First off, I've updated this mod. This update does two things:
1. It adds the key-word "everybody" to lovedFaction / hatedFaction. This will, naturally, cause "everybody" who is not the Faction to be loved or hated. Essentially, it supports "xenophobic" cultures that just hate everybody (think Pirates, etc.).
2. It addresses some very minor things about how certain data is obtained on Planet types. More improvements to this are planned.
can this mod be used to update an old outdated mod to current version?
Essentially, yes
I'm in the process of restoring some older mods now, actually (with permission from the authors).
However, it's not magic; broken file-types need to be rebuilt, etc.
The core areas that are (probably) broken and need replacement are:
1. You need to remove all of the Java files in data/scripts/world (and possibly other places, depending on how sloppy people were being). This code causes crashes, because it's using outdated methods that aren't supported any more.
2. You need to write a modernized .faction file. See existing .faction files for guidance, either in the Explorer Society example mod, or in Vanilla.
3. If the mod had fancy scripted weapons, Systems, etc., it might be necessary to fix that code. Usually not; this is actually an area of SS that's remained pretty stable.
4. Fighters / Wings and Carriers need to be updated to the modern format. Unfortunately SS Ship Editor doesn't (yet) support this, so you need to do some hand-editing of .variant files to address this problem.
That's essentially it; while ship_data and weapon_data probably need a few new columns entered into them to be fully modernized, that's easily done with Google Sheets- import the CSVs, insert the columns, export the CSVs.
I'm not sure if any of the new columns are
required or not to prevent crashes; probably not?
But basically, this is all pretty straightforward text-file editing work.