'off'? Most are not supposed to have anything there. Why waste a texture on black?

That is THE skybox. One and only texture. (There are like 50 'effects' skyboxes with no texture but have unique light settings for the stars.) It's a massive texture to. 20MB 4Kx8K.

There are 50 Skyboxs that don't have a texture. (well they do just a small transparent one that's shared to save space. I refuse to make sky textures like IC did.) But each of them have lighting effects that match the class/color of the system's star. The background stars have had their mesh replaced and retextured as a galaxy.

Thus O-Class stars will have VERY blue lighting, B-Class will have blueish lighting, A-Class will have White lighting, G-classes will have yellow-white light like our sun, (which is a G-class.) K-Classes will have Orangish lighting, M-Class will have Orange-Red lighting, and L-Class (aka: Brown Dwarf.) will have Red lighting.

There are different degrees of color which give me 50 lighting properties.

LOL I'm just an insane coder.

I'm not sure exactly what you are saying here, but I agree that some of the Day/Night lines on your planets look weird. The transition is to sharp compared to the Vanilla ones.

That's really the only criticism I have as well.

I made them that way.... An entire new set of night textures would have to be created just for the lower planets that are barely inhabited. Which would be black with a few specks of yellow. So I leave them black. Saves space and looks good.

As for the day/night dividers. This makes it more realistic. The way vallina had it planets could bend light around them to light the other side where light had no way of reaching it on a straight line. Look at any actual planet photo and you will see a very sharp contrast between day and night.

As for skyboxes, again, I'm not going to waste space on unrealistic clouds and stars for in system views. Any star that is in a nebula or has massive stars nearby (0-15LYRs) will be fried and uninhabitable. Stars as a natural progression of their evolution blast away any left over clouds. As time goes on stars migrate out of the clusters where they were created. Thus that is why we are not part of a star cluster.

But there is still a recognizable "twilight zone", some of which your planets have, while others just seem to go from being completely lite up to completely dark.

I'll wait to judge on the other details, though just keep in mind the rest of Sins doesn't stick to such astronomical realism. It might be odd to see a completely black night side planet with still lit up planetary structures and ships right behind it.

Well I'm trying to push the engine to it's limits regarding stars and planets. Of course the light doesn't even come from the star so there is no reason to expect it to be perfect. It may be odd but it's what we got to work with.

And it's also due to the fact I am still messing with the rendering files somewhat and the differences in the pics are different rendering tries.

Post up a new demo soon so we can look under the hood.  Great work sir.

Nearly done.

Oh and Goa should be happy I fixed the rendering files so there is a nice smooth transition from day to night though it does happen quickly.

Perfect Nova!

Eh. I think I made the Icons a tad too big. But they are nice and shiny. You decide

It all depends on your level of zoom. Looks fine to me bud.

Have you thought about making a Toxic Garden world/ Toxic Paradise World? I.E. a beautiful planet but you can't eat anything there because it will kill you.

It's the way to Eden man.

That's what the Low class planets are for. They are planets, that for whatever reason (location, newly discovered, deadly, poisonous, war, whatever you can think of.) despite the fact that they are habitable class planets lack a substantial population. These planets are usually characterized by the lack of a night side. Ice and Volcanic are the only misleading ones as most of their population centers are underground and thus don't emit any light.

And Low Class planets suck for the most part. (I've been getting complaints on them from the SOGE forum. Which means they are doing their job.) They have little population, log slots, tac slots, and health. They even suck up money a bit. Most you can't get rid of it, but colonization lvls 1 and 2 you can get rid of it for the most part through upgrading the pop. (like ONE time and that's it) but 3 and 5... Well... they will be leaches on your income (somewhat) BUT all low planets have 2 more roids than their more civilized counterparts. Colonization lvl 4s don't get income hits because they are SUBSTANTIALLY more populous. Though I may hit the one or two little ones in there with a corresponding cash hit.

So I do have it in there just a bit differently.

(Oh and col class 5s are your MAJOR income planets. They suck, but they can't be beat in terms of crystal and metal roids. They have a -5 credit per sec hit that is always there. You can easily minimize it by grabbing any type of Industrial, High Terran, Urban, Rusty, or Ecumenopolis planet. Which are you major credit producing centers.)

Heyyy, I'm not complaining about those Low planets. :v

They do their job well however.

Sounds like interesting concepts there Nova.  Can't wait to command it all from my MOON base.

Sins of a Sailor empire anyone?

Defense platforms have received a 50% increase in range. Ship speed has also been increased by 50%. Market now has more volatility and is more pricey. Jump degrees have been dropped from 45 to 30 due to larger grav wells. Planets now are MUCH farther apart. This is to reduce if not eliminate the grav well overlap problem. Also will reduce loads on systems as it will minimize the number of planets rendered at one time.

Grayson FTW

Just curious Nova, will you be releasing just a planet component to this? I know this is for SOGE, but anything you can do to keep gameplay changes to a minimum will be greatly appreciated by those of us who will have to go file by file to deal with compatibility issues. Not that it won't be a madness worth going through.

Edit: Thanks for satisfying this picky modder with the planet transitions as well.

God please no!!! 

I'm not changing much. I just needed to up the range and speed. Otherwise it takes waaaay too long. And defense platforms don't become useless. No, it would be madness going through. There is nothing left of the planets, stars, and skyboxes from vanilla sins. Even the planet bonuses have been eliminated. I'm not going to change ships or buildings except from the 4 defense platform files. What you will go mad from is changing the planets. I got them balanced very nicely. There won't be any compatibility issues for the most part. Unless you have planets of your own. Just don't over react.

So basically this can be plopped in any mod as is with little issue.
(Oh, the only issue which I will purposely put in is one planet tech)

I never thought that in the rest of my entire life, I would ever see anyone bring up this gal and her girl friends again. Sins of a Sailor Empire would be like creating a My Little Pony game or some other completely pointless thing like that, they just don't go over very well for virtually everyone.