"Kitbashing" as a term originates in model building, where one takes parts from pre-existing kits (often spares or unused models) to make something new. In the context of Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age, kitbashing refers to making a new vehicle by combining meshes from existing vehicles in game. Sea Powers vehicles are modelled and coded to facilitate this sort of modification.

Notepad or any Notepad equivalent of your choice will be used to do the actual modding, but before that, we'll need to do a bit of file setup.

First, you will need to open File Explorer, and navigate to the Sea Power folder, which will be as follows:

It may differ a bit depending on your install location, but thankfully Steam allows you to check local files by right clicking the game in your library.


You may start by finding the ship/plane/vehicle/whathaveyou in its respective subfolder in the "original" folder, as well as the language_xx folder of your choosing. You will copy the .ini file(s) of your vehicle of choosing, as well as the "variants" .ini (lets use the Galveston as an example), and paste them into your user folder, as well as make a new language and vessels/aircraft/land_units folder in your user folder.

in the language_xx folder, you'll want a [vehicle]_names.ini, copy and paste that into the language_xx folder in your StreamingAssets\user folder, in the end it should look like the following:


language_xx Folder:

vessels:

The "_info.ini" is mostly for the Steam Workshop to not show your mod as numbers and "MISSING TEXT", "the unit_class_names.ini", I'm not sure what it does 100% but filling it out won't hurt.

If you aren't planning out outright replacing/altering a ship, I'd name it something else, and adjust the "<vehicle>_names.ini" as necessary.

Now you are ready to modify your ship.

Now that your ship is ready for modification, I'll walk you through how to do it. First, you open the "primary" vehicle file (the one you want to mod), as well as track down and open the "secondary" vehicle file(s) (the ones you are taking stuff from).

For example, lets say you want to put a pair of 2M-3 25mm guns on an Osa-class PTG, you'd track down the Komar-class PTG in the original\vessels folder, while also having your copy of the Osa's .ini in the user open. You'll find the relevant lines from your secondary vehicle(s) and copy them to your primary vehicle's .ini, replacing as wanted.

Before:

After:

Do keep in mind: try to keep the names of your variables the same, otherwise you'll run into what I call "null-refs" that cause your vehicle to bug out and do whatever the boat equivalent of a T-pose is. So for instance, if you change something from from "TurretA" to "MainTurretA", make sure all instances of "Turret A" are turned into "MainTurretA".

Now, if you want to change meshes (the actual physical model of the item, not just the mechanical stats), do a similar process to before, but if you are taking a mesh from a place that is not the primary ship, you'll want to add a few lines, particularly "ResourcesMeshFolder=ships/___/", and "RootMesh=___", with the blanks replaced with the name of the base ship file (ie "wp_ptg_komar"):

Before:

After:

Not doing this will result in the aforementioned "null-refs". I learned this the hard way, so you don't have to. This isn't necessary if you are simply, for example, replacing the 5" turret on the Galveston with another 6" turret, also from the Galveston, but do keep this in mind for when your swapping stuff from different ships around.

Colliders are something I don't mess with too much, if you're copying weapon systems over, you may want to also copy the colliders over. Update the "NumberOfMeshColliders" and "NumberOfColliders" as needed.

You may notice a "NumberOfWeaponSystems", make sure thats also updated with the current number of different weapons or else funky things will happen. You could have multiple weapons of the same Weapon System if you were, say, *having the player swap between CIWS and SAMs* through loadouts.

Note: If you wanted to add a mesh from a land unit, such as the B-13 battery, you need to replace the "ships" part in ResourcesMeshFolder with "ground objects" (yes, with a space).


It is a good idea to make sure your submodel numbers are in proper order (ie the numbers go in sequential order and don't randomly jump from 9 to 17 and then to 10, bad things happen).

Something to remember is that the hull and superstructure of most ships in the game are one model, so no, you can't just add an extra hangar. Sometimes you will have to have a separate ship hull sitting inside your kitbash. Such as here with the Krivak III I made, I did this to shove an entire smaller ship inside. The hulls aren't marked on the submodel section (last I checked), so here's how to go about that, just enter the ships internal name as shown below.

If you don't plan on putting your creations on the workshop, ignore this step after slapping your language and vessels files in the StreamingAssets\user folder, under the respective language and unit folders. Make sure user files are enabled in the mod manager in game.

If you do plan on uploading your creations, put your language and vessels folders in its own superfolder (this is mostly for organizing stuff), as well as the "_info.ini" folder. And also any additional stuff like "sensors", "loadouts", the things that aren't vehicle folders, following similar instructions.

_info.ini should look like this:

It may also help to have the thumbnail you want to use for that project to also be in the same folder, though this is up to personal preference.

Uploading vehicles is similar to uploading missions in process, refer to the guide below for help on that front:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3364482257

If you pick a folder, and it does not look like this, try again. Just pick the base folder where language_xx, vessels/aircraft/land_units, and _info.ini is located.



That should be it. Good luck with your kitbashing endeavors.