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[Soviet Tom Bombadil]

neat stop gap but has anyone heard from Nerzhull?

1.25x is where I liked it, just big enough to unclutter the new content / systems from faction mods.

My recommendation is to:

1. Download RAT
2. Download Adjusted Sector
3. Install and Enable RAT
4. Configure RAT with the extra systems you want and nebula density
5. Edit starsector config
6. Change the map size in the starsector config to one of the sizes that works

Question. What's the performance impact of increasing the map? If I wanted to double the size how bad would the performance degradation be?

Quite high.

Aspect ratio for width/height is 41/26

205000 x 130000 = 1.25x larger
246000 x 156000 =  1.5x larger
328000 x 208000 =    2x larger

I avoided anything higher than 1.5 myself.

7. Open the terrain folder in Adjusted Sector's mod folders and copy-replace the nebula map size that fits the new sector size you chose, replacing the original map and using the original maps' name

This SHOULD keep all the new stuff in 0.96, but also let you have 250% more systems and a 1.5x larger map for example.

[Euripides]

Question: what file do I replace with the new bigger hyperspace map?

same file structure as the mod but in the game's proper directory instead; data/campaign/terrain -> hyperspace_map.png

so you take hyperspace_205k_x_130k.png or whatever it's called, and then rename it to hyperspace_map.png (or whatever it was that the original one is called its something like that) and replace the original one that's in starsector-core/data/campaign/terrain/etc. with the new larger one.

[Soviet Tom Bombadil]

might take a crack at doing this manually later in the day. I'd feel much more confident it I was working buttons and sliders in-game to make these tweaks though. Too worried I'll break something fundamental by fat-fingering.  I just need my sector to be a little bigger, I have a lot of faction mods and just want there to be some space to breathe.

Question: what file do I replace with the new bigger hyperspace map?

same file structure as the mod but in the game's proper directory instead; data/campaign/terrain -> hyperspace_map.png

so you take hyperspace_205k_x_130k.png or whatever it's called, and then rename it to hyperspace_map.png (or whatever it was that the original one is called its something like that) and replace the original one that's in starsector-core/data/campaign/terrain/etc. with the new larger one.

[Lycaeon]

I'm surprised there isn't an up to date mod that adjusts map size + system amount together in one clean package. The last mod I recall that did this successfully was Grand Sector, but it's abandoned. It seems like there are too many hoops to jump through to approximate the effect using this mod + Random Assortment of Things, and no guarantee it won't mess up something along the way, whether it be other mods or the game itself.

Personally, I think vanilla should have a large option with 1.25x the space and proportionally more systems. It should be a logical option seeing that small/normal sizes already exist, but there must be a problem since it hasn't been implemented already, even as a hidden setting like the spacer start.

[Soviet Tom Bombadil]

this, i'm kind of bad for fat fingering things when tweaking code. I'd like something as simple to use as Lunalib is.

I'm surprised there isn't an up to date mod that adjusts map size + system amount together in one clean package. The last mod I recall that did this successfully was Grand Sector, but it's abandoned. It seems like there are too many hoops to jump through to approximate the effect using this mod + Random Assortment of Things, and no guarantee it won't mess up something along the way, whether it be other mods or the game itself.

Personally, I think vanilla should have a large option with 1.25x the space and proportionally more systems. It should be a logical option seeing that small/normal sizes already exist, but there must be a problem since it hasn't been implemented already, even as a hidden setting like the spacer start.

[Kadatherion]

Personally, I think vanilla should have a large option with 1.25x the space and proportionally more systems. It should be a logical option seeing that small/normal sizes already exist, but there must be a problem since it hasn't been implemented already, even as a hidden setting like the spacer start.

Problem is performance. A mod can get away with almost anything, given that if something breaks or runs poorly on your rigs well, that's on you. And that's fine, there's always people that prefer Skyrim with 8k textures at 20 FPS rather than playing it at 60 FPS but with vanilla potato heads. When you are the game dev, though, you NEED to be extra conservative, as you have to account for weaker rigs and the smoothest possible user experience across a vast range of preferences and systems.

Fun fact, the game can already natively adapt up to about x1.25 sector size filling it with more constellations as needed (then it reaches the actual cap set elsewhere and you'd have to edit a few more values to keep going even bigger), you just have to increase the size in the config and voilà. Implementing a large starting option would thus be an absolutely trivial affair, but then you'd begin to see more complaints and that's not where you'd wanna be when you are developing a game that's not technically in release state yet.

Also, I may add, there's quite a few gameplay mechanics that are inherently tied to the sector size: increasing it means getting less balanced mission/bounty timers, colony accessibility, fuel management et cetera. So at a certain point to implement a larger setting you'd have to make these values variables too. Plus, we tend to forget it as we haven't played it like that in forever, but the vanilla game actually has relatively minor real 4x content, meaning there's not much point in having a bigger sector considering you're not (yet?) really supposed to stay there THAT long. Nex completely subverts that, and when you throw a few faction mods on top it soon feels cramped, but that's not the originally intended experience.

That being said, if you already use RAT to have a simple one click way to increase the AMOUNT of things that can spawn, this leaves you with really just the matter of increasing TWO numerical values in the core config, height and width, and that's it. And yeah, you may want to also accordingly increase the hypercloud map image size to keep it filling the sector. That's it. Nothing else, nothing breaks, unless you go overboard and then play the game on a potato. I personally feel x1.25 with RAT's +50% spawns is the best balance, and the performance hit is still sort of negligible even on my mid tier laptop (although it can compound depending on what other mods you throw at it, some mods that add complex factions and lots of exploration content can slow things down noticeably in bigger sectors).

[Lycaeon]

Problem is performance. A mod can get away with almost anything, given that if something breaks or runs poorly on your rigs well, that's on you. And that's fine, there's always people that prefer Skyrim with 8k textures at 20 FPS rather than playing it at 60 FPS but with vanilla potato heads. When you are the game dev, though, you NEED to be extra conservative, as you have to account for weaker rigs and the smoothest possible user experience across a vast range of preferences and systems.

Fun fact, the game can already natively adapt up to about x1.25 sector size filling it with more constellations as needed (then it reaches the actual cap set elsewhere and you'd have to edit a few more values to keep going even bigger), you just have to increase the size in the config and voilà. Implementing a large starting option would thus be an absolutely trivial affair, but then you'd begin to see more complaints and that's not where you'd wanna be when you are developing a game that's not technically in release state yet.

Also, I may add, there's quite a few gameplay mechanics that are inherently tied to the sector size: increasing it means getting less balanced mission/bounty timers, colony accessibility, fuel management et cetera. So at a certain point to implement a larger setting you'd have to make these values variables too. Plus, we tend to forget it as we haven't played it like that in forever, but the vanilla game actually has relatively minor real 4x content, meaning there's not much point in having a bigger sector considering you're not (yet?) really supposed to stay there THAT long. Nex completely subverts that, and when you throw a few faction mods on top it soon feels cramped, but that's not the originally intended experience.

That being said, if you already use RAT to have a simple one click way to increase the AMOUNT of things that can spawn, this leaves you with really just the matter of increasing TWO numerical values in the core config, height and width, and that's it. And yeah, you may want to also accordingly increase the hypercloud map image size to keep it filling the sector. That's it. Nothing else, nothing breaks, unless you go overboard and then play the game on a potato. I personally feel x1.25 with RAT's +50% spawns is the best balance, and the performance hit is still sort of negligible even on my mid tier laptop (although it can compound depending on what other mods you throw at it, some mods that add complex factions and lots of exploration content can slow things down noticeably in bigger sectors).

I appreciate the long and well-reasoned response. Is RAT and editing the hypercloud map image necessary to support the 1.25x size, or is editing the config and letting vanilla fill it with more systems as you implied sufficient?

[Kadatherion]

I appreciate the long and well-reasoned response. Is RAT and editing the hypercloud map image necessary to support the 1.25x size, or is editing the config and letting vanilla fill it with more systems as you implied sufficient?

Well, at least up to 0.95 Alex had left enough overhead in a few values to allow for just about a 20/25% increase in size or so, there's an old post by him buried in the forums somewhere where he mentioned that and indeed I could confirm that was the case in my experience. Basically you increase the size of the sector in the config, then start a new game and use the console command Survey All to see a counter of how many "markets" (planets/stations etc) and systems there are. Obviously the number is a bit random, but indeed you should notice the config allows for a bit of an increase in the markets and systems total amount (which didn't have enough free space to spawn at normal size) before consistently reaching the constellation cap (indeed around the 20/25% mark IIRC) and the sector beginning to generate noticeably less and less densely populated. I'd think it should still be pretty much the same today: there have been a few procgen changes since then, but nothing TOO fundamental.

That being said, we are talking about just an overhead and thus not everything might scale as intended (like the number of domain ships, sleepers etc that can spawn), so I'd say the best bet is still to use RAT to increase the themed spawners by 50% (a 50% increase is pretty much consistent with a 1.25x increase in both width and height, given that 1.25x1.25=1.56), so you are sure that EVERYTHING is set to scale as it should. If I'm not mistaken you can also turn off pretty much all other RAT content you might not like and keep only the procgen edit active, so nothing to lose there. That's very much hassle free.

As for the map (core/data/campaign/terrain/hyperspace_map.png), yes, if you increase the sector size you do have to edit it (regardless whether you also use RAT or not), or the clouds would only still fill a rectangle in the middle with the old size, which is pretty jarring as it's way too regularly geometrical of a shape. For instance, in my current campaign I have indeed increased sector width and height by 1.25x and the same I did with the map, which becomes 1012x625 pixels (vanilla is 810x500), so that the hyperspace clouds fit the borders perfectly.
Interesting factoid: seems it works pretty much the same regardless if you upscale the whole image by 25% (meaning the actual black shadow mask in the middle too), or just expand the canvas by 25% (so the black square in the middle stays the same size, and only the white background is enlarged at the borders). Depending on the software you use to upscale the image, the shadow map might become fuzzier, so the latter method might be actually better and simpler. But indeed there isn't that much of a difference, clouds are still generated and can change a lot depending on the density value you set (you can set it via RAT too) and if you have mods that add new fixed systems and constellations.

Imo this is a good balance to allow for quite a few content and faction mods without feeling cramped, and on the other hand without having silly distances to cover for missions or simply such a big sector that you'd never actually explore extensively before growing bored of the current campaign and feel like starting anew. And it's also still very performance friendly for my laptop.
On my desktop I did run much bigger upscales without issues too (I do tend to be one of those players for whom, instinctively, the bigger the better), but they just get rather unwieldly gameplay wise. Plus, honestly, I wouldn't anyway advise installing more than a dozen faction and heavy content mods (like Tahlan's, SWP etc) per playthrough at most, so there shouldn't be real need to go that much bigger. It's not a matter of VRAM: it's because they are all nice and sparkly and they lure you in with their songs of pretty ships, rainbow lasers and totally out of place catgirls... and then you end up with literally hundreds of different weapon types in your storage and no goddamn way to sort them by manufacturer/design/name or whatever. That alone makes the game a pain as refitting ships can become torture after a while.

Anyway, I digress. TL;DR: yes you do have to upscale the map. You should be able to get somewhat similar results in vanilla without *needing* RAT if you keep below the 25% upscale mark, but RAT is just more foolproof and probably more comprehensive.

[Lycaeon]

Well, at least up to 0.95 Alex had left enough overhead in a few values to allow for just about a 20/25% increase in size or so, there's an old post by him buried in the forums somewhere where he mentioned that and indeed I could confirm that was the case in my experience. Basically you increase the size of the sector in the config, then start a new game and use the console command Survey All to see a counter of how many "markets" (planets/stations etc) and systems there are. Obviously the number is a bit random, but indeed you should notice the config allows for a bit of an increase in the markets and systems total amount (which didn't have enough free space to spawn at normal size) before consistently reaching the constellation cap (indeed around the 20/25% mark IIRC) and the sector beginning to generate noticeably less and less densely populated. I'd think it should still be pretty much the same today: there have been a few procgen changes since then, but nothing TOO fundamental.

That being said, we are talking about just an overhead and thus not everything might scale as intended (like the number of domain ships, sleepers etc that can spawn), so I'd say the best bet is still to use RAT to increase the themed spawners by 50% (a 50% increase is pretty much consistent with a 1.25x increase in both width and height, given that 1.25x1.25=1.56), so you are sure that EVERYTHING is set to scale as it should. If I'm not mistaken you can also turn off pretty much all other RAT content you might not like and keep only the procgen edit active, so nothing to lose there. That's very much hassle free.

As for the map (core/data/campaign/terrain/hyperspace_map.png), yes, if you increase the sector size you do have to edit it (regardless whether you also use RAT or not), or the clouds would only still fill a rectangle in the middle with the old size, which is pretty jarring as it's way too regularly geometrical of a shape. For instance, in my current campaign I have indeed increased sector width and height by 1.25x and the same I did with the map, which becomes 1012x625 pixels (vanilla is 810x500), so that the hyperspace clouds fit the borders perfectly.
Interesting factoid: seems it works pretty much the same regardless if you upscale the whole image by 25% (meaning the actual black shadow mask in the middle too), or just expand the canvas by 25% (so the black square in the middle stays the same size, and only the white background is enlarged at the borders). Depending on the software you use to upscale the image, the shadow map might become fuzzier, so the latter method might be actually better and simpler. But indeed there isn't that much of a difference, clouds are still generated and can change a lot depending on the density value you set (you can set it via RAT too) and if you have mods that add new fixed systems and constellations.

Imo this is a good balance to allow for quite a few content and faction mods without feeling cramped, and on the other hand without having silly distances to cover for missions or simply such a big sector that you'd never actually explore extensively before growing bored of the current campaign and feel like starting anew. And it's also still very performance friendly for my laptop.
On my desktop I did run much bigger upscales without issues too (I do tend to be one of those players for whom, instinctively, the bigger the better), but they just get rather unwieldly gameplay wise. Plus, honestly, I wouldn't anyway advise installing more than a dozen faction and heavy content mods (like Tahlan's, SWP etc) per playthrough at most, so there shouldn't be real need to go that much bigger. It's not a matter of VRAM: it's because they are all nice and sparkly and they lure you in with their songs of pretty ships, rainbow lasers and totally out of place catgirls... and then you end up with literally hundreds of different weapon types in your storage and no goddamn way to sort them by manufacturer/design/name or whatever. That alone makes the game a pain as refitting ships can become torture after a while.

Anyway, I digress. TL;DR: yes you do have to upscale the map. You should be able to get somewhat similar results in vanilla without *needing* RAT if you keep below the 25% upscale mark, but RAT is just more foolproof and probably more comprehensive.

Again, thanks for the comprehensive explanation. I've decided to stick with the vanilla map for now, as I don't have any modded factions in my current list. But I have no doubt this information will be invaluable for any future readers of the thread with similar questions/issues.

[Nerzhull_AI]

neat stop gap but has anyone heard from Nerzhull?

1.25x is where I liked it, just big enough to unclutter the new content / systems from faction mods.

My recommendation is to:

1. Download RAT
2. Download Adjusted Sector
3. Install and Enable RAT
4. Configure RAT with the extra systems you want and nebula density
5. Edit starsector config
6. Change the map size in the starsector config to one of the sizes that works

Question. What's the performance impact of increasing the map? If I wanted to double the size how bad would the performance degradation be?

Quite high.

Aspect ratio for width/height is 41/26

205000 x 130000 = 1.25x larger
246000 x 156000 =  1.5x larger
328000 x 208000 =    2x larger

I avoided anything higher than 1.5 myself.

7. Open the terrain folder in Adjusted Sector's mod folders and copy-replace the nebula map size that fits the new sector size you chose, replacing the original map and using the original maps' name

This SHOULD keep all the new stuff in 0.96, but also let you have 250% more systems and a 1.5x larger map for example.

I did hear from him  = )

[Nerzhull_AI]

Adjusted Sector updated to 0.6.0.
2023.09.08 - 0.6.0:
- Updated mod to 0.96a version of the game;
- Fixed errors/legacy changes (related to remnant fleet spawners, etc).

P.s. If everything will be well, there will be another update in a week or so.

[SteelHeart]

I was itching to mess with sector generation but found that the base game files only seem to easily expose procgen for gates. Funny this should update just now.

[Nerzhull_AI]

I was itching to mess with sector generation but found that the base game files only seem to easily expose procgen for gates. Funny this should update just now.

I   l i v e   i n   y o u r   w a l l s

[Jade Tendency]

do the PK quest colony spawn with this mod now?

[Nerzhull_AI]

do the PK quest colony spawn with this mod now?

It should, current version of mod uses modified 0.96a theme files and integrated with all the rest of the things.
Put it another way, i don't see a reason why it wouldn't work now.