Hello there. First off, Thanks for taking the time to make this mod. It really adds to the life of the game. Everything flows together quite nicely and I love the additions to the pirates.

I have a question though concerning the planets. I noticed while this mod is activated none of the secondary regular planets types ever appear. For example, with the original Sins Diplomacy game there are two different ice, terran, desert, and volcanic planets. It is also the same with the secondary and third urban and paradise planets. I did not know if this was simply a bug or if they were intentionally taken out. And if they were taken out, would it be possible for me to put them back into the game while still using the mod?   

Nothing was taken out.  In fact, I think you're recalling something incorrectly.

In Unmodded Sins (all versions) there are only 2 types of Terran and Desert planets, Normal and Home.  All of the other types, gas giant, asteroid, ice, volcanic, dead asteroid, space junk, pirate base, etc...  There is only 1 type of each.  So whatever secondary planet you think you saw, I can assure you that you didn't.  To verify this, simply load up the in game map maker and select change planet type and look at the list.  Home will also only show up if the planet was designated as a player start planet, so the odds of you seeing those only depends on how many players are involved.  Far less for the Desert Home since the game never puts them in there as start planets.

In Distant Stars, there are 5 types of Terran, Desert, Ice, and Volcanic planets (Home, Moon, Dwarf, Normal, and Huge).  2 types of gas giants (Normal and Dwarf) and pirate base (Normal and Home).  4 of everything else colonizable wise (Moon, Dwarf, Normal, and Huge), and 3 types each of the noncolonizable space (Dwarf, Normal, Huge).  There are even two types of each star, the main star of each system and a smaller copy of each called a companion star.  Again, to verify, enable the mod, go to the ingame map maker, select change planet type, and gaze in wonder at the list.

In the game itself, all of the planets look like the normal variant except for the moon version.  That one is visibly smaller.  The difference between Huge, Normal, and Dwarf are represented by little ticks in the lower right side of the planet.  Dwarf has a single tick in the 3 o'clock position, Normal has a larger double tick, in the 3 o'clock and 4:30 positions, and Giant/Huge has a larger still triple tick in the 3 o'clock, 4:30, and 6 o'clock positions.  Gas giants and asteroids don't follow this pattern, but it's close enough to figure it out.

To get them to show up, it's better to play on random maps.  The premade ones don't necesarily take into account that there are variations in size to pull from, especially on maps not made with Distant Stars/Sins Plus/Celestial Bodies in mind.

I just spoke with Nacey, and I think that he is refering to the graphical looks

we had to reduce the planet models each to one due to going over the model count which caused the engine crash (back when it was limited to 200) may put them back in, not sure though due the fact that it may cause more lag

Got a load of work to do, Stant, but will get to try the gas giants a little later. Might even give it a go on Finley itself. The Lions will devour your system.

If its possible with current hardcodes im in favor of seeing the alternate versions of the planets come back, expecialy the Urban planet. I Actualy liked a couple of the other versions better and it was alwys fun to have several diferent urban planets in one game and have them look diferent. Made me more attached to them . Other than that bravo as usual DS team!

Models, not types...  Got it.  I never noticed that there was more then one look to a planet. 

My system eats carnivores for breakfast, Draakjacht.  As long as the carnivores start on the terran planet, not the desert planet.

To Ryat: Yes, I am indeed refering to the graphical looks. As far as gameplay itself goes it does not affect anything but I enjoy seeing the other models. That would be nice if you were able to put them back in but I understand the lag issue. Would there be any simple way for me to put them back in myself? The change would be soley for my own private use as I do not play multiplayer games.

To Stant: I am new to this mod so the information you provided is very helpful. It will help to know what to look out for in the game. Thanks!    

As promised heres the latest patch, currently Diplomacy only, will be released within the next day or two for Entrenchment also once everything is verified as working correctly internally and also by you guys

Distant Stars (D) Beta 0.7 Change Log:
- The new Diplomacy Maps use all the Distant Stars Planet types now
- New Capturable Starbases have been discovered
- Map Makers rejoice, there are now 24 types of starbase for you to use in your maps!
- Pirates have been completely re-balanced for Diplomacy and have some new surprises
- Refineries now cost half their previous price
- Advent Resource Focus has been buffed substantially
- The Vasari "Colony Pods" upgrade has been dramatically changed in price
- New techonologies now require the correct amount of prerequisites before you can research the next tier
- Player Portraits have been adjusted and added to
- New Loading screen characters
- Dynamic Movement, and Powerful Pirates Compatibility updates for Diplomacy
- As always optimisations to the files in the background, and other misc changes

Patch from 0.6 to 0.7:
http://distantstars.mmobase.com/diplomacy/Distant_Stars_(D)_Beta_0.7_Patch_[36951860].7z

The full download is currently uploading and will be available once I wake up in the morning.

Don't have diplomacy, but the additions sound amazing. I plan on having the modified images to you on Friday. Sorry for the wait, but I have a deadline I need to meet at the end of the month. You know how it is.

Yay, its great to see the work that gets added to mods with each patch, i can not wait for the entrenchment, also off topic, i would like to ask, i have been following the soa 2 mod, great mod that is also, i would like to ask, do u plan on doing anything to the polly count like they plan to, or will you leave that all up to ironclad?

Wow this is great. Now I'll have to do nothing but play sins for the next 48 hours. Thanks a lot! Hopefully the pirates won't gank me now. I'm glad the advent are getting some love too with the Resource Focus buff.

Cheers!

we are only interested in gameplay changes, anything beyond that (with some slight changes in UI and one or two new models) we are not touching.

Fair enough, thanks for the reply

The SOA2 team is running up against the 2 gig limit.  Is this an issue for Distant Stars?  I haven't noticed anything myself.

Thanks for the update.

Gray, not really since everything you see in the mod, is either directly from the main program it self, which has no problem parsing, or they are simple meshes such as the planets

Most of the changes in DS is merely numberical

First off, great mod. I won't lie, when I read that the music was replaced, that additional research tiers were increased, and all this other stuff was tacked on I was skeptical. All I wanted was new planets because after being exposed to Sins Plus vanilla just hasn't been the same. Anyways, I came across this and despite my skepticism I downloaded it. Absolutely no regrets. The music flows beautifully, and just the additional research tiers kinda just makes it to where you have to decide what your focus will be.

Anyways, out of curiousity, did you manage to zip in Bailknight's newest version of his graphics mod in 0.7? They looked great when I was checkin out the thread and was curious was all

I seem to recall an issue with the portraits not displaying in the setup screen.  Is this still the case, because when I went to update the portraits they all seemed to be offset slightly and did not match up to what was displayed?

Great mod, I'm really enjoying it after a few games of plain Diplomacy.

In the FAQ from above:

2) The loading screens and portrait pictures dont appear properly, whats wrong?
i) This is an issue with ATI based graphics cards (rarely affects Nvidia based cards) we're looking in to the issue.

If it's still happening, then they're still working on it.  =]

I knew I seen it somewhere.  I just wish it wasn't right there on the front page .  Ad I do have an ATI card.

Thanks for the help.

No worries bud, half the time I'm looking for stuff it's right there in front of my face an I'm just not seeing it.  =P

lol

had that happen many times as well

like when doing some coding and can't figure out why I keep getting minidumps

turns out I was using entiy files not entity files

Thanks for the updates, im sure its been done is there anyways to adjust cap ships sqaudrons?  I love the SOVA elite, and gunships.

I noticed that there are like 3 per squad.....

Edit the squad entity data

I want to extract just the Origin Defense ability from this mod (just for personal use). What files do I need to get?

These files are found in the gameinfo folder of the mod.  The files doing the buffs themselves are:

BuffPlanetDesertHome.entity

BuffPlanetTerranHome.entity

The files telling the planet what ability to use are:

AbilityPlanetDesertHome.entity

AbilityPlanetTerranHome.entity

Next, if you want the wording of the ability to show up in the game, in the string folder, search for origin defense (control + F is your friend here) in the english.str file and copy the ability name and the description under the ability.  You'll need the wording for both Desert and Terran.

If you're putting the above into a vanilla setting (aka unmodded everything else) then you'll need some more files like PlanetDesertHome.entity, PlanetTerranHome.entity, and maybe ProtoPlanetDesertHome.entity, and ProtoPlanetTerranHome.entity from the gameinfo folder.

Lastly, you'll have to edit the entity.manifest file to take into account that you've added files to the otherwise unmodded setting.  You must also make sure you maintain the directory structure if you're just pulling these files out and using them to make their own mod.  The files being taken from the gameinfo folder need to go back into a gameinfo that's in a folder for your mod, the english.str file needs to go into a string folder in the folder for your mod, and the entity.manifest needs to go in the main folder for your mod...

I believe that covers it.  Whole lotta work for one little ability, huh?