I'm enjoying very much a Corvus mode playthrough... except for the fact that Free Start stars you with a Monitor . A more worthless player ships I cannot find lol. The 10k starting vs 2k in the campaign is good enough if you win one fight and find something decent like a lasher.
I thought it was random? At least for me, starting with my own faction started me with a Alastor.
Oh! Well in that case I'm just going to restart until I get something else!
It always gives you a Monitor on own faction/free start without SS+, Alastor with it.
Monitor isn't the best starting ship but I couldn't think of a better choice: Tempest and Afflictor are too good, and I tried a solo Shade start and didn't like it. I could duplicate the Lasher or Wolf from the Hegemony/TT starts perhaps.
Histidine I'm not sure what's going on with the planet generation. However, along with the sporadic economy certain suns can spawn as a market. This is causing my longer playthrough a lot of lag since I ships can't despawn cause they can't approach the sun. It looks like moths to a flame.
Well, damn. Saw that bug once before but I thought I fixed it (and IIRC it was Sphinx that time too, although I checked and it wasn't the obvious bug). Went over the code again but couldn't find the source; I'll add a safety check at the start of the market adding code at least.
So...I came across said error once again, with no vanilla factions, and I don't know what to do.
There was no empty sectors this time, and all planets at least had a station.
Spoiler
2082156 [Thread-5] INFO com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.fleets.EconomyFleetManager - Spawned 25 point economy fleet from [Zell] to [Effecer II View]
2082214 [Thread-5] INFO com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.shared.MarketConnectionActivityData - Updating connection: [Oldat_Trading_Post_Vanilla]: trade (s: 2, l: 5), smuggling: (s: 0, l: 0)
2082309 [Thread-5] INFO com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.shared.MarketConnectionActivityData - Updating connection: [Esuna_Freya]: trade (s: 9, l: 0), smuggling: (s: 0, l: 0)
2082492 [Thread-5] INFO exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager - Spawning invasion fleet for Mayorate; source Vivi; target Crick
2083566 [Thread-5] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CharacterStats.getStatsEffects(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CharacterStats.refreshCharacterStatsEffects(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CharacterStats.increaseSkill(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.rpg.OfficerData.levelUp(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.events.OfficerManagerEvent.createOfficer(OfficerManagerEvent.java:194)
at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.fleets.FleetFactoryV2.addCommanderAndOfficer s(FleetFactoryV2.java:250)
at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.fleets.FleetFactoryV2.createFleet(FleetFactoryV2.java:168)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.spawnFleet(InvasionFleetManager.java:152)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.spawnInvasionFleet(InvasionFleetManager.java:372)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.generateInvasionFleet(InvasionFleetManager.java:466)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.processInvasionPoints(InvasionFleetManager.java:601)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.advance(InvasionFleetManager.java:634)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$2.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
oh, and I found another error as well, looks like it had the same thing in common with the "FleetFactoryV2".
Except it was a market issue.
Spoiler
3252887 [Thread-5] INFO com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.events.CoreEventProbabilityManager - Created MarketProcurementMission: domestic_goods to Polres Nest
3254140 [Thread-5] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CharacterStats.getStatsEffects(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CharacterStats.refreshCharacterStatsEffects(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CharacterStats.increaseSkill(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.rpg.OfficerData.levelUp(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.events.OfficerManagerEvent.createOfficer(OfficerManagerEvent.java:194)
at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.fleets.FleetFactoryV2.addCommanderAndOfficer s(FleetFactoryV2.java:250)
at com.fs.starfarer.api.impl.campaign.fleets.FleetFactoryV2.createFleet(FleetFactoryV2.java:168)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.spawnFleet(InvasionFleetManager.java:152)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.spawnSupportFleet(InvasionFleetManager.java:345)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.generateInvasionFleet(InvasionFleetManager.java:472)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.processInvasionPoints(InvasionFleetManager.java:594)
at exerelin.world.InvasionFleetManager.advance(InvasionFleetManager.java:634)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignEngine.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.CampaignState.advance(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$2.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Both happened on clean installs of Starsector & Nexerelin.
I keep staring at the code involved, and I still can't imagine how this can happen (and only in this one place). Just to check: You are using Starsector 0.7.1a-RC5, correct?