great mod!
its been a long while since i played the game so i wasnt even aware whats vanilla and whats from the mod, turns out, you added more than just a sol system!

i have a couple of issues though, probably should have read your documentation before playing:

exploration cruiser:
like em, very cool, i guess its on me but the ai just started upgrading all of my 200 exploration ships to cruisers, nearly bancrupting me.
took me a lot of fiddling around to prevent that, again havent played dw2 in a long while, but perhaps the exploration cruiser could be detached from the vanilla explorationship role?
basically being their own unique ship type with the same ai?

Terra:
great questline
noticed the moons have random names while all the planets have german names, despite my game being in english.

the mars shipyard: i repaired it and got an event telling me to pay 50k credits and after that another event telling me that we cannot afford to maintain the station but would be able to reclaim it later for a cost?
there's a station around mars, called mars guardian station, it has terran tech and is under my control so i dont know whats going on there but i suspect a bug.

the storm:
the story teased about getting rid of the storm, i have no idea how to go on with this, i assume it has something to do with the mars station event that somehow is borked for me?

is there a way i can fix the story progression or get rid of the storm?
through the ingame editor or editing mod files?

Originally posted by Skittles:

great mod!
its been a long while since i played the game so i wasnt even aware whats vanilla and whats from the mod, turns out, you added more than just a sol system!

Thnx, appreciate it and yes there are a few new things

Originally posted by Skittles:

....robably should have read your documentation before playing:

hahaha, sorry, definitly a yes!

EDIT: The manual also indicates how to proceed once the Sol system is discovered!

Originally posted by Skittles:

exploration cruiser:
like em, very cool, i guess its on me but the ai just started upgrading all of my 200 exploration ships to cruisers, nearly bancrupting me.

Clearly stated deactivate automatic hull upgrade! This cause the problem. Need upgrade path to "None" or "Latest Design for Hull"

Originally posted by Skittles:

that, again havent played dw2 in a long while, but perhaps the exploration cruiser could be detached from the vanilla explorationship role?
basically being their own unique ship type with the same ai?

Unfortunately not as there is a hard-coded level progression and predefined roles. With "Latest Design for Hull" and "Automatic Hull Upgrade" deactivated this is a non issue. Holds true for all ships btw.

Originally posted by Skittles:

Terra: great questline.

thnx but should lead to get rid of the storm

Originally posted by Skittles:

noticed the moons have random names while all the planets have german names, despite my game being in english..

Cannot influence the creation of named moons unfortunately. I tried.
Hahah, gonna fix the German names. That was an automatism. Thank you for spotting that
EDIT: Just checked and they mostly same names except Mercury and Neptun-e with e at the end.

Originally posted by Skittles:

the mars shipyard: i repaired it and got an event telling me to pay 50k credits and after that another event telling me that we cannot afford to maintain the station but would be able to reclaim it later for a cost?

That is an engine limitation that I found later. When you have automatic research or scrap a ship it might just give a tech boost and research the Decommission Mars Shipyard tag and get rid of the shipyard.

Its meant to be a fail-save when player run out of money he can disable Mars Shipyard (cannot be scrapped otherwise) because its a Ruin and save 15.000 maintenance. You can rebuild it though when you have enough money.

I will move it up the tiers and make it dependent on something so it not trigger that easy.

Originally posted by Skittles:

there's a station around mars, called mars guardian station, it has terran tech and is under my control so i don't know whats going on there but i suspect a bug.

When you rebuild Mars Guardian Station and take it over it trigger an event and you get a tech "Large Area Graviton Manipulation".
Its below the Science Academy.

Originally posted by Skittles:

the storm: the story teased about getting rid of the storm, i have no idea how to go on with this, i assume it has something to do with the mars station event that somehow is borked for me?

Once you researched "Large Area Graviton Manipulation" an Event triggers and Terran engineers can switch on the Emitter found on Terra and magic happens in a few years.
The version I uploaded is the one I test played before and it worked perfectly.
Look at the workshop page and the 2 screenshots...once with Sol storm bubble and the other about 80 years later with Sol System and no storm around.

Originally posted by Skittles:

is there a way i can fix the story progression or get rid of the storm?
through the ingame editor or editing mod files?

The one gripe I have with the engine is that it is static data so nothing can be done to remedy something.
The editor does not allow to interfere with events or disable storm bubbles

Thank you so much for feedback. It helps me a lot to iron out the few little quirks that may be still there!

thank you, i thorougly checked and it seems that the tech for the storm doesnt show up for me.
Sol might also be in a larger nebula (its not centered in the nebula its in)
its not that big of a deal though as all my ships can traverse the storm without issues, only the slowdown is a little painful.

still,even without the sol system, the fact that i couldnt distinguish between the mod features and vanilla features at first speaks bands about how well everything else works!

Originally posted by Skittles:

thank you, i thorougly checked and it seems that the tech for the storm doesnt show up for me.
Sol might also be in a larger nebula (its not centered in the nebula its in)

Game breaking engine limitation. When start a new game need put Nebulas on Very Sparse to minimize the chance for that.
When I generate a new game I usually look around at 400M distante to see of any storm with sun in center is within a bigger storm, if so I abort and generate new galaxy.
I hope some day in the future they will add an error handling so this not happen but I wont hold my breath over it.

Originally posted by Skittles:

its not that big of a deal though as all my ships can traverse the storm without issues, only the slowdown is a little painful.

ok, but its beautiful to have the system without storm and it also projects influence then, it does not when in the storm.

Originally posted by Skittles:

still,even without the sol system, the fact that i couldnt distinguish between the mod features and vanilla features at first speaks bands about how well everything else works!

thank you very much for kind words, really appreciate it

Started a new game for checking function of events and few new features and especially about Mars Guardian Station and if the event fires as it should.

Recon cruisers. I get the concept but when fully unlocked they replace standard explorers in the upgrade path which means unless I catch the design as soon as its unlocked and turn it to full manual most of my current normal explorers have already turned around to refit which is absolutely not optimal and a pain to reset.

Can it be set to manual automatically so I don't have to micro it to shut it off? Otherwise really enjoying it so far as I feel this is how in depth the story lines should have been in vanilla. Oh and can the recon cruiser research be moved farther down the hyperdrive line?

All my early abandoned warship retires are putting their points into the recon drives instead of the far more useful normal drives. Maybe at the same tier as the recon hull unlock since you can get the gigacell and drives long before you get to the hull.

Also characters leaving is still far too high even with the 12 year term. Maybe drop the percentage rate of those that leave too? At 10% I've had times where dozens of characters leave with the leader crippling my spy and research networks.

Originally posted by SgtScum:

Recon cruisers. I get the concept but when fully unlocked they replace standard explorers in the upgrade path which means unless I catch the design as soon as its unlocked and turn it to full manual most of my current normal explorers have already turned around to refit which is absolutely not optimal and a pain to reset.

Can it be set to manual automatically so I don't have to micro it to shut it off?

The manual says play on HULL UPGRADE= MANUAL for a reason.
I also specifically predetermined the upgrade path option to choose:
LATEST DESIGN FOR HULL to avoid this scenario.
This is how the game works and unfortunately we cannot change the system, just work around it!
The roles have levels to them and ships upgrade the levels when on automatic.

The Recon Cruiser is designated Explorer to get the role specific mission options.
I had it as Cruiser before. It could still survey planets (due to survey module) but had to be handled 100% manually

Originally posted by SgtScum:

Otherwise really enjoying it so far as I feel this is how in depth the story lines should have been in vanilla.

A good time is all we want from games and yes this why I made it cause I felt the same way...that there should be something more.

Originally posted by SgtScum:

Oh and can the recon cruiser research be moved farther down the hyperdrive line?

I wanted it to be available early so player can get one or two for long range missions available early to get an idea of who is the biggest threat

Originally posted by SgtScum:

All my early abandoned warship retires are putting their points into the recon drives instead of the far more useful normal drives.

This is literally randomised, not sure why this happening. I have not noticed this to be an issue.
It also throws some more wrenches into he players tech rushing machine so they AI not fall behind too badly.

Originally posted by SgtScum:

Maybe at the same tier as the recon hull unlock since you can get the gigacell and drives long before you get to the hull.

The event explains that the drive must be developed and after that permission for building a long range cruiser will be granted.
Both techs- drive and giga fuel cell are prerequisites for be able to research the recon cruiser so player must have them ready.

Originally posted by SgtScum:

Also characters leaving is still far too high even with the 12 year term. Maybe drop the percentage rate of those that leave too? At 10% I've had times where dozens of characters leave with the leader crippling my spy and research networks.

that must be a very unfortunate event as I dropped the chance for characters leave with leader to 5% from 10% in vanilla