Map Designer

I have some basic questions about the map designer that are not answered in the manual... and hard to locate answers for on the forum.

from Sins Forums
I've been trying to use the map designer to create some maps, and... I can't really seem to figure out what the slider bars do. Obviously the adjust what the title near them says, but there is no even basic indicator as to what moving the bar to the right or left, green or red, does.

For example, the size of the map, does red mean smaller and green bigger?

How about phase length, does green mean longer or shorter?

What about phase chance? Is green more likely and red less likely?

Orbit radius? etc.


I've been messing around with it, and for whatever reason I can never seem to get short phase paths. The starting colony is always is very isolated, and I don't really know how to fix that.

I've tried the forge thing, and it seems too hard to just create a random map. Everything has to be pretty well placed.

Any help with any of the above questions would be appreciated.
5,891 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I suggest getting Galaxy Forge and reading the tutorial. It's very easy to use and it allows you to place individual planets wherever you want. However, as of now any maps you make in Galaxy Forge will not auto-download for online multiplayer games so folks will have to obtain your maps first before trying to play them.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I already gave Galaxy Forge a try, and it seems to not generate random maps, but merely allows me to make maps where I manually place the planets where I want them. It would take forever to build a detailed 200 planet map like I can do in a few seconds on the built-in map-maker.

I just wish I could figure out the controls.

Are there any tutorials for the built-in map maker?
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
first of all all the bars go from right to left small to big less to more.
also your starting colony will ALWAYS start farthest out from the star (unless u change it, ill get to that in a min)
so what that means is if u creat a map with all the planets cose to the star ur starting colony will be isolated
Heres what i suggest...create an ingame map...then save and exit out. go into your users\'username'\appdata\local\ironcladgames\sinsofasolarempire folder. open up the galaxy and you should see your map u created ingame. open it with notepad (or something else doesnt matter) then you can see all the text for this map. scroll down till you see 'rings' those are your planet groups. from 0-1 theyl say how far away from the sun they are. 0 being closest 1 being farthest away.
now you can change almost everything in here(artifact/bonus density) extra planet counts, if you starting planets are colonized or not. even which planet is your home.
anyhow if you do change anything and save it...you cant click on it in the map editor ingame anymore or it will cause a minidump...
hope this helps a lil
 ;) 
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Regardless of the answers to the questions, and all the complicated solutions and work-arounds to the issue, it sounds to me that this is an ideal suggestion/request for a new "feature" in an upcoming release. And an extremely simple one to implement - simply adding some text to the screen to indicate what the sliders to from one end of their scale to the other. I.e. More vs. Less, - vs +, bigger vs. smaller, whatever...
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
first of all all the bars go from right to left small to big less to more.
End of quote


i apologize i typed it wrng and of course theirs know edit button...anyhow
green(left) means less, smaller, shorter, etc
red(right) means more, bigger, longer, etc
my apologies for the confusion