Hey everybody. If you have every frequented the custom maps download section for Sins of a Solar Empire you might have come across a map I made entitled "Star Wars."  It was something I threw together in a hurry as soon as I got Galaxy Forge just to satisfy my desire to see planets named after those from the Star Wars universe.  On a whim I uploaded it to WC and as it turns out, a lot of people downloaded it.  This surprised me greatly, as the map itself is nothing special, so I thought to myself there could be only one reason why so many people would download my map.  That reason of course is the fact that it is titled "Star Wars."

This conclusion has lead me to believe that there are in fact, a great number of Star Wars fans that play Sins.  So, in order to satisfy both their and my desire for more Star Wars in our Sins, I have crafted a new map.  Needless to say, this new map is more deserving of being prefixed by the words "Star Wars."

The map is called "Star Wars Galaxy", dubbed such for the soul reason that it is a rough facsimile of said galaxy.  To be specific, I used the map from the MMO "Star Wars Galaxies" as the template for this map's design.  It is by no means a perfect copy and since I am "teh noob" with Galaxy Forge, it will be inverted in game play, making it a mirror image of the actual map.  However, as I am told by Einstein and his General Theory of Relativity, that since space has no default orientation and is only defined by the relative distance between all objects within it, this should not be a problem.

Anyway, here is the link to the map:

In order to play this map you will need the latest version of Uzii's "Sins Plus" mod, because my map makes ample use of every single one of his new planet types and subsequent bonuses.  I would like to give props to Uzii for making this stellar mod, as my map could not exist without it.  One of the biggest reason I didn't do this sooner was because it felt stupid making a Star Wars map with only a handful of planet types to choose from, when we all know how varied Star Wars planets are.  How could I, in good conscience, classify Dagobah as a terran planet, Mon Calamari as an ice planet or Dantooine as a desert planet?  No, these had to be a swamp planet, an oceanic planet and a savannah planet respectively.  No half-decent Star Wars fan could settle for anything less.  Thanks again Uzii for making a sweet mod for all of us to use.

Here are some brief notes about the map:

1. It is designed for 6 players to battle in FFA, 2v2, 3v3 or 2v2v2 format.

2. It contains 106 (I think) planets from the Star Wars universe, all reflective of what kind of planet they were in Star Wars.  One of the exceptions to this is Ord Mantell, which I cast as a Ship Graveyard in order to make use of the planet type.  I deemed this acceptable as Ord Mantell was a junkyard planet to begin with and having derelict ships there in this map seemed the only way to keep true to the lore.  For balance reasons, it can only be reached from the star, as it happens to be located near one of the home worlds.

3. In most cases I sacrificed balance for realism.  As such, some starting positions may be more viable than others, but for the most part I tried to manage the phase lanes so that all starting positions had a number of tactical possibilities to choose from.

4. I left out a number of planets even just from the Star Wars Galaxies' MMO map and as such there is a great deal of room for improvement.  I encourage any like-minded map authors to take my design and build upon it.  Include more planets from the extended universe, add more starting positions, make the orientation of the planets even more precise to how they are in the universe.  Do whatever you like and by all means use my map as a template if it suits your purposes.  If I receive enough feedback, I could be coaxed into making a bigger and better version of this map, but that's entirely up to you all.  Besides, I'm sure there is a better map maker out there than me that can do a project of this magnitude more justice.

In closing, I hope you enjoy the map and playing it with your friends, enemies and....OMG IT"S A TRAP!

Note: Since I am careless, I accidently forgot to set two of the starting planets as capitals in the original release of this map.  I have uploaded a fixed version and it should be annexed to the maps section soon. It should have fixed in parenthesis suffixing it. Sorry for the inconvenience.