Map Mods

LordBrazen posted recently interesting data about the map generator in his modification forum.
You can use this data easily to create your own map mods. In fact, a lot of things are possible, especially more MapBalance and even totally different GamePlay. In this zip file is my first approach (see also the GoodMap mods further down this page and the Decent Rocks Mods.):

Download Orange Mod (b23)

Orange Mod
Some characteristics about orange systems:
a) At least 2 orbits of an orange star system are filled.
The exact probabilities are:
30% 2 or 5 orbits filled
20% 3 or 4 orbits filled
Be aware that these statistics include asteroids and gas giants.
b) An orange system does never contain an ultra rich planet.
c) Orange systems contain more often ocean, swamp, arid, terran and gaia planets than other stars.

The orange mod is quite simple. Any unguarded system is now de facto orange. That means that the previous star color is still displayed but the probabilities are identical to orange stars. Since many players complain about empties, singletons or rocky planets in their neighborhood this mod should help a lot. Additionally, an early Ultra rich was often decisive in regular moo. (Especially tolerant races are unstoppable in this case.) Be aware that only monster systems contain UltraRich planets now.

I don't know if these steps are enough. ALEXD pointed out that it is still possible that one side finds a lot of systems with asteroids near his homeworld while the other player has a dream start with a 5 planet system. I just thought this is quite a simple solution for more map balance. We will see....I appreciate feedback.

When you use this mod in a huge galaxy, you should verify that less than 250 planetary objects were generated. Otherwise it might be bugged.

BTW. Budee already created a nice icon for his orange mod launch button: orange.ico
Nice idea. Thanks.

Download GoodMaps (b23)

GoodMap Mods
Personally, I prefer orange systems in regular moo but of course even better system stats are possible. The systems in these GoodMap Mods have even better climate. I decreased the probabilities of toxic, radiated, barren, desert and tundra even further. Additionally, I excluded asteroids and gas giants.

GoodMap5
This mod generates systems with 5 planets. Be aware that there is a maximum of 249 planets in Moo2. Therefore this mod works only for small and medium maps. Don't use it for large or huge galaxies.
GoodMap4
All systems have 4 planets in this mod. This mod works in small, medium and large galaxies.
GoodMap3
3 planets for all systems. This works even in a huge galaxy.
GoodMap2
No, not what you might expect. In this mod there is just a 50% chance for a 2 planet system. The other 50% are 3 planet systems.

Installation
a) Find the Install.exe on your Moo2 CD and double click it to start the DOS installer.
b) Apply the v1.31 patch
c) Apply the v1.40 patch
Unzip the Orange_b23.zip & GoodMaps.zip into your moo folder. NO BACKUP IS NECESSARY! The new files (different file names) can coexist with the 1.40 patch.

Example: orange mod
Test the Orange.exe ---> Singleplayer should work already.

d) Multiplayer via DosBox:
Instead of orion2~1 (last line of step 8 in this guide, btw that is the exe name of the1.4 version) you can simply paste the exe names of the mods, fore example:
orange
or
goodmap2
etc.