How to mod a starting planet?

[Fyron]

It helps to provide context to such questions..

[GeorgiaBoy]

Hi Fyron,

Yeah, its growing pains. I will try to provide more info next time... Thanks again douglas and capnky.

GB

[douglas]

Ok, here's how to fix that without the "chainsaw" approach: IIRC, the homeworld selection algorithm is hardcoded to look for planets of size "Small", "Medium", or "Large", depending on the homeworld quality game setting. There is no reason you cannot have very similarly named planet sizes with exactly the same characteristics that will be treated identically in (almost) every way except they will not be considered possible homeworlds.

So, put renamed equivalents of the small, medium, and large planet sizes into PlanetSize.txt, and change SystemTypes.txt to use the actual Small, Medium, and Large sizes only for the first planet in each mini-system. The only problem with this is that you can't specify "any except these" for planet size so to be certain no one gets a domed homeworld you'll have to give up the randomness on planet size for all the other planets. As a compromise, you could fill out PlanetSize.txt with tons of extra duplicates so that "Any" size has a very low chance of picking a homeworld candidate.

The one thing you have to watch out for when changing PlanetSize.txt is that the size limits for planet creation and destruction are based on position in the file. If these abilities are used in your mod, you will have to make sure the planet sizes are sorted in the appropriate order for "can destroy planets with size before entry N" to match up with how you want them to work in your mod.

[GeorgiaBoy]

(tweaking mod right now). Thanks for the quick response, douglas. Inlaws are coming into town to visit for a week, so finishing up may have to wait a little...

GB