Yeah, the game defines a galaxy/solar system around each star, and you can only have 1 star per system. You cannot simply change the entity type, and as I said the source code is not available so you cannot change how any modifiers work, you can only change their values.

Other mods have taken two approaches to do what you are trying to do. One is to simply change all the maps in galaxy forge to have all planets connect to each other, and to tell your users to hide the phase lane lines in the options. The only real downside to this is that this will not work in random maps. The other way involves making a custom ability on scouts (or special ships, but scouts usually work best) that create a phase node every time the scout arrives at a planet. Since both the player and AI tend to first encounter a system with scouts, this lets the player jump to any discovered planet from any other planet.

Galaxy files are actually simple text files; maps were originally made in notepad prior to the release of galaxy forge. I probably wouldn't use a batch file but if you're good with programming some scripts you could indeed automate the process. I do something similar with a Python script that automatically changes the planet bonus/artifact density of every map in the directory, though what you want to do is significantly more complicated.

If you are willing to kill phase nodes as a unique research item, then yes there is a way to do so that works for any map, random or premade; I've done it.

I might be really late on this, but I just noticed something really cool. Sins' screenshots (i.e. using the ingame tool) have alpha channels. This might seem random, but it's notable for the fact that blank space is all white, but the ships are full form black. Which, in short, means they could theoretically be used to make detailed icons with little effort.

Releases are just a bonus to making a mod.

That's the way the things were in Starcraft. With the kind of effort you put into total conversions like I did, you had to be doing it for yourself. I really can't even comprehend the mindset behind people who do it just for the publicity (which was the excuse many mappers gave me for making maps).

That's also the reason why I only build original projects and not based on someone else's world.

Look at this thread.

Alright, here's an odd one. I've got a mesh that despite triple checking it over in XSI, gets its mesh points reversed in ConvertXSI. It may have something to do with the fact that some of these points are at odd angles. Anyways, I don't suppose anyone can tell me how to flip the orientation of mesh points in the .mesh file manually? I've messed with the orientation before but just the basic forward/backwards/left/right, but I don't know how to handle directions in between those.

This is due to xform data in 3ds max (no idea what the equivalent is in XSI). It happened to me several times in Salvation when I mirrored instances of hardpoints and then changed them. Even though their axis in XSI and max was correct, ingame it was flipped. To fix this, I had to reset the xforms of those points and re-orient them. It's really weird.

Check your root point. If it was rotated in any way it messes up all the points contained in it when you export to xsi.

Have you checked if the ability/buffs have effects that reference ability point(s), and if so, that the Advent's factory has said ability mesh point(s)?

Odds are you messed up in the conversion; I suggest rebuilding the ability from scratch. Any Trinity ability should work in Rebellion with the appropriate additional lines.

I have noticed that sins can have very severe issues with reloading old data or even data out of the wrong directories. When updating a particle effect, I was noticing that it wasn't updating ingame. The non-Dev version of the game was loading only the old textures from the Dev version of the mod, and nothing else; I confirmed this through Process Monitor.

To resolve that particular issue I just deleted that dev folder's contents because I never put it there to begin with.