Someone asked for a map of local stars.

Here it is. This is a work in progess. I would only open it in Galaxy Forge. All local stars out to Sirius, the top 10 list from NASAs terrestrial planet finder mission, and all known exoplanets out to 50 light years. Primary star distancesi, and direction are accurate to scale. Companion Stars and planet locations are not. Data used is in excel sheet I will clean it up later. I have another Im working on with our solar system. Should be up by monday. Requires the Mod.

Will that mod be ready? I hope so because i just cant merge them. But i did make a galaxy forge for Solar Sins and CB mods.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/349130

Go ahead.

And whats the problem with the Solar Sins planets? Is it the mesh or the entity? i can change a mesh file from the game its self and redirect the texture thing. But if its the entity well then i have no idea.

Ya. Im switchin to blue.

I have completed the map of the Solar System and nearby stars, using what I think is all the SolSystemobjects in the mod (All planets, large moons, dwarf planets and some asteroids).  the Top 10 Stars in NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder mission, all known exo-planets out to 25 LY and selected other stars (mostly the bright ones) out to 25 light years.

The File is HERE.   A very good spread sheet with all the data used is also available and could be very helpful if anyone wanted to add more stars, or do something similar. Lots of calculations are done for you by putting in distance, and R.A (or degrees). Star calculations are different than planet ones for good scaling. Size of the map can be changed and all bodies except the few spaced recalculated on the fly 9I expanded the map from 3000 to 10000 easily with this feature) . If you need more info on it let me know.

There are some weird things on the map.

Alpha Centauri System
A and B are far enough apart to have some seperate planets. But placing them based on the star forumla puts them on top on another. They are listed as seperate stars but are done on the planetary scale (24 AU apart). To place them I created a dummy star, and put A 12 AU up to the left, B 12 AU down to the right. Proxima is placed by the star placement formulas, and may not be part of the Alpha Centauri system anyway.

Companion Stars and Satillites greater than 300 AU are arbitraily placed at 300AU from the primary.

Dwarf planets are done in orbital spots like planets but not tied to the Sun but to the debris field they are part of. Asteroids not yet offically Dwarf planets were done as Satellites.

There are 3 races, Terrans, Martians and Venusians, this for my next step a playable map.

Planet placement was done on a logorithmic scale. Plants < 1AU were expanded, <10 compressed, < 100 compressed even more and so on. Its in the spreadsheet on the reference page.

Having done this there are some things I found the mod needed. I know some have been discussed but arnt in the current version so I will just list them.

Yea I've loaded it up in game many times and had no problems with the planets being outside the star radius. A lot of them are, and a lot of the companion stars are too. Visited the entrire solar system. Dintd build on any of the outer worlds. I'll run a game today and do everything I can to the outer worlds and see if i can get it crash.

I dont have entrenchment. Maybe thats an entrenchement bug? Does anyone know?

I just updated the map images for (click on the links to see the maps):

CB Mars Wars

CB Birth of the Trade Order

CB Purple Saturn Day

with Doberman's new forge icons. They look much better now

I resized most (except a few Red Dwarfs) stars so that the radius is an equal distance to the center of the habitable zone. Made other binary systems like the Alpha Centauri System if both stars had good habitable zones.

This leaves a lot of planets outside the star radius and im playing without any problems. Built structures around most the Kuiper belt.

I have noticed while playing that all the capital ships are called something similar to "Flagship Akken String not found Battlecruiser".

Also on Neptune where it should say "Neptune - CBT .." It says string not found.

I really love the new icons in Galaxy Forge, make things much prettier, and easier to tell what is what.

Ok can you tell me the color code ? then i will change it.

sound like i miscalculated the strings number again. I will look into it.

I you mean the tga texture files. You can edit them with photoshop or gimp.

Search in the string files for IDS_PLANETTYPE_ or IDSGalaxyScenarioTypePlanet all planet types start with this prefix.

Houston, we have a problem.

I have all the entity, mesh and texture files correct, the planets show up but when i start the game, It just shows an empty grav. well with the astroids and sais string not found. (The string i know how to fix).

What happened wrong?

Im only working on the ocean right now. you hnow, one step at a time. And i found out what went wrong. Ya the mesh reference was wrong.

And how exactly do i edit the icons? I opened it in gimp but now what? Do i add a nother layer? or do i just paste it? If theres a guide somewhere on the net that would help a lot.

ok i can do it , but why did you change the string reference ids?

BTW thanks for the color code.

Ok first you should look for a basic gimp tutorial (mr. google is your friend ).

And this is how I do it with Photoshop (with Gimp it is very similiar):

Open the TGA file you like to change save it as PSD (this is a Photoshop format i think gimp has a similar format) and add your new stuff into new layers. Layers are your friend cause you can alter things later.

Ok this was a very very short explanation. but it will be best if we switch for a gimp Icons Howto to a new thread.

Since the the preselected races do not work correctly (in fact the setup i did in GF is not realized by the game) you can setup any race combination you like. Since i realized that the setup does not work, i made all starting and special templates for all 3 races.

The races are specified just for the story, i had in mind for each map. I hope we are able to add some story elements in the future when scriptable events are possible.

But if i have an idea for a story for an Advent or Vasari only map i will make one.

i checked it starratt and the download works fine!

Huzzaah! you did it fast!