later.

first thing you need to do while playing is find a NPC that you want your crew member to look like. make note of it's exactfull name and faction (there can be several npcs with same name, but different faction, so they might look different). make a note of your crewmeber's name too. then, save game and exit (you need to save game while in the same sector, or the NPCs will be deleted from your saved game)

next, open the saved game (located in "documents/egosoft/x rebirth/some numbers/save") with any xml editor (i use notepad++), and search for the full name of the npc you liked. just after the name is also "owner=......." which is the faction. make sure it matches too.
the whole thing should look like this:

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<component class="npc" macro="character_ar_female_pilot_macro" connection="commandroomslot" name="Hayla Cheram" owner="beryll" page="10104" id="[0x17a3c6]">

1)to change just the face:
look down a few untill you find a line

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<npcseed bodyparts="1076085025" bonescales="3491312343" morphtargetweights="1687526894"/>

and copy it completely.

then, search for the name of your NPC, and make sure the owner=player, then scroll down untill you find a similar line to the one you have in clipboard, delete it and paste the one you got from before. save the file, load the game, then enjoy
NOTE: this short version will only work for similar npcs, such as swapping faces between marine officers, or between pilots, etc. some ocupations share models(like pilots and marine officers), other are unique (like engineers, which can not take any face unless you do a full model swap, as explained below)

2)to change full body model
the same as above, except you also need to copy the "macro=......."part of the NPC over the crew member code as well. this way, you can make an engineer look like a captain. this is my marine officer looking like a defence officer.


mind you, while it should not be a problem, i have not tested the 2nd method a lot. but i did notice that different jobs have different macros, so it -SHOULD- not be a problem. please do test it with a "sacrificial save" untill you've used the crew member and made sure it works normally. i will try to test it more tomorrow.

i hope this helps a bit!