This simple patch causes all ships and objects to appear at their proper size at any distance.
Description
'NLIPS' stands for Non-Linear Inverse Perspective Scaling. When the camera gets far away from a ship, Cataclysm will render it larger than it should naturally appear at that distance. This is an intentional feature meant to make it easier to see smaller ships from a distance. With NLIPS disabled your strike craft will appear as indistinguishable specks next to the Kuun-Lan and what they're doing in large fights can be very difficult to understand at a glance. You will definitely need to use the tactical overlay a lot and it helps to play at a higher resolution. Despite all that, it's fun to be able to see the vast differences in scale between ships.
It's a really easy mod that's been done many times before but it's surprisingly hard to find these days. If you look for information about how to do it yourself you'll just get links to long-gone forum threads. Even if you manage to track down a mod that disables NLIPS, it will mixed with other changes you might not want. I spent way too long figuring this out for my own use and am releasing it so that others don't have to go through the same thing.
Installation
Place the folders in the Cataclysm install directory (the folder where cataclysm.exe is).
This mod will conflict with any others that modify the .shp files. You can merge them with a program such as WinMerge.
Don't want it applied across the board? Each .shp file controls the properties of an individual ship or object so it's easy to pick and choose which ships you'd like to have always appear at proper size. The file names are mostly self explanatory and they're organised in folders by faction (sect = Somtaaw, p1 = Turanic, and the rest are obvious).
Warning
I recommend NOT using this mod if it's your first time playing the game.
Tested only on the GOG version as I wasn't able to get the original CD version to run. Let me know if there are any issues with that.
DIY
Here's how you can replicate this mod. You can also use this to disable NLIPS on ships added by mods!
You will need a program to extract Cataclysm's .big files (e.g. WinBigw), a program to automate find-and-replace edits to many text files (e.g. Notepad++), a program to find differences between similar files (e.g. WinMerge) and the two files cataclysm.big and update.big which are in your Cataclysm install directory.
1) Prepare an empty folder to work in
2) Using WinBigw, extract cataclysm.big to your folder
3) Using WinBigw, extract update.big to your folder and overwrite all conflicts
4) If you have any mods that add new ships or objects, put them in your folder and overwrite all conflicts (if they come as a .big file, extract them with WinBigw)
5) Delete everything in the folder except for files with the .shp extension and the folders containing them
6) Make a copy of your entire working folder, you'll want it later
7) Using Notepad++, press Ctrl+Shift+F to bring up "Find in Files" and set the directory to your working folder
8) Replace all instances of "N-LIPS" with ";N-LIPS"
9) Using WinMerge, compare your working folder with the copy you made earlier
10) Delete all .shp files that are identical to the old copy, you will be left with only those that had NLIPS in the first place
