The gövt resource

A govt resource defines the parameters for a government, which is in turn defined as 'any collection of ships and planets that react collectively to the actions of the player and other ships'; corporations and associations are handled just like actual political governments. Governments keep track of how they feel toward you, and they can also have set enemies and allies. The govt resource's fields are:

The govt resource

1 Class Allows you to assign this govt to up to four different 'classes', which are simply arbitrary groupings of govts that you can use to flexibly assign allies and enemies. Two govts of the same class are not inherently allied unless one of them has that same class number set in one of its Ally fields. Set unused class fields to -1.
2 Allies The numbers of up to four classes that this govt will be allied with. Set to -1 if unused.
3 Enemies The numbers of up to four classes that this govt will be enemies with. Set to -1 if unused.
4 CrimeTol The maximum amount of evilness the player can accumulate before warships of this govt start to beat on him.
5 InitialRec The playerŐs initial legal record in systems controlled by this govt (0 is neutral, positive is good, negative is bad)
6 Penalties The amount of evilness the player receives for smuggling illegal cargo (defined by the ScanMask field) through the government's territory, or for offences against the government's ships.
7 Display information Controls how the government's name is displayed in different parts of the interface, and what colour its systems should be when map borders are turned on. 'Minor' governments produce a smaller circle.
8 ScanFine If the player is caught carrying an illegal (and non-mission-related) cargo or item by a ship of this govt and he isn't yet evil enough to attack (i.e. his legal status in the current system isn't below CrimeTol) then he will be fined the amount or percentage in this field.
9 ScanMask This is a 16-bit flags field that is used in conjunction with the ScanMask field in the mïsn and jünk resources. If any of the 1 bits in a government's ScanMask field match any of the 1 bits in a mission's ScanMask field, that government will consider the mission's cargo illegal. Set to zero if unused.
10 Require These two Require fields together form a 64-bit flag that is logically and'ed with the Contribute fields from the player's current ship and outfit items. If for each 1 bit in the Require fields there is not a matching 1 bit in one or more of the Contribute fields then you won't be allowed to visit any planets or stations owned by this govt - this is useful for making travel permits, for example. Leave these set to zero if unused.
11 VoiceType Sets this government's voice type, used for when you have a ship of this government as your escort (i.e. an escort with an inherent attributes govt field that points to this govt). There can be up to eight different voice types, numbered 0-7. The voice resources are loaded from 'snd ' resources as follows:
1000-1009Voice type 0 acknowledgement speech
1010-1019Voice type 0 targeting speech
1020-1029Voice type 0 victory speech
1100-1109Voice type 1 acknowledgement speech
1110-1119Voice type 1 targeting speech
1120-1129Voice type 1 victory speech
...etc, up to:
1700-1709Voice type 7 acknowledgement speech
1710-1719Voice type 7 targeting speech
1720-1729Voice type 7 victory speech
If a particular set of voices (i.e. the acknowledgement, targeting, or victory sounds for a given voice type) contains an even number of sound resources, Nova will only use either the even- or odd-numbered sounds for each particular ship. The EV Nova scenario uses this to implement both male and female voices for certain governments. (You can also use the pop-up menus to tell the game to use only the odd- or only the even-numbered voices. None of this applies if Nova doesn't have an even number of sounds to work with)

If you don't want any ships of a government to use speech, set that govt's VoiceType to -1. Also note that ship types with no inherent attributes govt defined (see sh•p section for more information) will always use voice type 0.
12 SkillMult This allows you to apply a global multiplier to the skill levels of ships that belong to this government. A value of 100 will cause this government's ships to be just as skilled as any other ships of the same type. A value of 50 will cause this govt's ships to only be 50% as skilled, and a value of 150 will cause this govt's ships to be 50% more skilled as the stock ship is rated. This allows you to create governments whose pilots are more highly trained than the stock pilots, so they can gain extra speed and acceleration from their ships. Values in this field of less than 1 are ignored.
13 MaxOdds The maximum combat odds ships of this govt will consider favorable. Combat odds are calculated by summing the strengths of the ship's enemies (where a ship's strength is taken from the Strength field in the shïp resource, and modified from between 30% and 100% of that value epending on the ship's present shield stat) and comparing it to the sum of the strength of the ship's friends.

A value of 100 in this field represents 1-to-1 combat odds, and will cause a ship of this govt not to attack unless it calculates that it is as strong, or stronger than, its enemy. A value of 200 represents 2-to-1 combat odds, meaning that ships of this govt won't engage if they are outnumbered by more than 2-to-1. 300 means that ships of this govt won't engage a group of enemies more than 3x stronger than them and their friends, etc.
14 Interface ID of an ïntf resource to use when the player is flying a ship whose inherent attributes govt or inherent combat govt is equal to this govt type. Values less than 128 will be interpreted as 128.
15 NewsPic ID of a PICT resource to use as the background of the news window when the player is on a planet or station owned by this govt. Values less than 128 are ignored, and the standard independent/generic news background (ID 9000) is substituted instead.
16 Paint The theme color for this government's ships. You should use this sparingly, as modifying the actual graphics will look better than the simple paint that the engine can calculate on its own. Set to black or white if unused.
17 InhJam Allows you to give this government's ships missile jamming. See the wëap resource for how to control which of the four types of jamming affect each kind of missile.
For information about the various flags which are controlled by check boxes, hold the mouse over them and read the associated help tag.