Hey Stant, I do actually have a local version of sins 1.191 compatible soase distant stars however it is no where near ready for release as its in the process of being upgraded with alot of the changes from DS Entrenchment.

The issue your having there is that the pipeline effect folder is unique to each SoaSE, Entrenchment and Diplomacy. Easiest way to fix it? Delete the entire folder only one file is now modified in there and it isnt necessary or anything major just shield opacity, so its infact easier to just get rid of the lot

Okay.  Four bananas headed your way.  I fixed all of the main menu graphics so it looks like the unmodded version with the exception that it has the newer DS look to it, and the english.str file got updated accordingly to make all of the buttons work...  You need any of that?

Two sets of colorful pictures coming your way, Nace.

Hm have some Things here maybe you can think about it:

- Add the Colors Black, Dark Grey, White, Light Grey.

- Add another dark alien Race or another Type of Vasari with high Shields and a bit more like the Advent playstyle (good Defense and more a mass of Ships).

- Maybe change some Advent Ship and Structure Styles like the Carrier, Hangar Defense etc. (looking realy weird ... some of the other one are nice).

- Reduce those special planetary Bombing Skill Effect from the PIrates - they are much to big (dont know if the TEC Race have it too).

- Add a "Imperial Ship" Class (or something like that). Realy big Ships, only one per Race with modulating things (like the C&C3 Unit) and Levels - you have to balance the Crew and Fleet researches then.

- Change the stupid Bountysystem!!! The CPU only give Bounty on the Playerheads and this is a dumb when u only play alone (or most of the Time) ...

- More Avatars (Pictures) ...

- Maybe a connection between Avatar Gender and Voice, its a bit weird when u play a Female TEC and there is a Male Voice (same for the Advents).

- Maybe a Economy for the NPCs and Pirates on the free Planets (and the Pirate Base - think about Pirates who are capture Planets sometimes).

- Fix the Pirate Battleship, i dont know but 7k Hull and 9 Armor on Level 1 and it goes down realy fast is weird.

Hope u understand most of the Things, my English isnt the best. And thanks for this great Mod wich change the Basics of the Game not to much.

Well, DS is more of an enhancement mod for Sins, not so much a recreation. We've added a few new units, but nothing major. So let me give my two cents item by item...

1. Nice idea to add more team colors, but they have enough colors for all and black would be impossible to see half of the time.

2. Creating another race would be a major edition, requiring massive work on rebalancing. Just tweaking the three races has been a hell of a task.

3. We like adding new models, as you can tell from work with the pirates, but we have very few people who can model and have the time to do so. If they offer, then it can be considered.

4. The pirates are made that powerful because mid-late in the game they become a joke. Especially with Entrenchment, the pirates are too weak to do any real damage. Although they are more powerful, mines alone allow me to gut their fleets. Just keep throwing cash at them.

5. "Imperial Ships" have been considered by many mods and there are usually walls that stop them. Aside from the above rendering issues, they also have to be delicately balanced, both in power and cost. Often times it doesn't work just because everyone wants to go bigger and bigger.

6. I play alone 99% of the time. Usually the AI goes for other AIs unless I expand too quickly. That's part of the design of the game that has been thoroughly explored in other threads. If you use diplomacy to your advantage or expand at moderate-slow rates, you get better results.

7. We have added Avatars. I only know of two people here doing 2-D and we're both working on menus. Again, if anyone wants to offer up or Nacey asks, then it might get a go.

8. I have no idea how the voice thing works. I don't think female images were originally part of the TEC, so that might be why. That would require scripting, recording, and other annoying things that I don't think we're equipped for. Again, if we get volunteers, it can be considered.

9. We thought of giving the militias and pirates both economies and the power to expand, but that means they have to have the full power of the AI behind them. As it is, we're already pushing the 2 Gb limit on memory usage. Other mods have done that and often crash.

10. Okay, Ryat might have to look at that. I'm not sure why it dies easily for you. Mine do too, but I hit then with 5-8 mines, then start shooting. Ryat has improved pirates if you want to try that mini-mod. I hear it'll leave you sore.

These are just my opinions. Not trying to knock you down. I would love to see a lot of this included. Hell, I would love to see 8 playable factions with drastically different play styles, but since the game, especially large maps, tends to slow down or crash when you push it, I don't know how much of this can be done. But again, if some of these are technically doable, then I hope someone volunteers.

Dooling at the possiblilities for this game....in awe

Imperial Capitol Ship.

(Yes it is EVE but just ideas compared to other ships

Caldari Mother ShipWyvern

http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Wyvern

Cldari Titan Leviathan

http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Leviathan

I wish the Flagship did more then gain the senior mark....

Anyways I am not asking for DS to create this however could imagine the fear when this ships rolls into a gravity well.  The only way to make it fair would be to make it crawl.    Hmmm and take crystal or create a new column and use ti to jump systems.  Maybe a sins 2 idea.  New mining roids, which the big ships use for fuel and if you run out they dont jump.  In addition to antimatter.  Im going to double post this in sins 2 ideas.

Thanks for the reply.

3. NP, just dont like those snail shell / spiral style on some Modells (Battleship and the last one as an example are nice). The Vasari frig Factory is weird too or as example the Vasari Starbase. This is just my opinion.

4. I mean the particle Effect wich is just to big.

6. Then i make something wrong, im most the time the weakest Player until i get enough Ressources to growth up (and then the enemy Fleets are most the Time bigger and stronger than mine) so im 100% not worth the Bounty. With the Map Creator i tested a Game with 4 AIs without any Human Player and they NEVER give each other a Bounty!

9. For the militias is a very simple AI enough in my opinion. Just that they are a bit more realistic so that TEC, Advent and Vasari are the dominating Races.

10. Dont tested with Mines, seeing that in the AI Game (i push the Bounty everytime against them btw because they can handle them alot better and i have to do this because they only using me for the Bounty ).

The Performance is realy a Problem, small Maps can be slowing down too when u reach a Point. But hell i love big Maps and i test Maps with up to 200 Stars atm because ~100 are much to small for me.

Lets hope that the optimization Project goes a positiv way (have disabled them because its glitching my colored Skyboxes and Planets ...).

Maybe Ironclad will do something for us too.

3. I actually like the snails, but the Vasari factory is weird.

4. Oh, the particle effects? Okay, I can see that. Yeah, if these guys want to nerf the lights, that's cool.

6. I have no idea why they do that. Maybe the hardness or particular type of AI (aggressor, defensive, etc.) Can't help you.

9. Well, I could see given them just a small boost in abilities, but like I said, we're already pushing memory limits.

As for performance, if you're running on highest, cut it down a notch. Medium is the lowest I would be willing to play. Skyboxes seem to slow my machine down, so maybe you have to cut those out. That or Bloom. Bloom can do a lot. And always have anti-aliasing off.

If that doesn't help, good luck.

Hey guys, I hate to say it, but the mod doesn't work with the latest update. They've added a button in the main menu. I copied over the main menu window file, but now I've got to go add a string reference, and find a brush, assuming that's the only problem. It was able to skip these errors and still bring up the menu, but the outline, I guess is what I'd call it, around the buttons is now too small and doesn't look right. If I'm right, it's just a couple of minor file changes that need to be done, but the game doesn't want to start the mod and I have to tell it to skip the errors it reports. Hope you can fix this soon.

Its like i say only the "special one" from the Siege Frigs (dont know the Name atm) wich they use for the first Rounds before they comming with bigger Ships. They have some Skill wich fires Rockets and THIS explosion is mostly bigger than the Planet (and they fires 2-3 or more at once).

Lowering the Settings is maybe a way but doesnt help realy much and i like the highest Textures a lot ... =/

Anyway i will try a bit.

@AEyikanRyer: Wich Button did u mean?

There are now two buttons in the menu for the other games: they added a button to play normal sins, as well as the button to play entrenchment. Entrenchment has a button for normal sins and Diplomacy, and you can see where it's going. I suppose the game may just ignore these things if you have show errors set to false, but I mod myself some so I keep it set to true. Like I said, the game seems willing to skip this, but I've been unable to find the missing brush anywhere, so the game's going to continuously give me an error.

Black doesnt work. Trust me Ive tried it. White is ok. But anyhow you can all the colors you want using the color file. Even the text color.

I can honestly say the chances of us adding another race is -99.99999999%.

We wont change any of original stuff b/c thats not what this mod is about. Unless its bugged, then we will just fix it.

That is from an added mod. Most of us have very little knowlege with particles.

Simple wont happen.

Its hardcoded. We cant touch it if we wanted.

- More Avatars (Pictures) ...

We see if we can find some we like.

You cant, Unless you make a whole new race with female only voices and avatars. The game only reconizes one set of sounds per race.

There was a mod that gave neturals ability to expand and build fleets. It was awesome but it ground the game to halt. So it wont make it here sadly.

Im not sure why you mean fix. Its working as intened. Pirates dont get migitation. So they pop under really any kind of FF. If you want hellish pirates use the Powerful Pirate mini-mod.

Remember you can always make your own personal DS version by editing things you want to change. Just as long as you dont redestribute it without permission. I for example have a Carbon Edtion of Distant Stars I usually use. Mostly b/c Ive changed, some basic gameplay settings, changed a few colors and added a metric ton of music. And I know Ryat has Evil Pirates he uses beyond Powerful Pirates. Those are a few examples that even the team tweaks DS to our playstyles. Really the version we put out is the best merger of all of our ideas and tweaks.

The mod works just fine. Its just the main menu is off b/c of the new buttons but game works just fine. It will be fix in the next update. Its not priority b/c its just the main menu.

And I know Ryat has Evil Pirates he uses beyond Powerful Pirates.

and they are under my control

muhahahahahahahaha

And I still have the blow pirate up button safely installed on each of my planets.