Olterin - RE: Planetary generation from comments thread:
I've made the change that you suggested, and have been getting some pretty wile results. Along with the Gas Giants orbiting Gas Giants, I've also gotten a size 0 asteroid, and planet types seem to be all over the map - literally. Frozen worlds right next to the sun, molten worlds out at the edge of the solar system. Weird stuff. I'm going to go through the empire_initializer.txt a little more closely to see if I can pull it back into line.

The empire_initializer.txt should only affect the starting systems. If the rest of the map is misbehaving, something else is wrong. The system generation for empire starts is handled separately for the starter systems and the rest of the galaxy. Random systems do not have very strict generation rules at all - the only set of variables that I'd assume is affecting this is the "min_distance_from_sun" and "max_distance_from_sun" in the planet definitions. More than that should not be necessary. I took a look into the vanilla misc_system_initializers - there are no rules in there for how random systems are generated beyond the number of planets. You could see if things revert back to sanity by copying all the vanilla files over into the system initialization folder without altering them. Although as far as I understand how mods work this should not be necessary (nor very elegant since it'd be forcing an override of vanilla files that do not require overriding)

I honestly do not know how a gas giant ended up being a moon of a gas giant given that the gas giant planet class specifically defines that it cannot be a moon. The size 0 asteroid is a mystery to me since that was not touched at all. In my brief tests I hadn't seen very many habitable asteroids at all, though.

I'd set up a custom test empire starter system (like Sol-test) where the changes will not mess with anything in the galaxy at all and will only affect that one system. Should be possible without overwriting any vanilla files at all too, which'd help isolate issues with system generation. Sol itself is set up in "prescripted_species_systems.txt" to see how it's done - of note is that the system initializer states explicitly "custom_empire" meaning it will not get used unless picked by an empire (this is what I'm counting on to isolate the test scenario).

Found and fixed the size-0 asteroid bug. What was causing it, pretty definitively, was asteroids being spawned as planetary satellites (i.e. moons). The asteroid defines in 00_planet_classes.txt do not have a moon_size defined for them, once I added that the test case resolved itself beautifully.

On that note, is it really necessary to have duplicate entries for gas giants and asteroids in there? Seems redundant.

re: Duplicate entries - not sure. If I recall correctly, those were vanilla lists, with the new world types added in. But I'm not 100% certain I didn't add something trying to fix the generation error at some point.

I'm reworking the empire_initializers.txt by using the misc_system_initializers as a template with the homeworld and empire code added in. At first blush, seems to be working nicely.

Added in moon_size for asteroids - thanks for catching that.

Vanilla lists have only one gas giant in them, and only one asteroid type. Having multiples being defined shouldn't matter, however, the random lists in this mod at the end of 00_planet_classes include both of the two non-vanilla asteroid types (while removing the entry for vanilla asteroids which also got changed). This might be redundant code (and obviously interacts with the new habitability traits, if anyone were to start messing with it).

As a note, running only brute force colonization (or rather, my test copy of it with my testing home system added but nothing else) I was not seeing frozen worlds in low stellar orbit nor volcanic ones far away from system centres. Basically, in the 20 or so systems I had looked the only things out of place were the empire starter systems (which should be handled by what I had proposed) and the size-0 moon-asteroids. And with changed empire_initializers.txt I was still not seeing massively out-of-whack systems. In short: can not reproduce - what specifically should I be looking for?

I'm not sure I'm following you?

My apologies, disregard last post, I was talking mostly nonsense due to lack of sleep.

Just to add it to this thread, with the many new habability traits the genetic modification window needs to be reshaped.

Also, I would love a description of the many new planet-types at some point. When you get around to it.


Great work you two.
I love the idea of an actual asteroid orbiting a planet as a moon. I'm not sure if gravity would not over time make it change shape, but I can certainly see how an asteroid is caught by a planet.

@Olterin - No worries. Been there, done that. :)

@Oldstead66 - Haven't been ignoring you - just needed to get that system generation bug dealt with ASAP. Re: Asteroids as moons - there are many, many in the solar system - including Mars's two moons Phobos and Deimos, so :)

Also, can you screenshot me what you're seeing on lack of the descriptions for the new world types, please? I thought I had included those, and I'm concerned that they're showing up for me and not everyone else, or that I missed something.

I will tackle the Genetic Modification Window, but that might take me a little bit as I'm not sure where / how at the moment, so please bear with me!

Hey there's something going on with black stuff covering large portions of the planet
graphics not the tile the city window spot.

Can you get me a screenshot, please?

Also, are you running any other mods?

Re: Description of planet types.
Just a writeup here would do, with a short description of what all the new classes actually are.
What's the actual difference between Desert and D1 and D2 for example, Class M1-2-3 Continental and so on.

I have to say, I have not done any galaxy generation with this version of the mod yet, so I'm still playing with only vanilla planets on my map.
It's possible I'd know the answer to my question if I started a new game.

Re: Description of planets
No real difference between the types, other than graphics. I get tired of all the worlds looking the same. Two continental planets are not going to be identical, and so I wanted some variations. I couldn't find any other way for new graphics to show up other than a new planet class.

Carrying that thought, my head cannon says that two worlds of the same type are still going to have significant differences - especially if they have an ecosystem, hence the slight dip in habitability between types.

Carrying that thought even further, any world that's naturally habitable would be in the biozone (Goldilocks zone), or at the extreme edges at most. In game, each of those are really just a variation on a terrestrial climate, so I figured that any species would be able to colonize them without too much trouble. If you're at one end or the other of the GZ, you'll have some difficulty with your opposite preference, but I figure a technological species can manage that.

Re: description of planets
Personally I wouldn't mind having code comments being there in the files, last I looked (which, granted, was just as the new types got released) it was not absolutely trivial to deduce which new type is which.

I do believe the rest of the discussion that can be had about planet types should probably be split into a different thread to avoid cluttering the Bug Hunt with feature discussion?