Beginners guide to mods (Page 2 of 3)

Written by Roguey,

What are dats/cats?

If you ever want to make a mod then you will need to know what a dat/cat file is. In its simplest form, a dat file is like a zip file however inside it can contain compressed and uncompressed files. The cat file is like a table of contents, telling the game where things are. Both files are required and made by doubleshadows X3 ModManager.

There are two kinds of dats/cats: one being a mod and the other being a false patch.

Mod cat/dat's are found off the main folder and inside the folder marked mods. These are files that can be toggled on/off via the main start-up screen, like so:


The other type of mod is called false patching. These are dat/cats placed inside the games main folder are are numbered from 01 to 09/12 and so on. In false patching, the game will use the first occurrence of a file (counting from the last numbered dat first). Egosoft often use this way to patch the game, hence why its called false patching.


Most of the time you will be using mods method however sometimes you need to use false patching - most likely used to get out of trouble or for smaller mods...

Next: A mod's file structure
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