handy tip for checking the character file

[Antarian]

I get into heavy modding of characters, I have trolled the internet for photos of all my major Star Trek races and have, for example, a FULL set of Gorn, with 4 or 5 leaders, 3 or so ambassadors, 20 governors, 25 admirals, 30+ generals (Gorn LOVE their generals...) ect, and I find errors in this file, which is easy to do, will crash out the game.

I recently gave up on trying to try to spot the problems line by line, and just IMPORT the file into Excel, using commas as the delimeter. This will immediately show you your columns that don't line up, and where you have made a text editing mistake. Probably saved me 3+ hours of checking.

I should note that if your going to do this, you need to make a test version of your suspect file, and strip out all the non-data lines in it, and space lines. Just load the actual data lines. Then fix the original file when you spot the differences. Works like a charm!

[FireLion1983]

Are you using Notepad++?

[Shark7]

A tip for you Antarian: You will need more leaders and spies than the others. Depending on government type, you may have dozens of leader changes over the course of a game.

[Fenrisfil]

The need for leaders depends entirely on the government type. If running with a Military Dictatorship for example you will only need to have a good supply of Admirals and Generals as the military coup will always lead to a general or admiral taking over as leader. Additional Leaders will only be used if either you have more than one empire of that species or the Leader is killed (by bombing, invasion or assassination). When doing a franchise character set it is well worth taking into account where your future leaders will come from (though as races can change governments it is technically always possible for Governors, Generals, Admirals and Leaders to become leaders and it gets more complex when you have a technocracy race (scientist leaders) or think about pirates (ship captains leaders)).

Gorns fortunately don't have any characters that people would know enough to think strange they just took over the empire.

Personally I made Gorns a Monarchy but I could see them as a Military Dictatorship or Despotism too. With 55+ potential leaders in the General/Admiral pool Antarians Gorns should probably be Military Dictatorship.

Hmm, no Ship Captains though? If you have that many characters it is well worth shifting some admirals over to ship captains as everyone seems to spawn an endless number of those.

[Antarian]

I've played over 20 games now and I've only used up a handful of leaders. As above mentions, the military dictatorship always draws from the ranks of the existing admirals and generals, and unless your leader is particularly inept, in a democracy they will keep them. It also depends on the settings for how often a leader is generated in the race file.

Currently using this fine leader for the Federation

[Shark7]

I tend to play as republic, and I can go through 3-4 leaders in the first hour of the game.