Actually I altered that so the questions can go here too--was a bit much for some the other way.  As long as they are kept on target, short and to the point we are ok.

Hmm..that's something to ponder.  The idea of this thread is to act as an archive for modding help and I don't want people later getting a "file not found" at some web site that no longer retains the files.  Let me look around some--open to suggestions (and I have an idea maybe too).  I'm tempted to do it on my site but the thought of someone posting a 1 gig mod there and then fifty people downloading it the same day scares me.

I'll reply on this shortly.

ZombieRus is brilliant and a good guy--hope he gets the answer for you.

OFFICIAL:  Use pastebin please for script snippets, entity files and the like.  It had been so long since I needed it I had forgotten all about it.  Please check the OP for details.  Thanks ZombieRus5!  You will be spared in the great galactic purge.

NEWS NOTE:

This is very premature, but as I promised some rewards (other than karma), I thought I'd put out what was in my mind. I have a MakerBot which I am going to have to get time to assemble and teach myself how to run but I think one practical sort of reward would be ships printed from the game.  Obviously I won't be able to do this every day and for every respondent but we can have a democratic poll when the time comes.  Maybe if it's practical I can even make a Sins Chess (or checkers) set as a "grand prize" once a year.  Hopefully over this summer I'll have it ready.

Fingers crossed now that I don't blow up my MakerBot. 

Is there a way to force random maps to not put the 'Terran Homes' on the edges of their given system? But rather in the middle of the radius around the star, to more resemble realistic star systems?

EDIT: I know you can assign population to starbases through upgrades and influence a planet with the starbase, but can you mod them to replace planets as your primary method of territory control? Sort of along the lines of static motherships. And expanding on that, creating a true mothership to implement a nomadic style of play?

1. So I'm stuck to replaying maps I already designed. I can handle that, but maybe I can have a random rotation of them to keep the variety level elevated. Is that even possible?

2. I already know starbases can replace planets as population centers. I was asking more about totally replacing planets. I know they can be made to build frigates, so I would think they can also be made to build capitals. Resource collectors would all be neutral in this mod, so even with control of the planet you wouldn't necessarily have any resource gain. The true mothership is basically the Flagship concept meets the Starbase concept. A capital ship that is larger and more powerful, but is unique and triggers defeat conditions if lost.

2a. I already know how to avoid the research structure issues. Simply remove the need for the research trees to need structures, but increase the costs to compensate for the lack of needing to conquer planets.

2b. Can a capital ship be given an ability that will change it into a starbase and the starbase have its own ability to change back into the mothership? Losing it in either mode would result in a defeat condition.

1. Not necessarily. The random maps are not hard coded, open one up with notepad and see what I mean. Granted its not as flexible as I hoped, but you might be able to hard code the home planet positions as with a normal map than use the randomization parameters to handle the rest. Also you can set a spawn probability on phase lanes and planets, so you could also use that to increase variability if the other method proves too difficult.

2. Okay, totally replacing planets is impossible. For one you lose the game when you don't have at least 1 planet under your control, end of story. There is no way around this. Also I'm afraid there is no way to trigger when a game is lost, only when a player looses all of his planets or a player gets the required number of diplomacy points (if diplomatic victory is enabled) can do that. I'm unsure if starbases can be made to deploy capitals.

2a. Well that would work, but it would be tricky to balance.

2b. Not really. For one, capitalships cannot go directly to starbases, only frigates can do that (but as abilities can spawn frigates there is a way around that). Further starbases cannot really revert either, the best you could do is make the starbase spawn a frigate that has an ability that calls in a capital ship (using returning armada code), then have both frigate and starbase destroy themselves. This would be a bit crude however, and it would take a bit of time for the capital ship to phase jump to your destination. Also all capitalship levels and starbase upgrades would be lost. This is why its easier for the mothership to just spawn frigate intermediaries for this kind of thing which then turn into starbases rather than the using the capitalship itself.

I know its probably not exactly what you had in mind, but you could use the needing to have planets alive to your advantage. If you give the motherships the only colonizing ability in the game (and give planets low health), it would be quite easy to build a handful of siege frigates and size the win. You could also give the mothership the only planet bombing capacity, effectively preventing you from eliminating another player if you lose it (if you also got rid of Novalith's and other abilities that damage planets of course), though the AI won't recognize this and thus still resist even if you defeat its mother ship.

A new question from me.  I'm looking to mod mines extensively and provide each race a dedicated minelayer.  It looks as if I can have seven slots per minelayer ship unless the one normally used for combat action is not otherwise usable.

So is it actually 7 free slots here (for an otherwise unarmed minesweeper) or is it 6?

Thanks in advance.

Well considering how popular mines have been, I doubt anyone has ever had reason to use the default six slots, let alone try to get a seventh. You might be on the cutting edge of modding science Sinperium. That said, if mines could be used just as vessels for abilities... well that could be interesting.

Also Sobekeus, I realized I somewhat gave you the long way about starbases turning into capitals. You could give the starbase the ability that calls in the capital ships without spawning a frigate, but that doesn't solve any of the problems with that method other than it being slightly quicker.

Ah, nice. Thanks for the tip.

like a step by step vid or guide

That's why I asked.  I wasn't certain.  The pic I showed is the Vasari mine layer and I added the attack icon as I wasn't sure if it was usable for anything else.  The mine layer is a little different than other frigates that way. Including the attack slot, their are 7 capabilities showing but I can get by with five.  If you look at the bottom image in my pic above you're basically saying slots 6 & 7 aren't usable for other abilities (which is what I was asking). Thanks. That will work as I have five new mines each per empire type.

Read the original post here--this isn't the thread to ask how to run mods.  It's for people making mods.  Ask elsewhere please and as a suggestion, don't back-to-back double post when you do.  Good luck.

It doesn't really work that way. There is no weapon in the game that can ignore armor, phase missiles are a special case in that they can ignore shields, but you can't just change that to armor and expect the game to know how to do that.

The only thing that maybe able to ignore armor (I'm not entirely sure) is abilities. If so, you could set it up so that all beams technically do no damage but they have an ability that applies the damage buff on weapon fire (like incendiary shells). The only problem is that this takes up an ability slot, and the beam damage upgrades would then become useless.

Here's a question regarding the MeshNameInfo.

Since it's capable of changing the mesh an entity uses ingame (via StarbaseUpgradeLevel or Research), I'm wondering if it's capable of using a capital ship's level as a criteriatype (Intrinsic value). My first assumption is it won't (and will have to rely on research to pull off what I want, which is no biggie really), but you never know what someone else has discovered.

I'm pretty sure it tells the game which weapon range to use for its movement calculations. For example an index of 0 means to go by the first weapon (10k), so the ship will happily fire at that range without closing in to use its other weapons. An index of 1 means it will try to move so to 6k away so it can use its second weapon and 2 will force it to close in until all of its weapons are in range (for this example)