Changelog:

0.1-0.5 changes:

* Removed large empire penalty.
* Added maintenance cost of 3 credits per turn to colony capitals.
* Added 0.2 credits per colony per turn to the maintenance cost of colony capitals
* Removed maintenance cost of economy, manufacturing and research buildings.
* Increased free starbases to 24 (from 4)
* Increased star base sensor ranges by 40%
* Increased maximum habitable planets to 2000
* Increased base to 2000, too.
* Increased number of potential habitable planets in systemdefs.xml
* Removed starbase preclusions - if you want a starbase with 4 rings, have one
* All minor factions now major.
* Terraforming improvements now repeatable, but more limited in placement. Largely based on Sotof's Terraform More.
* All minor races are now major races.
* AI factions now more expansionist (to encourage them to build out more)
* Trade resources now stack, but are 1/5th as effective.
* All strategic resource yields reblaanced to 5.
* All existing component and building resource costs multiplied by 5.
* Resource building adjacencies buffed back to 1.01 levels (mostly 'cos I used a 1.01 file for this).
* Mining base bonuses multiplied by 5
* Starbase modules now all increase SB health by 10 when added.
* AI strategies changed to focus more on industrial output.
* Promethium made more common. Thanks to Deathwynd for discovering how to do this.
* Blueprints rebalanced to get rid of the insane amounts of life support the AI was adopting and add more engines. With thanks to TurielD, though I couldn't actually get his files.
* Rebalanced AI planet build choices. AI will specialize planets a lot more now; will also no longer attempt to produce 'growth' worlds.
* Rebalanced some of the AI's diplomatic and military decisions.
* Assault Fighters reduced to tiny.
* Carrier modules now much more expensive to build initially, cost 4x maintenance; some more massive.
* Changed the starting date of some of the AI strats, so it will go start->expand->personality->endgame, rather than start->personality->endgame.
* Removed the tech age limits on expansion strategies.
* Scaled POP to 100.
* Removed resource rebalance
* re-added the ideologiucal planetary projects, with punative effects - -1 growth for evil, -5 inf for pragmatic, -5 gross income (i.e., before modifiers) for Good.
* Patriotic now gives a flat +10 approval
* Research buildings now add a small amount of sensor range. Astronomers and that.
* Antimatter Powerplant buffed to give +50% productivity.
* Doubled ideology costs. You have millions of planets to colonize.
* Incorporated TurielD's fixes for medium missile boats, battleships and protoype varients.
* increased number of trade licenses gained from tech
* Altarian unique buildings buffed; terraforming improvement made repeatable.
* Thalan hives nerfed.
* Altarian tech tree buffed a bit, with emphasis on laser + shield buffs.
* Maintenance reductions from techs now apply to overall colony maintenance; effect divided by a factor of 5. With thanks to Lavo_2
* Reworked Approval. 100% approval now offers no bonuses. Less than 100% approval directly impacts on production, growth, resistance and influence at a 1-to-1 ratio.
* All growth bonuses from tech and improvements are now flat, aside from adjacency-granted ones.
* Tourism reworked a bit. Tourist buildings now add a small flat approval bonus to the whole empire, allowing you to 'outsource' approval to a few 'holiday destinations'. Tourism bonuses buffed; basse tourism reduced.
* Restaurant of Enternity now gives a very big (200%) tourism buff to just the planet it's on; now adds an empire-wide approval multiplier.
* Added Vidszhite's fix for transports, with thanks to Vidszhite
* Added some AI strategies for wartime - Greedy civs will tend to buy more ships; aggressive civs will actively use more and larger ships; science civs will tend to defend and try to out-tech you.
* Ancient races now get +10% research per colony per artifact they own. This should make the benefit a little less impressive. I may need to buff it.
* Ascension Crystals now give a global +10% productivity for each one owned, so they're not completely useless in non-crystal victory games.
* ArtocarpusViriles bonus reduced into line with other planet resources.
* AI will now send transports to attack any war enemy planet within 256 hexes of said transport.
* Planets in influence rebellion now suffer from -approval rather than -cash
* Added Strategic Repair modifier to hulls to give them 10% repair per turn - with thanks to Sansloi37 for coming up with the concept.
* Shipyards now give +500% repair rate to ships on the same hex
* Starbases now give +200% repair rate to ships on the same hex.
* Nerfed Tactical Repair a fair bit.
* Tiny ships now logistically cheaper; large and huge hulls now logistically more expensive.
* T-1 Ideology buildings produce slightly more ideology points.
* T3 Evil and Good buildings now include ideology point per turn multipliers rather than flat bonuses. This means they buff the T1s.
* Arbitration center reworked to be much less gash. Is now colony-unique rather than player-unique; now gives few ideology poitns per turn, now adds +100% approval to the planet it's built on (instead of tourism).
* Military ring for starbases now adds tactical repair to the starbase and increases all of it's military stats by 25%, making it much tougher against small raids.
* Luxury trade routes now twice as powerful.
* Entrepreneurs now get +25% approval from their trade routes.
* Free Trade treaties now give +2 trade licenses.
* Most treaties now never expire by default
* Allowed paid-for treaties to be broken after 30 turns
* Exporters trait now gives +50% trade licenses.
* Indispensible doubled.
* Appreciative now gives a flat +10 approval to ALL planets, not 5 for the first 5.
* Loyal now increases resistance by 50%
* Swapped Prominence 3 (take all planets in influence) and Prominence 5 (universal +25% influence).
* Changed Prominence 4 from giving +50% influence on starbases to a flat +1
* Skilled now gives +50% research to all planets (about 2 research centers).
* Breakthrough now makes all research buildings 25% cheaper.
* Quantum Leap now gives +100% research globally rather than a flat 5 research.
* Diplo AI now a little sharper on trade.
* AI now more aware of danger around potential moves

0.7 changelog

* removed Durantium from ship hulls
* Quadrupled ship maintenance costs.
* Removed population growth from techs which give pop growth buildings.
* Sensors given diminishing returns; going over 10 sensors now makes visibility worse.
* Life Support now gets better mass-to-range ratios at higher tech levels; cost more maintenance
* All engines given +1 move.
* Big ships now need more engines to get the same speed (added -10% move speed for small, -20% for medium, -30% for large and -40% for huge).
* Engines no longer get bigger with tech, just faster.
* All ship hit points reduced by 40%.
* All defense values raised 50%.
* AI now uses strat resource-based buildings as hubs rather than standard manufacturing buildings (to prevent it frm spending 17 turns building a Durantium refinery the moment it settles).
* Blueprint laser ships now get a second laser before they get more shields
* Blueprints prioritize engines a bit more.
* Thulium archive bonus halved
* Promethium park cash bonus halved; 25% approval bonus added.
* Fixed the complete mess that is ShipClasDefs.xml, so that the AI actually upgrades some of it's build choices.
* AI war target value reduced from 1000 to 256 (to match the transport distance).
* AI's diplomatic trade values tweaked.
* 'Slowdown' starbase modules mssively buffed to 100% and 200% increased move cost per tile for the enemy.
* Relics nerfed to prodeuce only 1/5th the bonus.
* AI should no longer panick-surrender after losing a single planet.
* Switch the production bonuses for Gifted and Genius.
* Added Logistics Cap bonus for Godlikes.
* Tweaked Weapon Augs.
* Black holes more common
* Higher chance of more antimatter around black holes.
* Weapons made more distinctive. Kinetics are now medium range, with a very high refire rate but poor accuracy, missiles a very long range, decent accuracy and high cooldown, and lasers always hit, have a short range and medium c/d.
* More AI diplo tweaks.
* Asteroids impact on speed reduced
* Nebula effects diversified a bit more
* Civ capital now gives +5 cash and +5 approval rather than +2 approval.
* Embassies and their follow-ups have become one-per-faction.
* AI starts most planets by building a factory, a hospital and an approval building; now generally makes a serious effrot to keep approval at a decent level.
* AI now much more likely to buy cash-generating improvements after the initial 30 turns or so.

0.8

* AI now builds Influence starbases.
* AI now really, really likes ascension crystals.
* AI less enthusiastic about producing constructors in the early game
* Fixed a bug which prevented Scientific AIs from building constructors for 80-odd turns.
* Cultural AI now like defenders a lot more in the early game.
* Mid-game strategy now stretches all the way to turn 300.
* Added some extra personality-specific mid-game strategy scripts.
* Fixed a bug in AggressiveMidStrat1 that meant either no-one used it or everyone did (not sure which).
* Nerfed Antimatter powerplant production point bonus a bit (50% was too high for an early-game colony-unique).
* Improved Drengin and Altarian AI tech choices.
* Yor pop cap techs raise in line with all the other techs
* Yor AI given slightly better choices in tech
* All AIs now appreciate how cool the governance techs are.
* Reconciled some new lines of xml added in 1.11
* AI much more likely to try and specialize worlds now.
* Numerous AI tweaks to make the AI expand in a wave pattern, with lulls so it can build up infrastructure.
* Fixed a serious bug that made very high but less-than-100% approval cause huge growth and influence penalties.
* Production points, unlocked techs and military power score weights increased. Treasury weight much decreased to make it less likely to screw up the score graphs.
* Cash and Research planetary projects now give a flat +0.1 per 1 manufacturing spent, so they're still not as good as actually devoting the population to it but are much less awful.
* Culture projects now give +0.01 flat culture per point of manufacturing spent.
* Midgame AI will now build transports even when not at war.
* Picking points in multiple ideology trees now gets very expensive very quickly.
* Picking points in the same ideology tree now gets expensive more slowly.
* Yor now recieve both pop cap and approval from their 'farm' buildings.
* Culture buildings buffed to 25%/50%/100% rather than 25%/33%/50%.
* Culture buildings now add small ideology point-per-turn multiplier effect.
* AI given more leeway for deficit spending and profit when trying to break even
* Defenses nerfed a lot; resistance buffed a lot.
* Drengin with soldiering bonus techs are now genuinely terrifying.
* Yor see the need to research the matrix line of techs.
* Homeworld ideology traits now only effect the homeworld.
* Durantium refinery now gives a bonus to maxmanufacturing, rather than production points.
* Yor popcap techs now also reduce colony maintenance (stacking upto 60%), to make up for the lack of market centers. In total, this permits the Yor to achieve an impressive -80% reduction in colony maintenance from technologies.
* Living Ships now only gives a 50% decrease in maintenance costs (even living stuff has to eat - besides, you could actually use this combined with other reductions to make each ship give you money).
* Yor Economic Efficiency now actually does something (adds +20% gross income universally).
* Iridium Free Market is now as powerful as a shopping center; now upgrades from market centers.

0.9

* Hives now give +50% food and +50% approval.
* Mother Hive is now empire-unique; gives +100% food and +100% approval to the planet it's on.
* All manufacturing, wealth and research hub buildings now give flat bonuses rather than modifiers.
* Removed preclusions from tourism buildings so they can be repeat-built
* Massively increased impact of tourism buildings.
* Trade routes gain value faster, cap out higher.
* Fixed Ranger and BattleshipD blueprints.
* Treasury no longer gives power rating.
* Fixed shipyard and Starbase repair.
* Re-added the small empire-wide Approval bonus to tourism buildings (no idea where they ended up). Stacking tourism buildings can permit you to create 'holiday planets' that improve approval on other planets, but do not replace approval buildings completely.
* Krynn temple line are now approval buildings rather than influence; now reduce maintenance; now colony-unique.
* Krynn consulate no longer colony-unique.
* Fixed Yor power martix line giving global approval bonuses.
* Terraforming improvements made much cheaper.
* Nerfed upper-tier factory and research bonuses a lot (since by the time they come into play most people are already doing 1-turn-for-everything). Progression now goes 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.
* Reduced prices to match.
* Altarian unique buildings converted to flat bonuses.
* Black Market now reduces colony maintenance by 25%.
* Colonial Capital now produces manufacturing rather than production.
* Drengin can now build Market Centers again
* Removed base maintenance. This makes it easier to build up 10-15 planets, but the colonial capital change makes it harder to expand further.

1.0

* Fixed the Awe 3 cultural trait, which was taking 25% health off of the owner's ships rather than the enemy.
* Colony Capitals switched to Social Manufacturing (from generic Manufacturing).
* Ascenscion crystal bonus reduced to 2%
* Resource building manufacturing costs reduced to cost 50 (except for the antimatter powerplant)
* Greed trait 1 now gives flat 0.5 income to every colony (instead of a 10% multiplier, which is basically nothing)
* Buffed Negotiator 4 (now causes a 3-point penalty).
* Nerfed Negotiator 1 (now 20 turns of peace rather than 50)
* Enlightenment 5 now gives 25% research boost (rather than 100%) in line with the manufacturing boost from evil.
* Enlightenment 2 now gives the homeworld a flat 10 research, in line with the manufacturing bonus from evil.
* Awe 2 now gives 100% influence bonus to the empire capital rather than a bonus to minor race trades (since minor races no longer exist).
* Building Level bonuses severely nerfed (now most offer just 1% increase).
* Weapon Specialization 1 now adds range to beams, cooldown to missiles and accuracy to kinetics (since adding accuracy to beams is largely useless).
* Molecular fab and industrial replicator now give production point bonuses.
* Approval Race Trait now brought into scale with other approval mechanisms
* Tourism Race Trait now brought into scale with other tourism mechanisms
* Speed-based Race traits now give a % bonus rather than a flat bonus
* Colonizer now gives +100% social production rather than a free improvement.
* Prototype weapons now unlock on the relevant tree root (so elerium prototype on Beam Weapons etc) rather than on weapon systems
* 'regular' resource-using weapons now unlock on the same tech as normal weapons.
* Added Drivers and Rockets as bottom-level (weapon systems tech) kinetic and missile weapon options.
* Added 4 brand-new, higher-level beam weapons that use Elerium.
* And 3 Advanced Kinetics, and 3 Advanced Missiles.
* Weapons rebalanced pretty much completely:
*All weapon types now have a (DPS*range)/Mass ratio of 0.1 per tier (so every 10 points of mass you spend is roughly 1DPS, adjusted to compensate for range).
*Weapon mass now fixed despite tier, so most ships will do a straight swap.
*Resource-using weapons now do 50% more damage than the same-tier normal weapon (as opposed to like 500% more)
*Most weapon masses and damage outputs sizeably reduced (mostly to allow me to do more cool stuff with blueprints)
*Weapon costs now scale linearly too.
*Defenses are now equivilent to several vollies from the equivalent-tier weapon
*Defenses generally much smaller, much less potent
*Defenses types now fixed mass regardless of tier.
* AI now likely to ask for peace at 80% power ratio (up from 70%).
* Most laser ships now have thrusters.
* Tweaked score values
* Fixed YET ANOTHER ranger bug - they didn't have hull sizes defined in ShipClassDefs.xml. They are now genuinely buildable.
* Adjusted AI's threat assessment.
* Targetting Specialization now gives 10% rather than flat 0.1 bonuses.

Yeah, I had it set to 5 at one point but have removed it while I balance the maintenance fees.

I'm tempted to strip a few of the components out to use individually - the mining economy and the maintenance change can both made made to work without the other changes fairly easily. This is just the current setup for how I'm playing the game tbh. Not sure how well it'll work on non-insane maps as a whole (the mining thing in particular might be too constricting - maintenance appears to scale rather nicely, as predicted) but feel free to loot whatever you like from the files.

You're using the 1.03 opt-in (unless SD put 1.03 live this morning). Stardock have added a line at the bottom of that file, so any mod which changes global global defs won't work on both 1.02 and 1.03.

You can either opt-out and revert to 1.02 and play now, or you can wait til I get home tonight and I'll put up a 1.03 compatibility patch.

I've got some pretty cool ideas lined up to play with on top of this regarding the resource economy, tbh; want to test out what the game will let me do and what the AI can handle with it, but I think I can a) create a deep manufacturing economy (so you mine Duranthium, process it at a refinery into another resource, and then can use that resource in another process to create something else) and using a similar system, turn 'food' into a strategic resource so you have to build agricultural worlds.

Might do that as a separate mod though, and not sure if the AI will hack it too well - if it's even possible in the xml alone.

This sounds like a valid mod idea just want to point out one thing that seems to me had been mentioned b the DEVs in some places:

The idea behind the extra large maps is to accommodate around a 100 AI players. This would give the universe a strong sense of immersion and empires could form and perish without the player even noticing. Sadly I could not test such a scenario yet as one would have to create all the custom races with custom colors of which there are not too many as of yet - waiting for mods to produce the custom races but then the game will be on

The scenario of the mod derivatives from the above and some of the things mentioned as broken might not actually be (like the expansion until turn 50) in this scenario. I suppose the DEVs will focus on the later giving this mod the opportunity to fill in the gap for players who wish to play with few races on insane maps

Currently experimenting with a couple more changes:

* hulls bigger than tiny now require increasing quantities of Duranthium to build (1 for small, 5 for huge. Cargo ships not included)

* Tweaked AI to like expanding more aggressively in the early game

* Made the AI like starbases a bit more, too

* AI made more likely to aim to acquire cash.

The AI seems to be handling it fairly well tbh - I'd feared that the duranthium costs would prove too difficult for it to get it's head round, but it seems to be doing OK at acquiring and using resources. I'll keep testing the limits of where I can take the economy for the moment; adding in new resources seems fairly difficult (any new good needs to be 'enumerated', which appears to involve pissing about in the schema) but if others can be added in there's some pretty cool ideas that can be followed through.

Absolute maximum as in the most the game can handle before crashing horribly appears to be somewhere around 3000. You can set the maximum number per map size in mapsisedefs.xml; actually setting how many is likely to appear involves some tweaking of the system definitions and the mapsetup defs too. I'll see if I can piece together an equation, but it's complex due to the interventions from maxhabitableplanets in mapsizedefs and the number of planets allowed to appear from habitable zones in the system defs.

Updated to V0.3. 

Huge amount of AI work in this one, with a few minor changes to balance. I've also updated the ship blueprints; I wanted to use TurielD's for this purpose (as he's done a lot more work on it that I have), but couldn't find the files (the dropbox link said no). The AI is generally a lot more competitive, particularly diplomatic races, and seems to have no real trouble with needing resource for ships.

I also made carriers take up a lot more mass (and cost a lot more maintenance), added more promethium, and reduced Assault Fighters to Tiny hulls.

For the next version I'm intending on concentrating on yet more AI work.

Thanks! I'm using as my base mod to load a bunch of races into. The only mod I've found that doesn't play nice is federation.

Bug: It says in the Iridium tech tree that Intensive Farm produces +30 food.  

Speed of AI build colony and ship are insane ... game much harder but it's still insane how many ship, planet and still gross inc to AI

Iridian (or what this nation name) Colonize planet insane fast... turn 42 Iridium corporation got 23 colonies and 91 ship - 23 colony ship and rest military ship -, durantium -62, 1300 gross (every turn more). Rest nation are not so hard but still they got alot of ship. Second nation Drengien got 20 colonies and 23 ship (second military power).

Game is hard but little unbalance... so many colonies, ship and still gross inc. I got 29 colonies 6 ship and -209 gross inc. but game is hard now like hell.

Can you also mod it so that it's easier to get ideology points post expansion? Less expansion = less ideology.