Repeat Crashing after Altering Campaign Planets

[Enjoku]

Preface: Downloaded the mod about a week ago, loving every second. I've spent most of that time figuring out how to alter the mod to suit my taste, such as giving the New Republic the Venator with extra spawned bombers and etc. (now just have to get rid of the tie fighters that come with it). The major thing I've altered is increasing the number of planets in the FTGU campaign exponentially. My one and only critique was the relatively low number of planets available for some of the campaigns. I've had great success adding planets and connecting them through trade routes, testing thoroughly, and everything has been working great. I even managed to transport a few planets from Republic at War into ICW with the .alo, .ted, .ala and etc, and they've worked wonderfully.

Issue: Just today I came across a new problem. I must have hit some kind of limit to how many trade routes can be in a campaign file. I started getting repeat crashes after a recent bout of modding, and after some work I narrowed the problem down to the Campaign_FTGU.xml file. I can't add any more routes between planets, any of them. As soon as I add just 1 more past the "limit" the game crashes after a few seconds on the startup screen. Is there an actual limit to the number of planets and routes? I'm going to keep fiddling with the files to see if I can work around this.

Additionally: In the base game and some mods I see that "trade routes" seem to not be the same as what connects planets for hyperspace travel, or I am not seeing the route lines. Like in Republic at War you can travel from certain planets without seeing the trade route lines, while other planets are connected by clearly visible colored lines which are trade routes and twice the speed as normal travel. Essentially my map is a big collection of planets all connected by a visible spider web of .05 width lines. When neutral the planets are connected by a very thin line that almost looks like a dotted line when looking at the full galaxy map. When conquered the planets are connected by a similar, but colored line, as well as the trade route hyperspace blip effect. Is there a different method of connecting planets which may avoid the "limit" issue I'm having?

In my head "trade route" and "how to get from one planet to another" means the same thing. Hopefully the very foundation of my alterations aren't the cause of this (i.e don't put in 100 new trade routes).

[Enjoku]

After some fiddling around in the files for a while I think I have just hit some kind of limit to how much can be changed regarding planets and trade routes. I managed to fix adding more trade routes after removing a few planets so the game doesn't crash, but now other things are going wrong. Some trade routes just aren't appearing despite being entered correctly, and some planet's .ala/.alo files are not appearing ingame as they should despite working fine previously. Its like I've hit some kind of ceiling and now the game is making room for my changes by changing other things. I add a planet here, the .ala file for a planet over there stops working. I add a trade route here, a planet over there goes missing. Is there a limit to just how much you can change regarding quantity of planets and trade routes?

[Corey]

How many traderoutes and planets are you using?

Additionally: In the base game and some mods I see that "trade routes" seem to not be the same as what connects planets for hyperspace travel, or I am not seeing the route lines. Like in Republic at War you can travel from certain planets without seeing the trade route lines, while other planets are connected by clearly visible colored lines which are trade routes and twice the speed as normal travel. Essentially my map is a big collection of planets all connected by a visible spider web of .05 width lines. When neutral the planets are connected by a very thin line that almost looks like a dotted line when looking at the full galaxy map. When conquered the planets are connected by a similar, but colored line, as well as the trade route hyperspace blip effect. Is there a different method of connecting planets which may avoid the "limit" issue I'm having?

Not all travel is restricted by pre-set routes. The base game functionality (which is what Republic at War kept) is that ships can travel within a certain distance, and trade routes can e travelled regardless of distance. We use exclusively trade routes so that players can plan for attacks and defense more thoroughly instead of stuff just ranomly getting thrown around. It also gave us more control over factors that impact the selection freeze bug.

[Enjoku]

Well let's just say pretty much all planets and trade routes (minus ones that overlap too often), or very close to all, in addition to at least 4 planets brought over from RaW. And my fiddling makes me think that it may just be the case of too much stuff in one Campaign file, if that's even a thing that can happen. In the last 2 days I've started editing the ArtofWar files instead and have had no crashes at all. So I guess I have to just moderate my desire to fill the entire map of one campaign. It's not a tremendous issue at this point now that I know how to maneuver around the crashes, as well as continue to backup files often.

I like the idea of using trade routes as set navigation paths. As I have it now all the routes are .05 to make them almost invisible. I'm not too troubled by the crashes anymore since I'm aware of what causes them.



Also, briefly off topic before this topic is closed, where can I find the files to edit the names of vessels? I see the .txt files and am aware how they work, but I want to add new .txt files for ships like the Venator and others. I'm trying to look for the <moniker> segments in the .xml areas but am having trouble finding them. I'd like to add names for some of the smaller vessels just for appearances sake.
(I hope I can find an answer to this one question in particular as I browse the forums after this, but might as well ask while I'm here.)

[Enjoku]

Cancel my question regarding ship names. Found what I was looking for.

[Jorritkarwehr]

If you're interested in adding new text files, you may appreciate my submod.

[Enjoku]

That's the exact one I found and I adore it. I've already added dozens of names to the list.