Yeah, I've got some sluggish issues going on. I'm playing that 11 star system with the 6 pirate bases around a central star (can't recall the map). I've got full diplomacy going on and throwing 40k pirate swarms at other factions while being their "good buddies"

There's something menacing about assaulting a pirate base that has 40+ capital ships at it. And stomping it into the ground.

yeah the AI can barely handle the regular pirates, the DS pirates are something else and when Powerful Pirates is brought in? well I have lost to them several times

16 Kostura cannons ended most of DS's deadly pirates at one base for me... Just the starbase survived, and with a lot less health.

Funny thing that...

The Vasari are the only one's that can take the coward's way.

It takes balls to go face to face with your enemy.

Heheheheh

I am usually a TEC player, but I like to play as Vasari in DS, because you can get the economy going crazy as just about any race.

I'd like to ask the DS devs about how to modify something that has been bothering me about the mod.  What entity file would I need to change, and what specifically would I have to edit in said entity file, if I wanted for random planets to spawn no less than 2 resource extractors rather than 1?  It seems to happen far too frequent that I end up with a really bad start, where I have a couple or more almost completely worthless adjacent planets (usually dwarf asteroids) that only have 1 resource node in the gravity well.  This almost always spells out immediate defeat for me before the game even begins and its especially irritating that the the CPU rarely seems to get the same sort of bad luck.

I think of it as karma. In a past life, you must have had too many smurf accounts.

As for the pirates, I say take them on direct! My brother finally has the pirates down to 700 ships after about 4 max fleet waves. Finally, a manageable number.

@Manic

It's not that they start better then you it's that they being AI's get to cheat a little bit, plus AI's multitask a hell of a lot better then you and I.  I can almost guess that you're a turtle player in the sense that you don't expand quickly because you're busy covering your ass before you move on.  Before you mess with anything, try a new strategy.  It's called "get out there and grab some planets puto."

Basically, everyone is starting off with the same thing, send out your couple of scouts, build a colony cap ship as well as a colony frigate with a few escorts and send them off in different directions.  Your cap can fight it's own battles by itself so let it go by itself.  If you have options between a lightly defended planet and a heavily defended one, go after the light one first and don't waste the time on the heavy one until you have the ship count to make quick work of it.

You don't need to protect your home or any early grabs because no one has the ability to be producing an attack fleet much less anything that can lay down some orbital bombardment.  Just grab and go, get yourself out of the hole population upgrade wise so you have a positive tax income, but don't do any high stage upgrades until you're maxing out in population or orbital structures.  Your early expenditures will stay low and you can grab more planets and expand your fleet faster.

Later on if you're still feeling like you're getting the shaft follow these directions.

You can't do anything like how you're picturing it.  Random spawns are based on what planets are listed in the galaxyscenariodef file, so in order to change the number of resource asteroids you get, you're going to have to hit up every single planet.entity file there is and change the numbers yourself.  There are a lot of them so clear up a healthy chunk of time.

Changing these files is going to require you to have a way to change the files from binary to text and back.  One option is Harpo's textbin mod tool, another is the less updated Dekhranic mod tool.  Both do the job equally in this case.

Once you've got the planet entity files changed over to text, look for the section that follows the line planetResourceSetupInfo

This example is from the PlanetTerran.entity file

planetResourceSetupInfo
    asteroidSpawnAngleVariance 3.141593
    totalMaxResourceAsteroids 4
    metalResourceAsteroidSetup
        minCount 1
        maxCount 4
        extractionRate 0.400000
        refineryRate 0.060000
        maxRefineryCount 6
    crystalResourceAsteroidSetup
        minCount 1
        maxCount 4
        extractionRate 0.400000
        refineryRate 0.060000
        maxRefineryCount 6
    neutralMetalResourceAsteroidSetup
        minCount 0
        maxCount 0
        extractionRate 0.000000
        refineryRate 0.000000
        maxRefineryCount 0
    neutralCrystalResourceAsteroidSetup
        minCount 0
        maxCount 0
        extractionRate 0.000000
        refineryRate 0.000000
        maxRefineryCount 0

The important things to play with are the red green and blue numbers.  I don't want to explain them because it's obvious what you need to do.  If you can't figure it out, then...  Nevermind.

When you're done, you can leave them as text or make them binary again and put them back in the gameinfo folder.  Run your game and enjoy.  You'll have conflicting info with online players though so whatever changes you make, it's advised to make them into a minimod if you play online so you can simply turn them off for that (in entrenchment and diplomacy only.  vanilla is all or nothing.)  If you don't know how to do that, then just keep a copy of the originals in a special folder, and keep copies of the modified files in another special folder and copy and paste as needed into the gameinfo folder.

Whats the checksum for the latest version by chance? Just wanna make sure im running it correctly.

Diplomacy-[36951860]

Entrechment-[36672790]

Sweeeet don't need any help this time around lol.....great work guys!

I understand the factor that the AI gets a bonus resource income above hard difficulties, but I'm not talking about that.  What I mean is that I simply usually start out with a very crappy selection of random planets adjacent to my homeworld, such as dwarf asteroids with 1 single resource node, very heavily fortified "big" planets that are impossible to take early game, or planets that aren't possible to colonize immediately without research.  This makes it extremely difficult to expand my empire at a consistent rate and feasible manner every game like I am always able to without using the mod.  Also, I never turtle unless I absolutely know I have the upper hand and a well established choke point with a starbase up.  I colonize about twice the speed as the AI typically does on Unfair difficulty without the mod enabled, pretty much every single time.  Matter of fact, by the middle of the last game I played I had 14 planets colonized by the time the AI had 6 colonized (again, without using the mod).

Other than that, I already am familiar with the other points and strategies you mentioned.  Thanks for your help with what entity files I need to edit though. 

I always play randomly generated maps.  From playing vanilla Diplomacy, I can tell that the resource asteroid spawns are always between 2-3 per planet, and on rare occasions 4, without exception (for every type of planet).  With your mod, it seems like the resource asteroids can vary between 1 and 6 per planet based on my experience, but for which planets I am not sure.  All I'm going to do is change the "minCount" to 2 so that the planets always spawn with no less than two of any type of resource asteroid. 

Again, thanks a lot for your help with what to edit in the entity files.  I'll take a good look at the information you provided and try to figure out as much as I can without bugging you any further.

If you tired of getting screwed by random maps, maybe make one ingame or with GF. Random maps are just that, but IMHO someone gets screwed by them. Its either you or the AI.

The resource asteroids vary depending on planet type and size of planet. The smaller the planet the less roids. The larger the more.

The resource spawns are 0 to 6, all depending on the type of planet you get.  My memory is a little fuzzy since it's been a long time since I looked, but it goes something like moons have 0 to 2, dwarf have 1 to 3, normal have 2 to 4, and giant have 4 to 6.

If you use my better gas giants minimod, those can have 6 to 16 depending on which one and how lucky you are.

Speaking of your Better gas Giants they are added  in the Online Update.