"Text FileArchive missing label" generally has something to do with versions, IIRC. Look at the top of the file for things as

TXT

or

TXT2
SinsArchiveVersion 194

I would try disabling engines. I did essentially this for black holes in E4X, but I'm not sure of any pull abilities that don't disable engines.

I'm trying to mod more research arrows into the game, but I can't figure out how.

Currently, I'm just trying to get the research window to display an arrow leading from a prerequisite to the tile just above it. This arrow already exists in the game files! BackdropInGame.dds already has this exact arrow, and it's already listed in Screen-InGame.brushes as "ResearchWindowArrowUp1".

Except ResearchWindowArrowUp1 isn't included under the arrowBrushes section of ResearchScreen.window. The problem I'm having is, any attempt to alter what's listed under arrowBrushes breaks the research window UI.

Adding the line "Up1 "ResearchWindowArrowUp1"" before "Up2 "ResearchWindowArrowUp2"" produces this:

All other research windows are similarly broken. (This disaster generates the expected flood of error popups in Developer.exe)

Trying to tease out exactly what the game will accept (new arrow listed at the bottom of arrowBrushes, or simply changing the twos in "Up2 "ResearchWindowArrowUp2"" to ones) just yields the same broken research window every time.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there something important I'm overlooking, or is it just impossible to add new arrows to the research window? I'd greatly appreciate any help with this.

EDIT: Nevermind I figured it out, I'm an idiot  

I've been trying to add 2 extra research levels to RESEARCHSUBJECT_COSTDECREASERESOURCES.entity. The research has 2 extra levels but the cost decrease for the extra levels doesn't apply, any idea why?

The only change I made from the original was in this line:

Entire file: https://pastebin.com/SfwaVMLG

Hi there - I have a few questions I'd hope to get an answer to.     I'm specifically for looking for certain kinds of mods that have been made, but there's so many it's hard to be sure whether what I'm looking for is out there (and if not, if it can be created), so I'll just post it out.

1.  Is there an Improved AI Mod standalone?

I realize that no AI will ever be as good as a human most likely and that you need quite the programmer to make a good one, but if there actually is an Advanced AI somewhere for the game, that would be nice.

2.  No Fleet Income Penalty when not at cap intervals

I like the Tax penalty when upgrading to new fleet levels, but having the tax be retained when your fleet is destroyed has simply never made sense to me (and can make recovery nigh impossible, which one would think would be the point).  Are there any mods that make it so that the tax is only applied if your ACTUAL fleet usage is enough to enter the taxation zone?  (e.g. 0-100 fleet points = no tax, regardless of level upgrade; 101-250 = 9% tax regardless of level upgrade, etc...)

3.  Simple Balance Mods

I realize some mods do balance while expanding the game, I'm just wondering if there are mods that ONLY do balance and nothing else.  Following some games and reading up on things I've noticed that some Capital Ships (for example) are almost never used because they are considered underpowered - the very concept that such an animal could exist doesn't make sense to me...I think everything should have its place and I'm wondering if any Balance Mod has addressed this to the community's satisfaction.

Might have more questions later but for now this will do.     Thanks!

If you're talking about player portraits for additional factions, its not easy. The game only supports 3 factions displaying there. Mods that have added a second row in the portrait texture itself, and completely changed the game UI so that it actually looks like its loading more than 3.

It is a complete hack and requires lots of changes to the UI anywhere the large player portrait is displayed, including the in game diplomacy screen as well.

You're not quite understanding what I'm saying. The game is only loading three factions. There's nothing you can do to change that.

The trick is to change it so that the three that it is loading actually looks like 6, even though the game is only loading three factions worth Portraits. For example, in Interregnum the Empire and TEC large portraits are actually in one file together. That means you need to hide where the second faction at the bottom appears in the in game UI, everywhere but the player setup screen.

Yup, I'm definitely an old timer here now.

Hey everyone, me again. I'm having an issue where my mod crashes things. It's only after I start a game, and always at least several minutes into it—sometimes as long as several hours. When I play using dev.exe, I don't get an error pop-up when the game crashes, nor is there anything useful in the debug file.

I've narrowed it down to an issue with the Vasari Loyalist faction specifically (all other factions will never crash the game). So this should be easy to solve, right? Just track down the files that are unique to Vasari Loyalist, and the problem should be in there. Except I have! Every relevant file is perfectly fine. (I even tested by removing their Titan from the game, then the Solitary Path research item. Still crashes.) As far as I can tell, there are no typos, no mistakes, no errors, no janky buff chains. Everything should legitimately be working fine, except it doesn't.

I've posted my mod files to GitHub. Please help me, I'm at the end of my rope here. I would love to release my mod to the public one day, but I can't do that if one whole faction (my favorite faction!) consistently crashes the game.

Update: used my standard troubleshooting technique (set up a four-player game in dev.exe, all the same (problem) faction, set player to AI, let the game run until it crashes), but this time with all research that's unique to Vasari Loyalists removed from their player file. It still crashed. But... that's it. That research and the player file itself are the only differences between the Vasari Loyalist and Vasari Rebel factions. I just compared the two player files, just in case, but there's nothing in the Vasari Loyalist player file that should be causing a crash. Everything is valid as far as I can tell. What the hell is going on?

Solution: LMAO it was the missing byte-order mark in the player file. Just had to change the encoding from UTF-8 to UTF-8-BOM and bam, no crashes. Game runs for 4+ hours now without any issues.

Huh, interesting. I stick the unmodded, original player file for Vasari Loyalist in my mod, and everything runs fine without crashing. I copy over the researchInfo list (so, just the RESEARCHSUBJECT item list) from the modded file, run a test, and it crashes only a few minutes in.

So it is something with the faction's research. But it's 90% the same list as the one in the Vasari Rebel player file, so it's something wrong with the faction-specific research, except I already tested by removing that stuff before and it still crashed. So maybe it's how the list is formatted, somehow?

Update: I stuck the (modded) Vasari Rebel researchInfo list into an original (unmodded) Vasari Loyalist player file and it runs fine. No crashes. So now it's just a matter of patiently, tediously changing one thing at a time in that list. Hopefully, there'll be an obvious problem file I can narrow it down to.

I don't believe you can increase available colors, just change them.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to do this. You have to design your tech trees with the arrows currently already used by the game.

I'm trying to mod more research arrows into the game, but I can't figure out how.

projectfreetv.onl

waplus

GoaFan77 says it isn't possible to add different arrows, but if your question is about adding more arrows then the game will automatically populate the arrows I believe if you have added the research correctly.