?

That relies on querying a "isBoarded" property.

I don't know if this property is built-in (as hard-coded in the game code), or if it is defined by the ship/structure entity files. But it would be a huge no-no if I had to change every single ship and structure to implement this feature... and I don't know for sure, but adding an extra property (if it is even possible) would probably have a perfomance impact on the single-threaded game loop, with thousands of ships having that extra property bulging the game logic.

You need to use conditionals. The only reason the "isBoarded" is percent is so that the player can see which ships have been taken over that way. All the Ragnarov's abilities, Psionic Scream, and countless other Rebellion abilities use it without having an explicit boolean.

Just try it Joe...I think you will find it is much less terrible than you make it out to be...

In my current mod, there are no neutral (capturable) extractors....when going through the TEC frigates, I figured I might as well remove the frigate roletype "ResourceCapturer" from the TEC colony ship...

And every game that started with an AI controlled TEC player would MD exactly 30s into the game (right when a normal AI starts its construction orders)...there were a bunch of other concurrent changes aside from the one above, but it seems that giving back the "ResourceCapturer" role to the colony ship fixed the problem...

So, why does not having any ship with the frigate roletype "ResourceCapturer" cause the game to MD?  I thought the AI only looked at stat count types when building ships...

Well there isn't a stat type for Resource Capturer. I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly how they are used. Just try to label them as well as possible and match Vanilla wherever possible.

This is incorrect. It also looks at RoleTypes, I can confirm this from my own testing. There are times where I've had ship X, which say has 6 RoleTypes. After I removed one, and later when I added a different, RoleType, the AI produced the ship in different amounts, even though the ship's stats and statCountType did not change.

The AI is also aware of if a ship has fighters, even if it is not listed as having the Carrier RoleType or statCountType. I know this from a ship, defined solely as a Heavy, that the AI produces in rather large amounts for a Heavy. Usually the AI doesn't build too many of these, due to a preference for siege ships, carriers, and LRFs. Yet the AI's frigate fleets always have a good number of these ships present.

Is it possible to make an artifact that can't be found by exploring planets, i.e. it only shows up if you purposely put it on a homeworld, like in Ancient Gifts, except that you cannot find it on any other map?

I ask as I have a map where players all start with fleets, which are well over the starting supply, so I'd like to put in an artifact that covers the supply cost of this fleet.

If you're willing to make a new planet for it, you could have this planet have say 3 planet exploration upgrades. For artifacts you can set the minimum upgrade required to find the artifact. Set it to three, you basically make it impossible to find anywhere else.

However, note that the artifact will still be randomly placed instead of other artifacts, they just can't be found except on that planet. So the effective artifact density on every map will go down, so you may want to increase this to compensate, or just put all this in a separate minimod.

This is brilliant, and will most certainly do the trick. Much thanks, Goa! I'll increase the density to compensate.

I feel like this is an idiot question, but...

I'm updating/fixing More Hangar Space. For me, installing the mod was confusing- the folder structure isn't right. Finally figured that out, but the game crashed when trying to load it. Figured that out, but it didn't work properly. Found three files that are necessary to make it work with Diplomacy. Added them, modified them to match the Original and Ent files, and it crashed again when loaded. Figured out how to convert my own binary files to text. Started from scratch, got everything up and running, no crashes. Tested with all three races. Works great!

So now the question: what do I do with it? I mean, I can use it, but the original mod was downloaded 17000 times (between the two versions). Three questions:

1) What mod repository sites are still active that I can upload this baby to?

2) I don't have Rebellion, is there someone willing to test this in that expansion if I add its components in?

3) I rebuilt the mod from scratch. I'm also not using the same values Grimjowl or Silveressa used. However, I did use Grimjowl's version as a reference. Do I need to contact him before release, or just give a shout-out to his earlier work?

You could upload it to Wincustomize again. The other main alternative is Moddb, but for a mod this small that's overkill. Or just put it on your favorite file hosting site and just keep a thread for it with a link.

The file format is different enough that using almost any entity files directly from diplomacy will cause a crash.

For a number tweak like that no permission is needed. In general if you use something as a reference it might be a good idea to mention it that you took inspiration from it, but you don't need to bother him with an email for something like this.

I downloaded the Rebellion files from a sticky on these forums. I was going to make a Rebellion version with those, so no entity files from Trinity should be used. I could then include the mod for each version of the game, but I don't want to include it without testing- and I can't test it.

Thanks for the other answers! In other, unrelated news, any idea why I can't upload an avatar pic? It says uploading, then does nothing- no error message even. My pic is 99x99 pixels and 12KB. Tried on Firefox and IE, with full javascript allowed.

I take it that it is a png or jpeg.

Is this from your comp or website, DL to your comp and upload from there.
I know it takes a while to see the avatar in your new threads, old ones will not show, but can't remember if i showed in account.   How much time are you giving it? Just try to let it sit a while and use another tab to surf. 

Ohh, I have my avatar in the OP, tanx Sin 

Random map factor. Kinda cool watching stars spew novalith looking projectiles. Surely someone else has thought of doing this.

Small question, where do you change where is says Sins of a Solar Empire on the start screen?

You mean the text at the top of the main menu? String file. The Rebellion logo at the bottom of the main menu is a texture file.

Anyone got an IRC chat or can add me on Xfire for day to day stuff? I want to finish this project! PM me!!! 

I'm on Stardock's IRC most days, you can pick my brain on entity issues if you send me a pm there.

I know this is prolly dumb but i searched and cant find answer did they change the opening theme song? i replaced it in a mod and never is what i replaced it to. 

In Rebellion they changed the name and SoundMusic.Sounddata reference.  Re-name your new main menu track to "Rebellion Title.ogg" or change the "MUSIC_FRONTEND" entry in SoundMusic.Sounddata to what your song file is named.

I'm trying to toughen up capital ships a bit in my personal mod.  I had an idea of extending the titan research line adding another 3 or 4 tiers where some of the technological advances gained from figuring out how to build a titan were applied back to regular capital ships.  Nothing overly ambitious, probably a 5-10% increase on all the basic stuff (hp, shields, regen rates, dmg) and a point of armour or two in order to help keep pace with a more lethal galaxy than back in vanilla sins.

However, looking at other posts about various cap ship improvements and the list of research modifiers I get the impression that this is impossible since cap ships don't have unique hp, armour, shield, etc like starbases.  Correct?

Purely from research, correct. However, you could make the research unlock a passive ability in the 5th slot of each capitalship, which can then give max HP & shield, weapon damage increases, etc.

I'd suggest making this ability a fixedlevel0 one which simply requires the research to work. Otherwise, if it uses the research based method instead of fixedlevel0, the AI will waste points by trying to get this ability.

Is culture rate on starbases affected by culture rate increase research?