# The düde resource

A dude resource can be thought of as a container for ships that share certain characteristics. Any ship of a given dude class will have that dude class's AI type and governmental affiliation, and will yield the same types of booty when boarded. In a dude resource, up to 16 different ship classes can be pointed to, with a probability set for each ship class. The result of all this is that, in other parts of Nova's data files, you can point to a dude class and know that Nova will create a ship of the proper AI type and governmental alignment, and will pick the new ship's type based on the probabilities you set in the dude resource. The dude resource's fields are:

1 | AIType | Which type of AI to use for ships of this dude class (see below). If you set this to 0, each ship will use its own inherent AI type. The four different AI types are:
1 | Wimpy Trader | Visits planets and runs away when attacked
2 | Brave Trade | Visits planets and fights back when attacked, but runs away when his attacker is out of range
3 | Warship | Seeks out and attacks his enemies, or jumps out if there aren't any.
4 | Interceptor | Seeks out his enemies, or parks in orbit around a planet if he can't find any. Buzzes incoming ships to scan them for illegal cargo. Also acts as "piracy police" by attacking any ship that fires on or attempts to board another, non-enemy ship while the interceptor is watching.
2 | Govt | The ID number of the dude class's government, or -1 for independent.
3 | Booty | Flags that define what you'll get when you board a ship of this dude class. If none are set, then you can't get anything from the ship, and you're told that you were "repelled while attempting to board" it. If 'money' is selected, the amount is determined based on the ship's purchase price.
4 | InfoTypes | What kind of info to display when hailed
5 | ShipType | These fields contain the ID numbers of up to 16 different ship classes. Set to 0 or -1 if unused. (Unlike previous versions of the EV engine, Nova can handle dude resources that are not completely filled - so, while the dude resource can handle references to as many as 16 different ship types, not all fields have to be used. If you do this, remember to set the corresponding ShipType fields to 0 or -1 to indicate that they're unused.)
6 | Probability | These fields set the probability that a ship of this dude class will be of a certain ship type

Based upon the EV Nova Resource Bible by Matt Burch, ©1995-2006 by Ambrosia Software, Inc.