Adjusting Border Size of Solar Systems?

[Grave461]

I'm doing a little experiment, and trying to make the solar systems bigger. I can increase the orbit distance no problem, but I get to a choke point where the borders of the solar system itself prevent you from visiting far off planets.

I'm looking in the 00_defines.lua for something that expands the border size of systems, but I'm not seeing anything that pops out. Any idea where I can find the value to adjust this?

 

[lasch]

Yes please, someone make a mod with bigger systems (like in Distant Worlds Universe).

 

[Grave461]

Well, I've had marginal success with this... but not exactly on the scale I was hoping for. Here is what I have learned so far...

In 00_defines.lua, these three settings seem to determine the size of solar systems:

SYSTEM_INNER_RADIUS_OFFSET = 30,
SYSTEM_MIN_INNER_RADIUS = 150,
SYSTEM_OUTER_RADIUS_OFFSET = 100,

Specifically, the SYSTEM_MIN_INNER_RADIUS determines the size of the system itself, while OUTER_RADIUS_OFFSET seems to affect the distance from the outer border (orange dotted line) from the inner radius (white dotted line). Not quite sure what INNER_RADIUS_OFFSET does, as I've used several different values and it doesn't seem to do anything that I can see. I mean, I know it impacts SOMETHING, just not sure what...

Anyway, the maximum size I can set a solar system by adjusting the SYSTEM_MIN_INNER_RADIUS is 500. Anything larger than this, and the camera starts acting really wonky. Specifically, it seems like there is a narrow field of view on the camera, and planetary orbits and anything else on the edge of this field of view seems to disappear unless you center it directly on your monitor.

So, if you are going to increase the size of your solar systems, you should also adjust the values for the camera zoom as well. This is what I've been using in my custom lua file:

NDefines.NCamera.ZOOM_STEPS_SYSTEM_PERCENTAGES = { 0.025, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 3.0 }, -- System zoom steps, in percent relative to the system size
NDefines.NGameplay.SYSTEM_MIN_INNER_RADIUS = 500

When I make the SYSTEM_MIN_INNER_RADIUS larger than 500, I cannot click on any of the empty space in the outer reaches of my solar system and command a ship to go there. I can click on individual planets, etc, and command the ship to enter it's orbit, but that's it. Also, any inner radius larger than 500 and I can't build wormhole stations because the game tooltips say I'm outside the radius of the solar system (which I'm obviously not).

So, unless there are other values that I need to tweak in the 00_defines.lua (or some other file) to make systems larger, then the largest inner radius I can set and have the game play as smoothly as designed is capped at 500.


Anyone else have any other ideas/suggestions?

 

[Silverfish42]

There's this from 1.0, but it hasn't been updated and seems to not be working for some reason now. I've been staring at it trying to figure it out, but haven't had much luck yet.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683230711

 

[Grave461]

I downloaded and tried this before Clarke was released, and I couldn't the planetary orbits to show up on the map. I've since unsubscribed from it, but if I remember correctly, I think this mod had the same issue where you couldn't right-click on the outer regions of the larger solar system and command a ship to go there.

 

[Arandir Tur-Ani]

Looks like I'm looking on the same thing that you :

Spoiler

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to change the size of differents systems, so that the whole systems looks emptier.

But I've a problem when I try it, is that the sun randomly seems to appear and deasppear on the screen, depending on the angle and not of the zoom level.

Here are some exemple :

Spoiler

View attachment 186453

View attachment 186454

View attachment 186456

Also is it possible you think to make the sun brighter, so that it is something really shiny when you are in the system.

 

[Grave461]

Arandir,

By the sounds of it, that's pretty similar to the problem I'm running into. The issue I'm experiencing isn't random, though... objects always seem disappear if they are on the outer edges of the screen.

I will say that the angle I view at seems to make a difference. If I go to a completely top/down view, everything shows up just fine. But if I use the default camera angle (give or take a few degrees), then that's when things at the edge of view start to vanish.

 

[Silverfish42]

Has anyone had any more luck with this? I've been playing around with it and the biggest issue I'm having right now is getting orbits satisfactorily spread out.

NDefines.NCamera.SYSTEM_SPACE_SCALE_MULT =

is an interesting value to play with, I've had it all the way up to 75 and am still not sure of the sweet spot. I'm currently trying to go through and manually double the values of all of the orbit_distance in the system generation files, to see if that does anything.