a lot of the conversion tools are out of date, look at Harpo99999 stuff, he keeps his up to date almost as much as we do

When I download the mod for dip 1.01, there is no extras folder. I really want to try out dynamic movement and powerful pirates (although the pirates seem way powerful as it is in DS), but they aren't there. What's the deal?

Diplomacy changed a lot of things so dynamic movement and powerful pirates need to be revamped for diplomacy (we worked regular DS during the beta, but that took up a lot of time)

cant say much for dynamic movement

but I am working on Powerful Pirates as much as I can (there is a lot that has changed about them so I have to do a lot of research and studying to get them just right) but I hope to have them up by tomorrow night or Monday, no guarentees with RL.

signed

Ryat Lord of the Distant Star Pirates

Lol, as for DM, since the ships are pretty much the same as the entrechment ones, so I have already told Nacey where to go for the general direction for the DM. So it should be already in the works, if not I'll finish up on my side and send it over.

Two things...  Actually 4, but two that relate to the quote.

First, I'd have to agree with it being because the planet is 100% explored already.  You don't have to be a modder to figure it out, just a tester.  Part of the testing process is trying it out in a different setting, put all of those bonuses on a planet that isn't a home planet and explore it to see just how many show up.  There's also differences in the way the bonuses show up.  Some show up mearly by entering the gravity well. Galactic trade center, dense molten core, porous core, perfect holiday destination for example...  Some show up as soon as you colonize the planet.  Black market and plundered booty for examples of this if I'm remembering my playing correctly...  The rest that don't fall into these two categories don't show up until you've explored.  The bonuses you are seeing could be the ones that show up by being in the system, or just by owning the planet.  First thing is to put everything on a non home start planet, then remove the bonuses that show up when you enter the grav well for it.  The next step is to remove any that show up when you colonize, and the third is to see how many show up when you actually explore.  You don't need to be a modder with the ability to change the way the game plays to do that, you just need to be patient and willing to restart your game a bunch of times until you figure it all out.

Second, the number of times you can explore is actually not an issue as far as I know because I've run into planets with 3 bonuses on them and only 2 chances to explore, but I don't remember if one showed up as soon as I colonized or not.  If I had to put a theoretical limit on things, I'd say limit to 4 bonuses for most planets.  One that shows up when you enter the well, one that shows up when you colonize, and two more for exploration.  That's purely a guess since I really don't want to be up all night testing it out in as many variations as I can to give a for sure this is how it works report.  Tomorrow (later today since it's just past 2am for me) I'll get to testing it if I have the time.

To complete the 'Never Expand' achievement, the easiest way is to play against an easy AI on a small map, and have a hard AI as an ally and let your ally harass the opponent while you build up a small fleet from your homeworld and take them out if your ally doesn't.  That's purely the easy way of doing it.  The more allies you give yourself the easier it is, of course.  Going 1 on 1, or going against multiple enemies makes it harder, but the reason for this achievement is to appeal to the tank rusher type of player.  Someone who builds up a quick and dirty, harass the other guy fleet and tries to end the game in 3 minutes or less.  It's not a goal that should be attainable or even desireable by someone taking their time to tech and build up their planet.  Just build those little frigates and send 'em over.  You may actually score a second achievement by not building any cap ships going this route.  Two-fer special.  Unless I'm thinking of the cap ship only achievement...  You get the idea...

Some advice about the 5 superworld battle royal...  Switch the home planets to something else for the higher population cap, and thus higher credit income.  You can then throw out any income bonuses you were trying to add in...  Urban, Urban giant, and savannah giants all have over 1000 max pop cap (1170, 1170, and 1045 respectively), as opposed to the 532 Terran home gets, so you may want to consider making those the starting planets if it'll let you.  Then you'll have double the population and the ability to explore still.  Again, these are all just guesses, albeit a little bit educated guesses, I can't say for sure until I have a chance to test it out myself or hear feedback on someone else's tests.

Hope all of that helps you out.

Unsure if this has been asked before, so sorry if it has.

I like this mod, especially the new plantets etc, but just wondered is it possible for a release which only alters the environment (new planet types, bonuses, artifacts etc) nothing to change graphics for ships, alter ai behaviour, add new ships or enitity files. The only reason I ask, is that I wish to play your mod with other mods, but it isn't working correctly, and if it were just the extra planets and enviroment variables, I believe it would work.

Diplo verison will have the extra released after we catch it up to Entrechement (last patch did that), make sure it stable, and also after the minimods have been reworked for Diplo. For example, Powerful Pirates is being totaly reworked b/c of the changes in Diplo. DM just has to be updated. Till everything is ready they wont be in the Diplo version. If you wanna play witht them head back to Entrechement.

This 'I want to use just part of the mod, can you break it up?' request has been common lately. But we will not be spliting the mod into seperate add-on or sections. Its a nightmare and supporting it all would drive us mad. Sorry. Feel free to remove/edit what you dont like for a personal version of Distant Stars. Or you could see about looking for an updated Version of Sins Plus and Celestial Body.

I understand and thank you for the response, I will alter as necessary, just have so many files to delete, I thought you might already have just a seperate mod for environment variables. Many thanks to Distant Stars.

Uh, forums go BOOM!

Roger that.  Thanks, Ryat.

It is indeed a simple fix to add Dynamic Movement in to Diplomacy. However releasing the minimods at an early stage of Alpha / Beta testing of the Diplomacy version of Distant Stars would cause more issues than it would appease peoples requests for it. So we held off on releasing it, as I mentioned before it will be included in the next release of Distant Stars for Diplomacy hopefully as will the Powerful Pirates mod with some new enhancements from Ryat as always im sure.

As Carbon has mentioned we have had a few requests for it as of late however at the moment we dont have a split up version of our mod and we havent planned to release one in the near future due to the work involved in tearing it to pieces after we've spent so long throwing it all together lol. Its certainely a possibility but we certainely wont be doing it any time soon due to time constraints we're spending as much time as possible developing the mod further.

Hey guys I installed the new Diplomacy patch and I'm still getting minidumps. That and the game who nuts the next time I try to load it.

I can run any game on max settings however I also tried to play this one on "high" settings only. Same issue.

After a minidump I'll enter the game and the resource stats will be in the negative and completely F'ed. It'll just say -27326387263 and the computer will consistently notify me of a pirate raid before it dumps out.

The dump was C:\DOCUME~1\Tim\LOCALS~/1TEMP\Sinsdump\Sins-DiplomacyV1.00-2010-02-21-15-36-17-652-2012.dmp

Any ideas? Thanks

You're playing diplomacy version 1.00 according to your dump file.  Update to version 1.01, then apply the mod.  That should help.

Edit: Also redownload the full version of DS 0.6 in case the data on your copy got corrupted somehow.  Unzip the files to the desktop first so windows doesn't mess with anything, then transfer it over to the Mods-Diplomacy v1.01 folder.

Well I thought I downloaded the 1.01 version? Where is that? I just downloaded the one at the top of the page....

No, you need to open Impulse and update your version of Diplomacy.

ahhh thanks sparda! lol