I want to allow a ship besides the Death Star to destroy planets, but I can't figure out how. any help?

If you have RebEd you can load any of the other ship cards into the Death Star's slot, and it should give you the option of letting said ship destroy planets.

 

Of course if you don't have the ship model loaded with the exchanger mod, in battles the ship will still be the Death Star.

So there's no way I can edit an existing ship to be able to destroy planets? I'm still trying to find the specific code that allows the death star to destroy planets with resource hacker, so help finding that would be appreciated too.

So there's no way I can edit an existing ship to be able to destroy planets? I'm still trying to find the specific code that allows the death star to destroy planets with resource hacker, so help finding that would be appreciated too.

If you have a hexeditor you could try to change the "ship class" value in the CAPSHPSD.DAT file from 14 (hex) to 18 (hex). 14 (hex) is the "class code" for capital ships & 18 (hex) is the "class code" for the Death Star. The class code is the 17th byte in each ship record. I'm not sure if that will work, or what would happen with your fleets, because two Death Stars can NOT be in the same fleet, or orbiting the same planet (per program: because of gravitational forces, yada yada yada ...); therefore, two "ships" with the class code of a DS might not be able to be together in the same fleet or system. Best guess, give it a try and see what happens.