[Andrés]

Sorry for the long time since I Last posted something here.
I'm currently doing most of this by myself and other projects and games distracted me.

I've upgraded everything to Gold Version 1.69.
Due to the many requests of a gold sw-mod and that most of us have gold Version or are planning to have it soon.
And beacuse I want to use some of the new features in gold.

If there is demand once we have everything working, we may release a pre-gold Version.

Although there are hundreds of things to add the core and most Rebel and Imperial techs are working.

No AI work has been done yet, but I made all AI races use "Standard Space Empires IV tech" so you should be able to play against them while testing.

I have it in my hard drive but I haven't uploaded any files yet.

I want a few opinions on the best way to do it.

I like the format used in the B5 mod: one small file with all text files, and another big file with all bitmaps and sounds.

Do you want me to include all shiptets?

What about sounds?
In gold the number and size of sounds is increased, and they are still not treated like bitmaps, going to the default dir if it isn't included in the mod. (this would be a nice request for next patch)
Options are:
a- don't use any new sound
b- copy all default sounds into the mod as we used. only difference is that the resulting file will be heavier and take longer to download.
c- include only the new sounds, players would have to manually copy the files into the mod. (perhaps we can include a .bat or small program to automate this)
d- put the new sounds in the default sound dir and not in the mod directory. This was done with one sound in the devnull/moster mod. This would make uninstalling the mod more difficult.

Still in my to do list
*Add extra pics for rebel ships
*Add/change pics for some components
*Add fighter bay requirements to most capital ships
*Add bases
*should we implement base-planets as I had suggested in a previous post? If we do, how many facilities, cargo space and pop should they have?
*trade fed/sith empire/vong neutrals
*another ~100 things I cannot recall right now

About the ship sizes. I had made a set of custom vehicle sizes for each race.
And I had heard some conplains telling me to make this ship bigger and that other one smaller.

Well, the main objective of these ship sizes is to show the CONTRAST in ship sizes used by different races (and different sci-fis).
All of these sizes are based on their known or estimated "real" tonnage, scaled according a variable scale to make logical SE4 sizes. (I'd included XLS file showing the scaling in the old downloads)
Altering the size of one hull would disrupt RELATIVE sizes when compared to other races ships.
So I don't want to change any of the ship sizes unless:
a- There is a mistake in their estimated "real" tonnage
b- We change the parameters of the variable scale, what would alter the size of most of the ships.

Note that there is no problem in adding or removing a hull size, as long as ships are added according the scale. I think that many races do need more sizes.

Those who were asking about a trek mod or the trek part of this mod.
You said you'd be able to work on the data files but not on the graphics.
Either you choose to work directly for this mod, or make an independent mod to be merged with this one later, my advice would be to concentrate on that, and just use the available pics.
Pictures can be added later, changing pic nums in the data files isn't hard and it can even be done while single player games are in progress without problems. If there none of the existing pics fits a particular component (or facility ect.) then providing 1 or 2 pics wouldn't be too hard.