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.