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Oh I see what you mean. I really should have explained this. Those are the new png image files. Each race that uses them has white set as the secondary colour. It doesn't always load them the same, but I've had lots of games where it loads them perfectly. Obviously, if you're using one of these coloured flags, you'll want to use white as the secondary.

I'll compile a screenshot with all the different race flags so everyone knows what colours are best to use. Unfortunately part of the nature of Distant Worlds is to give the player the choice of colours (which is nice) but it means that it mucks up the rest of the race's colours.

The oak leaf flag is the Maquis and doesn't actually get used by any race, you can just ignore it. Pirates have their own flags anyway. I put this in to see if I could force the pirates to use it somehow.

Gotta download this right away! muhahahaha!

@Igard

Ah ha! You are quite right they look much better with white as a secondary color.
The Gold and other tertiary colors will not even display for me with any other secondary color than White.

re: Tech
How well does your NPC AI adapt to the open techs? Does it know to research them and use them? If not, the player will easily hold a vast tech superiority and that makes the mod feel very 'weenie mode'.

Other than that, just a personal issue, I have yet to find any real problems. The alert messages are a bit hard to read at 1920x1080, but then all the text always is mod or no.

Cheers Cyclops

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer

@Igard

Ah ha! You are quite right they look much better with white as a secondary color.
The Gold and other tertiary colors will not even display for me with any other secondary color than White.

I really should have explained to use the white in the first place.

re: Tech
How well does your NPC AI adapt to the open techs? Does it know to research them and use them? If not, the player will easily hold a vast tech superiority and that makes the mod feel very 'weenie mode'.

The AI appears to sometimes use the special techs. It seems OK to me, but I'd like to hear your experiences. I'll certainly change it if necessary. Don't think for a second that I'm the authority on the matter. I need you guys to test this stuff and report back.

Other than that, just a personal issue, I have yet to find any real problems. The alert messages are a bit hard to read at 1920x1080, but then all the text always is mod or no.

I just noticed yesterday that the tech alert messages have been changed to include a picture of the component, thus crushing the image of the PADD. It's quite hard to read those.

ORIGINAL: CyclopsSlayer

@Igard

re: Tech
How well does your NPC AI adapt to the open techs? Does it know to research them and use them? If not, the player will easily hold a vast tech superiority and that makes the mod feel very 'weenie mode'.

The AI appears to sometimes use the special techs. It seems OK to me, but I'd like to hear your experiences. I'll certainly change it if necessary. Don't think for a second that I'm the authority on the matter. I need you guys to test this stuff and report back.

Not had a lot of time to play a deep game yet. Couple of things I noticed, might just be bad luck or something;
-Pre-warp starts seem even more cash strapped than typically. My usual income tricks seemed useless. Also Pre-warp in this mod seems insane as the Pirates seem to have Really big ships early.

-Played a small universe game as starndard Romulan. Everyone went to war so quickly it was hard to get a feel. Restarted about year 15.

-Restarted as Federation and played about 25 years in so far. The Breen two empires of which are near me, seem to absolutely HATE the Feddies. Had a Free Trade with one and BAM they declared War, followed almost immediately by the other Breen empire. The other Empires DO seem to be researching the 'Racial' techs, but so far no obvious usages of them. Been to busy with wars and pirates to capture enemy designs and see what they are using.
So far seen them R&D Shadowghost, Raptor, and the Ultra Efficient engine designs. None have done, so far, the Shakturi burst, Fast recharge Shields, Robotic repair, High volume thrust, and advanced maneuver techs.

I know pirates can get strong if ignored long enough, but they were running fleets of 6-12 Cruisers before I had my third colony landed. Just about every world I have conquered or colonized has had to fight a Hidden Pirate base at least once.

Overall, so far, a very good total conversion.

Future concerns;
I will try and note the dialogs a bit closer, but it seem that ruins frequently are using the same names even more noticeably than in vanilla Shadows. Plenty of characters so far it seems.
I abandoned the Romulan game due to being overwhelmed with Silvermists. I found 4 and others have released a couple as well. Two of my key core worlds were wiped clean by them, /sigh...

Thanks for the info Cyclops.

I am leaning towards reducing the ship sizes now. They were implemented during Legends before pre-warp was introduced and before pirates were buffed significantly. In the mean-time, there's no shame in turning the quantity and strength of pirates down a notch or 2. I haven't focused at all on pirates so I've been playing on few and normal and they're a pushover.

I abandoned the Romulan game due to being overwhelmed with Silvermists.

Not playing with the total conversion installed? That would make me sad. Or did you mean Crystalline Entities? [:)]

Is this graphic I made any use to people? I threw it together but I'm not sure if it was a waste of time.

Note: I've set the Son'a to use the primary colour of the Mechanoids. However, the game doesn't allow you to choose this for your race (only AI races will use it). Therefore if you're playing Son'a the closest match is sand, the same as the Gorn. This can produce a knock on effect where other empires will change colour to avoid clashing.

love the flags Ingard great work.

ORIGINAL: Igard

Thanks for the info Cyclops.

I am leaning towards reducing the ship sizes now. They were implemented during Legends before pre-warp was introduced and before pirates were buffed significantly. In the mean-time, there's no shame in turning the quantity and strength of pirates down a notch or 2. I haven't focused at all on pirates so I've been playing on few and normal and they're a pushover.

I abandoned the Romulan game due to being overwhelmed with Silvermists.

Not playing with the total conversion installed? That would make me sad. Or did you mean Crystalline Entities? [:)]

Game uses the crystalline Entity graphic, but when released it refers to them as Silvermists. Probably another text file to convert, or that I failed to swap properly.

Well I'm glad to hear you're using the total conversion.[:)]

It's the gametext.txt file. Place it in your DW directory remembering to backup the original.

ORIGINAL: jsolo15

love the flags Ingard great work.

Thanks jsolo, but the question is, is that graphic of use to any of you? Would you use it to set up your game with the correct colour schemes?[:)]

ORIGINAL: Igard

Well I'm glad to hear you're using the total conversion.[:)]

It's the gametext.txt file. Place it in your DW directory remembering to backup the original.

Ah yep! That was the one. Copied over the folder contents and forgot the root file there.
Too bad there isn't an installer that one-button adds/removes the total conversion type mods. [:)]

I would , I love them

ORIGINAL: Igard

ORIGINAL: jsolo15

love the flags Ingard great work.

Thanks jsolo, but the question is, is that graphic of use to any of you? Would you use it to set up your game with the correct colour schemes?[:)]

OK carried the Federation game out to the ultimate conclusion. No real bugs noticed. DW seems NOT designed to handle multiple hundreds of Fighters and Torpedoes on screen all at once, never crashed but some of the battles played in stop motion.
Even as the Federation, the jealousy effect from size made almost all my allies eventually declare war. So... I HAD to do what was best for them and absorb them into my fraternity of planets. How Altruistic of me... [:D][8|]

Final ships were impressive to say the least. Glad I didn't need too many of them. [:)]

Carrier (3825sz) 40 Adv Fighter bays (Hvy Assault and Superiority), 15,000 shields, Gravity Well, Shadowghost, S2F7 repair, 36K FTL speed with a 36sector range, Starburner & Swift Vector for 25 cruise and 15 degree turn.

Capital (2550sz) 40 Shakturi Firestorms & 20 Plasma Thunderbolts (3480 Firepower each), 5 Adv Fight Bays, 15,000 shields, Gravity Well, Shadowghost, S2F7 repair, 36K FTL speed with a 36sector range, Starburner & Swift Vector for 25 cruise and 15 degree turn.

@jsolo15, Great! I don't blame people if they want to simply install the mod and start a quick game, but it's a better mod if you take the time to set it up. That's why I've added a 'Helpful tips for setting up your game' section on the first page of this thread.

@Cyclops, thanks for the report! Sounds like a good game, though I'm sorry to hear about the frame rate. I'm glad you stuck it out to the end. [:)]

Hello Igard! I've been really enjoying the Shadows version of your Mod (thanks for all your hard work!), but I've encountered a late-game CTD that repeats when I re-load my last auto-save. Here's the error message:

System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at DistantWorlds.Types.BuiltObject.CompleteTeardown(Galaxy galaxy, Boolean removeFromEmpire)
at DistantWorlds.Types.Galaxy.EliminatePirateFaction(Empire pirateFaction, Empire conqueror)
at DistantWorlds.Types.Empire.TakeOwnershipOfColony(Habitat colony, Empire newEmpire, Boolean destroyBases, Boolean destroyTroops)
at DistantWorlds.Types.Habitat.ResolveInvasionBattles(TimeSpan timePassed, Galaxy galaxy)
at DistantWorlds.Types.Habitat.DoTasks(DateTime time)
at DistantWorlds.Main.S6aQusJvLu(DateTime , Int64 , BuiltObjectList , Boolean )
at DistantWorlds.Main.ProgramLoop()

Thanks Elrohir.

I'm not sure what could cause that. Others might have a better idea than me. If you're using the total conversion (replacing sounds and images in the main game's folder), I'd suggest you restore your original files and try reloading your last autosave.

I tried restoring those files, but sadly it didn't help. The game keeps using the images and sounds I started with, even with the original folders back in place, and the crash happened again. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

@Elrohir525

First of all, I don't think this isuue is related to Igards mod.

Does this error happen when you load the game or after the game is loaded? I mean does the game load and then crash or does it crash while loading? I suspect it crashes *after* loading, maybe in the first game loop, but hey... because of this entry in the call stack:
> DistantWorlds.Main.ProgramLoop()

From the callstack it seems that there was a ground invasion on some planet,
> DistantWorlds.Types.Habitat.ResolveInvasionBattles(TimeSpan timePassed, Galaxy galaxy)
the invader won
> DistantWorlds.Types.Empire.TakeOwnershipOfColony(Habitat colony, Empire newEmpire, Boolean destroyBases, Boolean destroyTroops)
and a pirate base got removed in the process. This seems to habe been the last installation of this pirate factions and it gets destroyed.
> DistantWorlds.Types.Galaxy.EliminatePirateFaction(Empire pirateFaction, Empire conqueror)
Within the "EliminatePirateFaction" method some object was removed
> DistantWorlds.Types.BuiltObject.CompleteTeardown(Galaxy galaxy, Boolean removeFromEmpire)
which one, I don't know. Maybe the base that just got destroyed?

So this:
> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
means the game tried to remove an object that either wasn't there anymore (less likely, there would should a different call stack, but I am not familiar with this programming language) or the object (more likely) has a reference that doesn't exist anymore - but which one, I can only guess.

It could be a bug, that always happens when the destroyed planetary pirate base triggers the destruction of a pirate faction or maybe an inconsistency that occurred because the game was saved at a very bad time. (maybe the base was already removed, but the invasion was not resolved? I don't know.)

I heared there was a possibility to immediatly pause the game, but I don't know how to activate it, maybe try "Options" in the game menu. If it works, look for the planet that is invaded and try using the game editor to remove the pirate base there (it will get destroyed anyways) Or try to remove that pirate faction with the editor. If it doesn't resolve the issue, try deleting the entire colony per editor (before it gets conquered) It is a very long shot into the dark, but it might work.

Regards, Sirian

@Sirian

The crash happens several minutes into my last save. I'll have a look and see if there are any ground battles going on involving pirate bases. Thanks for the suggestions!