Don't mean to sound pushy, but was there going to be an update to this for Diplomacy released soon?  I'm planning on doing some major modding (again, 'cause I just got Diplomacy) but I'd rather wait if you all are going to update some files again.

yes, its the first download on the list, its been up for a while

(we will soon update that when the devs update diplomacy, which should be soon)

w00t! 100 pages

I've been a silent fan of this mod for a long time, but playing a bit last night gave me an idea that I really need to share. (probably not at the right time since you guys are very busy atm but I forget what I don't write)

I don't know if this is intended but I've noticed that when you give a mission to pirates to attack a planet, they seem to stay there and even reinforce (unconfirmed). (could also be a bug because the AI thinks it never completed the mission)

Anyway, this gave me an idea to make pirates more interesting on a strategic level. Kind of like ambassador ship, any of their ship could have an ability that render neutral planet lawless, making them less viable to colonise until decay of the effect, kinda like the diplomacy bonus you retain after your envoy ships leaves a planet. (less taxe income from corruption, less trade income from risk of raids, less culture spread rate from being unlawful)

so, this will be kinda like the novalith cannon: use it carefully because denial of territory works for everyone since the pirates will stay to defend this neutral heaven (surviving ships of the original attack basicly), making it harder to retake, plus it will be lawless for a certain time after the pirates are gone. For balance however, this should only happen when pirates are set on missions and not when they just go out for a normal raid to prevent this to happen too early in the game. If not, the first person to suffer from a pirate raid will never recover, most map having few planet to colonise early w/o tech requierement.

Anyway, just wanted to share this. Keep up the good work! I really enjoy this mod! By far my favorite.

Cheers! and back to silence  

If the devs release their update tomorrow, we should be updating on the evening not long after the official update is released all going well, I have alot of work I need to get done for you guys before tomorrow (as im busy all day tomorrow 'til the evening UK time which is usually when patches are released).

Another of the Silent Society of Distant Stars speaks?! is nothing sacred these days?
That is actually an interesting suggestion you have there, and infact its given me an idea for a similar pirate related planetary debuff. Definetely worth looking in to, thanks for the suggestion Sicarii.

We've finally hit the 100 page milestone, thanks to you all for supporting us for this long and hopefully a long time to come. I was doing some checking the other day and since January 1st 2010 we've used over 800GB of bandwidth, almost as much as we did in the entirety of last year in just two months (averaging over 20-30GB bandwidth usage per day in February alone).
Anyway back to work on the next patch for me, no time for my ramblings!

I was playing last night (with no crash, amazingly enough), and I was hit by no less than twelve pirate cap ships, and about 50+ other ships. A transcendancy starbase with two planetary defense transmitters, two fighter bays, and four repair bays are all it took to hold them off, but I was still a bit put back by it...  since there were four computers hitting four of my planets with 200+ ship fleets at the same time.

They weren't expecting to get thwomped and then my 8BB,6CA,2BC fleet w/ 100support ships start thwomping their homeworlds one by one. I swear it was like a wrecking ball.

Will vanilla Sins still be supported?

I want to ask for permission to use the mod for my first steps in modding. I want to create a quest map and i think your mod raises very much my chances of succeeding.

Also, as I am not a person who just asks and expects to receive for nothing, I wanted to contribute by uploading a fully functional Galaxy Forge for Diplomacy (That means all bonuses and artifacts work, although there are a few steps to be taken care of). I know that you (modders) of course have it, but there's no download link in the main post and i wanted to make map-creating a lot easier for the casual modders.

Now, about the Galaxy Forge. You need to overwrite the GalaxyScenarioDef from Distant Stars/Gameinfo folder with the one from the Galaxy Forge folder. After that, all will work like a charm

Here's the link -> http://www.filefront.com/15613845/GalaxyForge.zip

I hope you like it

eventually, getting entrenchment and now diplomacy is taking much of our time, plus what is in entrenchment adds some much to the game that anything for vanilla will not be nearly the same.

@Masakary - No problem man, thanks for asking and yeah we wouldn't mind a refreshed version of Galaxy Forge for DS appreciate the hard work

have some Karma man

Yesterday, me and my friend were playing a map I made, it had all the planet types and a secret cluster, consisting of 2 Ancient Citadels and the Consiousness of The Unity ( I know I can't type), which were insanely hard to get to, aquire and defend, because I thought they would be cool and usefull and very powerful and valuable things to own, until I found out the the Unity was nothing more than a planet and that the Citadels were empty. Please increase the the chance that Ancient Citadels house artifacts and give the Unity something special, for starters a substantial size increase, so that it's not the same size as a star base and some special bonus, ability, or it having an artifact only it has, and it will always have, that adds something, that is totally advent, like 50% more strikecraft for all squadrons, or a faster shield regeneration rate, you get the idea.

yeah, those things were from another mod we incorporated into DS

can't effect the artifact thing (thats only a universal modifer) but we will see about the other ideas

Honestly, if you use the forge you can force the citadel or any other place to spawn an artifact. (Using Masakary's Forge you can add in any planet bonus you want as well. Refer to reply number 2482 for the link.) Editing the planet's properties and changing a couple things can make it happen.  You lose the randomness of the artifact being spawned, but then again, does it really matter if you know every citadel you come across will spawn an artifact?  Random artifacts is what all of the other planets are for.  Just add a cluster of citadels and spawn all of the artifacts that way.  Not being a code monkey, I can't reliably edit anything for you to make it happen the way you want, otherwise I would.  Here's some images to refer to.

and just so you can see the in-game result

Artifact on every one.

Edit:  Now that I think about it...  If you do it this way and still want them to be somewhat random, create 12 citadels, assign each one an artifact, connect all 12 to a star or planet that will always show up in the game (like a hub and spoke wheel design), and then change each citadel's spawn probability to some randomly chosen number like .38 (gives a 38% spawn chance).  Then each time you load the game, the citadels themselves will be randomly in the game.  Sometimes you'll have a few, sometimes none, in rare cases all of them...  It should vary which ones show up each time you play it.

Thank you so much, +1 Karma for the help, also while we are on the subject: being an Advent player, I can sure as hell dig the planet type you added, but what about the other races, maybe the TEC could have a Galactic Trade, but to make it interessting, instead of it increasing trade income (kinda obvious) it will lower the Fleet Upkeep, how does this make sence, well imagine a gigantic space station (it will use the trade port model) that handles all of the accounting of the empire, redistributes resources where they are needed most, logically distributes money so that ship crews that aren't doing anything are not recieving the same amount of creds as the frontline fleet, works closely with scientist to better exploit new energy sources. To make ti balanced, all races will be able to take it, and this ability will be upgradeable and it will cost a lot.

Vassari will have a Stellar Porticulus, which will allow them to jump to any object, that they have been to, from it's gravity well, for a big cost and will not be able to jump ships smaller than a cruiser, so that it's balanced. Model whatever you pick.

And ofcourse the Advent as I posted above might have a shield regen increase for all their ships, or extra strike craft squadrons or more craft per squadron, anything which will be usefull. Also please redo the model, as I was thinking of having the same starbase model, only bigger and with a temple of communion in the centre, that would look ballin'.

If I have any more ideas I will post.

Seems some rather interesting things are involved in the Diplomacy edition.

In regards to GalaxyForge New...

Where do you find out what all of these bonuses DO? I can't find a list anywhere... or maybe my googleprowess sucks. I mean, Bonuses like:

BigAss, Atmo+, Black, CorroA, Design J/1/2, HardAss, Impure C/M, Lions, Looks +/-, Military, Smug +/-, WarTorn, Wood, Wood again, and Wood++ ???

I'd like a full list of just what all of these bonuses do.

This mod looks really cool, and I can't wait to try it out.  Unfortuneately, every time I try applying it in Diplo (v1.00, in the correct folder and everything), Sins just locks up and does nothing.  Checksum value is correct, and its fine up until I hit the "apply changes" button.  Tried this several times, but after the 2nd force reboot cuz my display was stuck on frozen Sins and wouldn't alt-tab or bring up the desktop I came here.  I've got the right version, in the right folder, playing w/ the right version, and for some reason it just doesn't wanna give