My current checksum is 36954869

Pretty sure I got it working.

One question I have though is how do I change the initial starting planetery type? Does it have to be Terran all the time?

I always play on the "Huge Multi" map.

I tried changing my starting planet to Urban and the game just ended having everyone lose.

Then I tried to change the random volcanic/ice and the asteroid planets that start next to the Terran Home planet and they didn't have phase lanes.

Any ideas? I just wanted to change it up a bit instead of the boring same old.

Another thing none of your maps (at least the random ones) incorperate the "Oceanic" planet.....was wondering why that was as well lol

Thanks guys awesome mod! Love it.

Any planet has a weight. This weight determines how often it is used in Random style maps. Personaly I tend to get serveral of them at once when I do get them. Other time I dont get any at all. Much like the Gas Giants.

As for different starting planets they must be either Terren, Desert, Ice, or Volcano. And they must be the home version of each.

What about the adjacent planets? I tried to change from always being ice/volcanic or asteroid and the phase lanes disappeared....thought it was weird. Do I need to change the weight and how do I know what the weights are?

@Hegemon: After patching you need to rename the Distant Stars folder manually to 0.6 or 0.7 for it to show up in game as the new version. It isnt necessary and is only a cosmetical change, but its worth doing so you know what version you're on but aslong as your checksum is correct its not entirely necessary.

@Draak: You've got email back mate, thanks for your work as usual, looks great

@Everyone else: Sorry about not updating the above post with the direct full download. I had done but when the forums were wiped back the link was reset also.

I'am already back to work on Entrenchment as promised and we will hopefully be bringing Entrenchment and Diplomacy up to 1.0 around the same times. Entrenchment first ofcourse as that is closer to being completely finished than Diplomacy is.

The only reason Entrenchment hasnt been updated for a while is that Diplomacy had required the more immediate attention to be as stable as possible. I'm also looking at adding in the planet variations again however that will depend entirely on testing and see'ing how much memory the game uses. So i'll keep you guys updated on whats happening there.

@Hegemon76 - Since you used the patch, did you delete the 4 files AbilityPlanetPirateMania.entity, BuffPlanetPirateManiaActivated.entity, BuffPlanetPirateManiaCharging.entity, and BuffPlanetPirateManiaOnPlanet.entity?  Doing so should bring your checksum to the correct value.  Also if you rename the folder to 0.7, disable the mod ingame first, or change the name in that little text file to reflect the changes you made.  Sometimes the game locks up and crashes when it can't find a folder it's expecting to see.

Also, after checking out a few things on the ocean planets, it appears they've been left off of the random lists all together.  So it appears that unless you specifically choose to use ocean planets, you're not going to see them in the game.  Not with the current galaxyscenariodef file.  I guess I'm going to have to take the time to go through the lists and kind of build new ones.  Maybe even add in some new options, like random true non-standard which would have the result of you getting a random choice of colonizable planets with atmospheres that aren't terran, volcanic, ice, or desert.

That'll give me something to do this week.

Edit: Also about the phase lanes disappearing, that's a new one for me and I'll spend some time in the forge later today trying to recreate the issue so I can have an answer for you.

Just to clarify, this is not correct.  You can have ANY planet be your starting planet.  I ran tests awhile back proving it could be done, and just to make sure you can see it for yourself, here's a screen shot.

The difference is that the home versions of the planets always have 2 each of resource asteroids and the others follow the standard rules for that planet type.

The most likely reason for your instant defeat Hedge, is that you didn't have assigned starting points for all of the players enabled.  In fact, that's almost always the reason.

When using the GalaxyForge, you have to make sure that if you have 4 players enabled, all 4 have a starting point.  Outside of that, nothing else matters.

Also, the IsHomePlanet setting.  True means many of the planet upgrades are done for you and you're already into a income earning situation with your population.  False means you start off as if you just colonized, none of the research is done, and you are in an income losing situation.  To compensate for this setting you can also change the starting amount of resources for the player starting on said planet that is a starting planet with the False option set.

Well I learned something new about home planets tonight.

I think we need to get Stant to do a little modding for this, including modifications to the random variables. I mean, if he's going to do it anyway, what's the harm in adding him in to our collection?

We have not hazed him enough yet LOL

Talk to the boss. Im sure he wouldnt mind another slave...volunteer...to the mod. Although, with this current expansion in the crew, I might need ask for a raise.

And a corner office.

And a personal assistance who brings me beers.

VIP privileges for me and Carbon

w00t!

Last I checked, I had two systems and a whole fleet (minus one casualty) under my command. I think I... wait, that's just a game. Damn I need help.

Okay, well at least buy me lunch for the 2-D work.

Ahhh, yes.  2-D work... I'm about to be doing some of that real soon.  Been up all night so far.  Isn't insomia great!   I'm done with making changes and updating the galaxyscenariodef file and the english.str file so the game has words to show you when you select things using the map editor...  I hope.  At this point all I need to do are the Galaxy Forge Icons to give you a visual look of my new options.  You know what sucks?  When your count is off by 1 and you spend a few hours going back through every change line by line a few times until you figure out you're a dumb ass and just miscounted...

I'd be testing it right now, except, somewhere down the line I messed up something in my game without realizing it, so now I have to redownload the 0.7 full install.    Oh well, I can mess around for 10 minutes.  >=]

Humm very interesting.

Mind you I was not in glazy forge when I was messing around. I opened the file by going through my C:drive/stardock games/ sinsofasolar empire/ then opened the glazy folder.

I did this because I changed the amount of bonuses by upping it to 99% and the artifacts as well.

I really don't know how to use galaxy forge.

I went to the initial home planet in the script and just changed it to "Urban" instead of "TerranHome" or HomeTerran" whatever it said lol.

Like you said I got the immediate defeat after that.

The forge is actually fairly easy to use, even moreso since Masakary made an update that included almost all of the bonuses, and I've continued work on it ever since polishing it up so that going any other route is just foolish at best.  =P

I highly recommend using it over messing with the file itself.  You get far better results in the forge now.

This post shows you how to add bonuses and artifacts to planets: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/335474/page/100/#2542027

At some point, I'm going to write up detailed instructions on how to make a galaxy file from start to finish, including the preview window picture and starting resources and ships and all of that, but that'll come later since I'm only half way done with my updated icons right now.

Honestly, it doesn't take that long to learn it.  Right clicks allow you to add planets and stars fast.  Selecting a planet, holding control down, and selecting another planet is the fast way of adding phase lanes.  Changing the spawn probability (number between 0.0 and 1.0    0 being never shows up, .5 being 50% chance to show up, 1 being always showing up) makes planets randomly available, there are quite a few random options to choose from and about 23 more with my next update...  30 minutes and you could probably have it almost mastered.

If you start using it and you get stuck, PM me with questions and I'll do what I can to help you out.

And all done now....   Anyone want to check it out, get it here:

http://sites.google.com/site/steelers086/gamefiles/UpdateTest.rar

Stupid time change...  Making me take longer.  =\

Is the galazy forge updated for Diplomacy? When I went to download it below the download it doesn't list diplomacy.

hegemon, the galaxy forge does NOT know of any entrenchment OR diplomacy alterations, it's last release was when the map format changed with sins 1.15/entrenchment 1.00, but as the map format has NOT changed, any maps you create with it will work with sins,entrenchment AND diplomacy. also there is a very iritating bug in galaxy forge to do with template  creation with glaxyforge displaying the condition 'if owner is race' but puting 'invalid' in the actual map,it should show 'IfOwnerIsRaceNormalStart' and 'IfOwnerIsRaceQuickStart' and place these in the template

I had a suggestion for your mod and it totally slipped my mind. Let's see..

I remember!

Changing the population on planets so that they accurately reflect real life populations and increasing the damage to population on siege frigates and capital ships to accommodate for this. It's a small touch that adds a good bit of immersion. Currently I think that the populations on planets is vastly understated.

20 people on an entire planet? Even though it's an ice planet seems ridicuoulsy unrealistic? Very immersion breaking for me.

Well, I think two things:

One, if you did that, you would also have to tweak the tax income otherwise you would be very rich, very quickly.

Two, the population numbers are not actual, rather representative. If you multiply by round numbers, they still seem a bit off, so it's likely that the numerics reflect a relative ratio. The same is done for vessels. Although the scout frigate takes a "crew" of two, it is a frigate, usually manned by a minimum of a couple dozen men. Likewise, the capitals are crewed by thousands, as is listed in the Sins wiki, but you use a "crew" of 50, which couldn't operate a modern day vessel without a great deal of trouble.

The problem with real numbers is that they are unnecessarily large for a game. Say a planet can maintain 9 billion people. Another planet can maintain 900,000 people (assuming its very hostile). It's easier to have one cap at 10000 and the other at 1, a ratio which eliminates a lot of numbers on the screen (if I screwed up the actual ratio, you know what I meant).

There are many views on and how the popluation is represented.

I for one base the number on more of political/military presence on the planet. With the people in charged fried under a hail or missles or laser it easy for your planetary leaders to fly right down from that colony ship and put it all back in order.

Other like Draak think its a ratio. *shrugs* Both could be right. So it really depends on how you look at it.

I find it unrealistic that any race would kill all the population. Which if we take your suggestion it what the numbers would show. And then somehow replace that population with their own so quickly. Do they just plant them like flowers?

So again its all in how you look at it. I find them fine the way they are now. I also find the lack of a campaign in the game completely awesome. So take it as you may...

I didn't really want to create a new thread for this, and I had initially intended for it to work with Distant Stars in the first place...

I just finished up a No Mines mini-mod for Entrenchment 1.05 and Diplomacy 1.01. I've also included versions that work with both the Entrenchment and Diplomacy versions of Distant Stars 0.9951. Not only does it remove the means of building mines, it also completely removes them from the research tree too.

Download link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?un4lytz4yww

There shouldn't be any bugs (at least not what I'm aware of) but I'll make sure to update the files should any arise.

For those who think that they're OP, that's a good option. Definitely makes multiplayer more interesting.

As for the population, I kinda figure with three groups at such great odds, I don't see the Vasari or Advent trying to hold onto TEC pops, but I don't think of the new pops as growing like flowers either. A war within a single system would take a while, much less an interstellar war. At the same time, buildings and planets are grossly disproportionate. Not to mention the fact that nebulae do not occur within a system (the other way around, in fact). Point is that the game mechanics are for the sake of the game, not reality. I've actually played a space-combat game that is realistic to the letter (and I mean that with the utmost seriousness). It was absolutely boring.

Given both of your arguments concerning population, maybe an entire rethink of the whole system seems to be in order, expanding on what you can do with a planet.

Possibly something similiar to Rome: Total War in which capturing a settlement would give you the option to either occupy the settlement allowing the remaining population to continue living in a similiar way, enslave the population sending a fraction of them away to work as slaves or to exterminate them which results in killing three fourths of the remaining population.

With this in consideration, I think the population that is exterminated by siege vessels and capital ships would be the military and political presence on the planet while a second population of civilians remains compartively high despite bombing. This means that the population holding control of the planet is wiped out while the general civilians can be occupied, enslaved or exterminated.

If this is possible, I would hope it's implemented given it doesn't disrupt the gameplay but if it's not, then thanks for reading.

On a side note, how do the frigates know that they are bombing the military and political presence on the planet instead of civilians? That's where the fact it's videogame comes into play. Too much realism isn't nice but a little touch of it can add a whole lot more to a game overall.

My personal interpretation of the population numbers is that they're referring to the number of millions of people there, not exact numbers.  However, this doesn't hold true for the asteroids so then I claim they're talking in the hundereds being represented, rather then millions...  Having 564 million people on a earthlike planet is believable since we're over 3 billion as it is...  Seeing 4000 (40 x 100) people on a very large asteriod for a mining operation is somewhat believable to me...  Mining towns in the American Southwest have comparable numbers.

To explain away the rapid growth, I just look at what the focus of the game is on.  Space combat.  The only aspect of the game that is represented in real time is the fleet movement within a gravity well and the battles that occur there.  Everything else is represented in an extremely acceleraterd frame of time.

Today's standards, even in the best of conditions, it takes years to build a super carrier, not 90 seconds.  Today's standards it takes decades to refit new weapon systems into an entire military, not instantly as soon as the tech upgrade is finished.  Today's standards it'd take dozens of generations of people just fornicating like mice to go from a zero population to something in the 100 million range.  Today's standards, it takes 3 months to get to our closest neighboring planet, or if we could travel at the speed of light, 4 point something years to get to the next star.  Clearly, the game has minimal focus everything except combat.

I honestly don't see how micromanaging how you take over a planet adds any realism given that everything except the combat is uber fast.  It give's you options, sure, but it doesn't add anything outside of that.

As for the side note about how and where frigates hit...  It's easy.  Today we can already do that.  We drop bombs from tens of thousands of feet in the air that are laser guided to targets and they hit with perfect precision.  We fire missiles from ships out at sea that fly hundereds of miles and use their own on board cameras to find, maneuver, and hit their target.  (See tomahawk cruise missiles for 1970's technology doing exactly this)  Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM's) do exactly what a seige frigate does, except that it's fired from a land base instead of space.  It flies up, enters space, travels as far as it needs to, re-enters the atmosphere, and hits it's target.  That covers the how, as to the where, just look at a map to see the capital.  Ready aim fire.  Besides the map, capitals are usually one of the largest cities a nation has.  Just hit the largest population centers and you can pretty much assure yourself that you're at least influencing political change even if you don't take out all of the powers that be.  The world trade center twin towers for example.  Those had no politicians in them, yet destroying them evoked political change world wide.

Orbital bombing to take over a planet is actually one of the truer more realistic aspects to this game rather then one of it's fictions.  We'd probably be fighting our wars in this manner today if the powers that be didn't sign treaties back in the 60's forbidding the militarization of space.