The granted experience for small ships (frigates and cruisers) is in each individual ship file.

The capital ships work differently. In the file "Gameplay.constants" you have the experience values for the capships (experience needed for levelup, experience gained for killing it and cost of training). Those values are shared for all capships, no matter the race.

No, we already tossed that idea around internally. Game engine just doesnt support it. You can though change in your gameplay data the drop rate per jump for culture. If you want no drop just change each number the the max i.e. 200%

Ok so if i purchased the diplomacy micro addon i still wouldnt be able to play the MOD correct?? Sorry for asking the questions but i have heard nothing but good things about the game.

IF i am unable to play the MOD could someone tell me of one or a way i can up the pop cap limit? I know nothing about mods for this game but have heard there is something i can do about the cap.

Thanks,

John

If you purchased Diplomacy you would be able to play the latest version of the mod, since it is made for the latest version of Diplomacy.

You could. If you look at the OP. You can see there are different download for each version we support.

For vanilla we supported till 1.181

Entrenchment: 1.051

Dipolmacy: 1.34

I'm with juntinian66 on learning how too do stuff myself...

So I got a second question, What is the process you guys use too raise the level cap on %bonus research. AKA Laser's/Armor stuff like that? Any answers would be nice

Once upon a time I downloaded a mod called "TEC Laser Beam Mod" for Entrenchment and I quite liked it, but since it stayed at only the TEC and an older version of Entrenchment, I decided to put my own laserbeam mod together.

For those not familiar with the concept of spotH3Ds original and now also my mini-mod:

Since a laser is a ray of light, traveling at lightspeed, it has to be a beam, not a blob or projectile. Of course in a vacuum you couldn't even see such a beam of light, but who cares about that in a game with sound in space.

Anyway back to the technical... I replaced all projectile laser (and I mean really ALL lasers) with short-lived (between 0.1 and 0.3 seconds depending on race and size) beams.

With the Advent I tried to stick as close as I could to the colors of the original blobs (blue for light, violet/pink for heavy). I also fiddled a bit with the weapon colors of ESW and Elite bombers to visually put them apart from standard bombers. All Advent beams use the nice and regular Advent beam graphics.

With the TEC (and derelict ships) I got a bit more creative, since their original lasers are all the same color (boring...). They use the more irregular beam graphic found in the Kol's forward beams. Their light lasers start out as yellow (with the yellow light pulegun muzzle and impact effect, since it fits better than the red laser effects), their heavy lasers have the same orange color as the Kol's beams and the medium are pretty much in between.

The pirates use the "pirate capitol beam" graphics that DS put into the game and all their lasers are blood red. Since they use far less laser weapons than the TEC, all lasers having the same color isn't a problem for them I think.

The mod, in it's current form is based off the DS 1.00 files and only replaces graphical effects. It has no impact on balance. Just make sure it is enabled above the DS mod in the mod-manager, or it won't have any effect. It was made specifically for Distant Stars (D) 1.00, so I'd advice against using it for anything else.

56k warning: Packed in a rar archive this mini-mod is 91 KB big (about 340 KB unpacked).

I hope some of you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Distant Stars Laser Beam Fan Mod

Just in case: I am not part of the DS team (though I did ask wether I may post my mod here).

Downloading!

I love mini mods!!!

*cough*You kids need to make more*Cough*

By process what do you mean?

Ok Carbon likes the Lazor Mod.

TEC lazors are a bit harder to see, but thats b/c it lookes like they are not Bailknight's style FX's unlike the Advent.

But this is going to a pera addon for me. Makes my pew pew so much cooler!!!!!!

Interesting.

By process I guess I meant what files did you tweak too raise the research level cap on them. As in how TEC laser research (both of them) are 4 levels each (5% per level) for a total of 40% boost instead of 2 levels each for a total of 20% boost.

Also still wondering how you guys made the Faster research setting make research go Ultra-Fast. Would be really nice too know

Those answers are very simple that I can happily give you before crawling into bed.  In the research files themselves, you will see this line: MaxNumResearchLevels 4  It used to say 2.  Also in the research that is next in the chain such as the second set of laser research, there is this section:

Prerequisites
    NumResearchPrerequisites 1
    ResearchPrerequisite
        Subject "RESEARCHSUBJECT_WEAPONDAMAGE_LASERTECH0"
        Level 4

That level used to say 2 as well, but since the previous research got changed to 4 levels, the change here needed to be made as well so that you couldn't research it before completing the previous.  You can change all of the numbers to 8 instead of 4 and thus give another doubling of the effect.

Alternatively you could just look closer to the bottom of the research files in the section that has this:

researchFloatModifiers 1
researchModifier
    modifierType "WeaponDamageAdjustment"
    baseValue 0.000000
    perLevelValue 0.050000
    linkedWeaponClass "LASERTECH"

All you would have to do is change the per level value adjustment.  Currently its a 5% per level gain.  You could change that to .1 to give it a 10% per level gain.

research speeds are set in the gameplay.constants file.  Look for this section:

    researchSpeedData-Slow
        researchRateGameSpeedScalar -4.75
    researchSpeedData-Normal
        researchRateGameSpeedScalar -1.3
    researchSpeedData-Fast
        researchRateGameSpeedScalar -0.15
    researchSpeedData-Faster
        researchRateGameSpeedScalar 7.5

That 7.5 is why things happen at warp speed compared to the other numbers that have negative values.  The higher the number the faster it is, the lower the number, the slower it is.

Flaghips mod? or will it be added later?

Added later. Like when I have time to review it and make any necessary changes. Right now work is crazy. UPS.

Sweet thanks. I can start tweaking some techs I never used much at last!

Woo!

Have a   for the help

Norbert, i love the Laser mod. TEC starbase + Pirates = Pink Floyd.

I think this could definitely be worth looking into some more (hint hint).

Yes, once I saw a pirate starbase with the lasers, it was gold! Btw, is it a full on DS change that militia get starbases and caps or was that just the Ashes of TEC map?

They could have them in any map that addes them to the template.

Hey DS Team just a quick question/concern. While loading up your mod today, I noticed the entrance theme is different. Infact, the music is the exact same as normal Diplo. Did you intend for that? Only because I liked your original entrance so much:). Also, while playing the TEC today the in-game music was normal Diplomacy music as well. I miss the music so much only because I think music directly impacts gameplay and mood so I was wondering if you intended for this and were going to incorporate other music or if this was a complete accident. Either way the music for me has been unchanged and remains the same of normal Diplomacy. Also I was wondering if you could add music for other races?

It sounds like you didn't get a good download?

DS didn't completely replace the original diplo music, it just added new ones to it, so it isn't unusual that you can hear original Diplo music ingame from time to time.

The Theme song though, is another matter. That one was taken out (or forgotten to be put in maybe?) for the 1.00 version. The others are all still in there, as far as I can tell.

If you still have an old version of DS, you can just copy/paste the old "Opening Theme.ogg" into the new folder. Though I don't know wether that alone is enough to change the mod-checksum.

Also make sure that you unpacked it properly. If there is a Distant Stars folder inside of a Distant Stars folder, then you need to take it out of the first folder. Dunno if that makes sense, but there should be the Diplo mods folder, Distant Stars folder, then mesh and textures and all. And make sure you hit both enable and apply mod buttons.

Draakjacht, i too have the standard Diplomacy fanfare to greet me on the  main menu, and i have it all unpacked correctly.

There's also a *slight* issue with a map (maybe?). It's the large scenario map with 8 players called "Balanced Resources."

In the area i started in there was a deep space sector just behind my home planet, which was home to what seemed to be the only pirate base on the map. Just saying that it was rather frustrating to have every pirate raid make a trek through my system just to get to the other players.

I'll have to look into it, but if it's a deep space sector with a pirate starbase, it shouldn't be a spawn point for pirates, rather the starbase is just a component of the local militia. If it's an actual pirate base, then that's the design of the map and yeah, it would suck. Hmm... methinks I have to jump over to my other comp later tonight and double check that.