setting up a scenario

[lordafabie (OP)]

Hi, I've been playing this game off and on for a couple of years and understand how most things work pretty well.   But now I have a specific scenario I want to set up, and I'm not even sure it's possible to do.

I want to start as a colony from an inter-stellar empire that collapsed long ago.   Many planets had their entire populations destroyed, and the ones that survived lost the secrets of Trans-Newtonian Technology.   I will be doing a conventional start, my people just on the cusp of re-discovering the ancient secrets of TN-Tech.   A couple of NPRs will have gained the secrets already.

Where I'm having trouble is that I want to place ruins in logical places that are of specific size, and from the same race.   Is this something that can be done with the designer mode password, Or would it require editing the database by hand?  I doubt I would bother with the latter, but access to designer mode might be usefull for other things too.

Any help would be appreciated, and I would like to thank Steve for making this great game available to all of us.

[Rabid_Cog]

The exact race of a ruin has no effect on gameplay, although the tech levels do differ I suppose. But wouldn't tech levels differ between far flung colonies of the same empire? If the racial thing still bothers you, pretend that the empire was a multiracial one.

What I suggest is that you manually seed each system you discover with ruins using SM mode. That way you don't have to plan the whole thing out in advance.

[sloanjh]

All designer mode does is allow you to see computer-controlled NPR races.

Editting the DB by hand is also not a good plan - it's too easy to mess things up.

I would try doing it in SM mode.  You can generate systems until you find one that you think suits your race (or edit planets' atmosphere etc using SM mode to match the racial characteristics).  The tough part will be connecting them with a warp network - I have a vague recollection that the ability to edit which warp point connects where (which was present in SA) was removed in Aurora.

John

[Brian Neumann]

You can connect systems through jump points.  It really helps to do this in a random start (non Sol start) game and create the systems.  Make a note of the system numbers and names that you want to connect.  Once you have all of the systems built the way you want them to be you can start connecting them in a rational way. (ie a way you can remember)
Start with whatever system you want to connect, in the F9 screen go to the jump point tab.  Select a jump point then on the middle right side of the screen is a button that says "break link"  I usually have to hit this button before going to the pull down menu in the same section.  Use this to select the jump point in the system you want to connect to and then hit the "connect JP" button.  The two jump points are now connected.  You will need to do this for each jump point you want to connect.  Up to you if you connect extra jump points.  On the left hand side of the screen below the listing of jump points there will be several buttons.  You can use them to add or delete jump points or jump gates.  If you add a jump point you will then need to go just to the right (center screen) and enter a realistic bearing and distance for the new jump point.  This is because all new jump points are created at the star (center of the system).

Brian