The devs did change the way the pirates handle research so it might be working now. Like I said, I will get around to it when I can.

Ahhhh that sounds to nice, I'll be able to implement a few old ideas into some maps I had to give up on as a result, any way you could give a file name to where we can add a specific research to the pirate's list? say wormholes, Synergy, phase interference immunity?(setting choke-points outside the pirate bases is handy, but not if you're actually trying to use them...)

Well, you have to give them the research in their tier list, then you have to list the research in their player file.  You do both of those and you should be set.  I'll look it up more specifically tomorrow morning while my niece is over watching cartoons.

Hey Ryat, I changed the role type of the admiral's shuttle for all three races to Cargo and the results are pleasing.

They hang out in their own gravity wells, I didn't see any run off to ally gravity wells, they flee from the gravity well when you jump your ships in, and they don't go out scouting or raiding or even bothering trying to attack.  Probably the best you're going to get with that.

Now about that armor and shield mitigation...  Those can be dropped down to more reasonable levels to allow you to actually be able to kill them.  I seriously have a full on 6000 supply fleet and 33 cap ships (since I held off on making the Flagship until after I had 32 other cap ships) shooting at it, and that little bad ass is taking everything like a champ and not dying.

I can see having tough armor (not as tough as it is), I can see having great regeneration rates to shields and hull, but the mitigation should be dropped down.  Right now, it might as well just have the invincible tag thrown on it.  The threat of it being killed off will also make it so that players don't use them as scouts since with the Cargo role type AI's won't use them as scouts either.

Edit: Also if the weapons are going to be 0 damage, why bother including them?

Very nice find, Stant. 

Anyone know which entity files to edit in the flagship mod to get the correct weapons fireing for the Vas Flagship?

Or do I need to change the nulls in the model file itself?

Thanks.

When using Distant Stars version of Galaxy Forge, when I select 'Non-Green Random Star' does that simply pick from the vanilla non-green stars or does it include things such as white stars etc? Also, if it does include the other DS stars, does it include the Sol star? It would be awesome if it did not include the Sol star but included everything else when selecting the non-green star.

Thoughts?

CAPITALSHIP_PHASEBATTLESHIP2.entity

If you don't want to do it, just let me know which weapons should be on there and I'll fix it up and hand it off to Ryat for the next release.

It's the standard without the green.  I meant to add in the others a long time ago.  The sol stuff (star and planets) are not included in any of the random options in DS and won't be to my knowledge.  They're included in the first place because of Celestial Bodies.

What would have to be done to include those other stars in the 'non-green' random setting?

galaxyscenariodef file in the gameinfo folder.  Right at the top you will see this:

starType
    designName "RandomNonGreenStar"
    designStringId "IDSGalaxyScenarioTypeStarRandomNonGreen"
    orbitBodyTypeCount 3
    orbitBodyType "BlueStar"
    orbitBodyType "RedStar"
    orbitBodyType "YellowStar"

Change it to say this:

starType
    designName "RandomNonGreenStar"
    designStringId "IDSGalaxyScenarioTypeStarRandomNonGreen"
    orbitBodyTypeCount 5
    orbitBodyType "BlueStar"
    orbitBodyType "MagnetarStar"
    orbitBodyType "RedStar"
    orbitBodyType "WhiteStar"
    orbitBodyType "YellowStar"

Of course, you could always change the count to 6 and add in the line    orbitBodyType "BlackStar"  to make black holes randomly appear too, but the AI's have difficulties in dealing with them to the point where that just slam their fleet into it and die.

Might try that thanks.

Something to think about true. I made it like that as it will appear amongst a battle and I didn't want it dying too quickly. The pirate battleship can take it out but no other now that I think about it.

Last time I tried that the game yelled at me. So I put it back. Maybe it won't if I set it to Cargo.

Thanks Stant 123 I'll be using this in the map I'm working on! Could you and the team include this in the Forge extras for the next release of Distant Stars?

If i have my own custom galaxyscenariodef file, I'm asuming there will be problems if someone else tries to edit it? I'm looking through it and I'm curious if I could put together some new planet groupings tomorrow and get those to you to include in your next version as well? What is the difference between a Planet Type and and Orbital Body? I understand the templates so that shouldn't be a problem.

Shouldn't be an issue, it's just a couple of lines.

Tries to edit the map?  In this specific case, no.  There won't be any problems as you're adding options to a selection already available.  Someone else playing just won't ever see Magnetar or Pulsar stars if they use your map with the random no green star setting.  Their's will still see the red, yellow, or blue only.  The only time there is even an issue is when someone uses a map made from a galaxyscenariodef file that has options no one else has.  For example, Space telescopes is not a selectable option currently as an individual gravity well item I believe, so if a map maker uses a custom file that has space telescope as an item to force it to show up and passes it around to the rest of us...  We don't have that option so the map will crash on load.

Sure, why not, I did for 0.7  Haven't ever bothered to look to see if my newer one ever got included...

Uh...  Planet type is the header the game uses to identify pieces of the galaxyscenariodef file.  OrbitBodyType is the option used in game.

planetType        <-------  So the game knows here is the next selection option
    designName "RandomAsteroidSize"
    designStringId "IDSGalaxyScenarioTypePlanetRandomAsteroidSize"
    orbitBodyTypeCount 4    <-------   So the game knows how many 'planet' types to pick from when this is used.
    orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroidHuge"
    orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroidDwarf"
    orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroidMoon"    <------   The 'planet' that can appear in the gravity well
    orbitBodyType "ProtoAsteroid"

If you add another selection option, you must adjust the planetType count at the start of the section just as when you add more options to the orbital body types, you must adjust the count there too.

Update 1.21 is now out. Any compatibility problems?

Wow, I actually logged into the wrong account  before. Amazed that I remembered the password!

Changelog https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/408939 for version 1.21

Aside from reverting all of your setting back to default and forcing you to move all of your mods over to a new folder, no, the update does not create any compatibility issues that I know of.

The ICO, interface, and AI changes are not something that would affect us.

The others, here are the differences between DS and the official stuff with changes made in 1.21:

In the soundeffects.sounddata file, they added the following:

effect
    name "WEAPON_PHASECAPITALWAVEHEAVY_MUZZLE"
    fileName "Weapon_PhaseCapitalWaveHeavy_Muzzle.ogg"
    type "Effect"
    is3D TRUE
    priority 5
    threshold 30000.000000
    minAttenuationDist 1200.000000
    maxNumPlayingSimultaneously 5
    isLooping FALSE
    isResident TRUE
    minRespawnTime 0.1
    fadeInTime 0.0
    fadeOutTime 0.0
    alternateGroup ""

Gameplay.constants: (there's actually a few differences here)

    jumpAngle 45   (DS is 15)

        DefaultSalvageRefundPercent 0.30  (DS is 0.40)

        planetBaseAllegianceAtDistanceCount 11
        allegiance 1.00
        allegiance 0.90
        allegiance 0.80
        allegiance 0.70        DS is:
        allegiance 0.55          60
        allegiance 0.40          50
        allegiance 0.25          40
        allegiance 0.25          30
        allegiance 0.25          20
        allegiance 0.25          10
        allegiance 0.25          05

        DamagePercentBonus:ANTIVERYHEAVY:CapitalShip 0.6   (DS is 0.75)

Pirate Raid stuff is all changed in DS so I'm not going to bother listing it.

    buildSpeedData-Faster
        shipBuildRateGameSpeedScalar 0.40          (DS is 1.875)
        moduleBuildRateGameSpeedScalar 0.40      (DS is 1.875)

    cultureSpeedData-Faster
        cultureConnectionReferenceLength 850000    (DS is 2125000)
        allegianceShiftRateScalar 1.45                      (DS is 3.125)

    researchSpeedData-Faster
        researchRateGameSpeedScalar -0.05     (DS is 7.5) Not sure if that's actually an error.

    incomeSpeedData-Faster
        incomeRateGameSpeedScalar 0.75       (DS is 1.25)

    shipPhysicsSpeedData-Faster
        shipLinearMaxSpeedGameSpeedScalar 0.6          (DS is 1.5)
        shipLinearAccelerationGameSpeedScalar 0.6        (DS is 1.5)
        shipLinearDecelerationGameSpeedScalar 0.6       (DS is 1.5)

    diplomaticPointsSpeedData-Faster
        diplomaticPointsRateSpeedScalar 2.0               (DS is 6.65)

    playerTradeNetworkDef
        incomeRateBonusPerLongestNodeDistanceNode .075    (DS is 0.15)
    targetTypeCounterData
    aiData
        aiRetreatThreshold 0.25           (Ds is 0.13)

Tech and Psi module constructors had their abilities moved to the 4th slot rather then the third. (Not an issue)

Deconstruction abilities and buffs added.     (Not in DS currently)

Detect mines range 6000 (DS is 7625 if you downloaded my scout fix, variable and not working in DS without my fix.)

BuffGaussBlast had "OwnerChanged" finish condition added.

The other gameplay issue about the capital ships is not something we had access to before, so it doesn't affect anything DS does.

English.str the following was added:
StringInfo
    ID "IDSOptionsScreenVideoOptionsUseSystemCursor"
    Value " Use System Cursor"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_TECHMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_NAME"
    Value "Deconstruction"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_TECHMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_DESC"
    Value "Tear down enemy structures."
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_PSIMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_NAME"
    Value "Deconstruction"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_PSIMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_DESC"
    Value "Tear down enemy structures."
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_PHASEMODULEDECONSTRUCTION_NAME"
    Value "Deconstruction"
StringInfo
    ID "IDS_ABILITY_PHASEODULEDECONSTRUCTION_DESC"
    Value "Tear down enemy structures."

 VideoOptionsTabContent.window file had the following added:
useSystemCursorCheckBox
    area [249, 568, 220, 30]
    text "IDSOptionsScreenVideoOptionsUseSystemCursor"

Entity.manifest had the following added:

entityName "AbilityPhaseModuleDeconstruction.entity"
entityName "AbilityPsiModuleDeconstruction.entity"
entityName "AbilityTechModuleDeconstruction.entity"
entityName "BuffPhaseModuleDeconstruction.entity"
entityName "BuffPhaseModuleDeconstructionTarget.entity"
entityName "BuffPsiModuleDeconstruction.entity"
entityName "BuffPsiModuleDeconstructionTarget.entity"
entityName "BuffTechModuleDeconstruction.entity"
entityName "BuffTechModuleDeconstructionTarget.entity"


I think that's it.