Thank you all again, I appreciate all the kind words!
how does the modding end of this all work, is it "just" a plugin of some flavour that gets passed a tooltipMakerAPI or similar?
Yeah, a CodexEntryPlugin that can gets a CustomPanelAPI to do whatever it wants with. Also gets a premade widget with the related entries it can add whenever it wants.
Alternatively for the "Display the contents mod in Codex", how about giving every mod their own entry in Codex, and having the mod then show up in "Related Entries".
The entry for the mod itself could then refer towards its other content aswell, or have a simple entry in descriptions.csv that let modders to write down a description of it there, or some other hook.
That would feel much more integrated i think.
I get what you mean, yeah. That's a possibility, though... but -
Yeah i was asking about it being a main feature. People are always confused where things are from.
I can understand not wanting to make it very visible though, maybe some icon in the corner that you could hover over that displays it?
Ah, I could see that. If we're being honest, I'm not real enthused about adding a "which mod is this from" field to like 10 different classes just now, but I'll keep the idea in mind!
I can absolutely understand not being enthused about it... but at the same time, it would be really nice to have easy access to this information for ships, weapons, hullmods, planet conditions, etc. Tracking this kind of thing down by hand is a nuisance too.
(Yes, ideally, mods would use manufacturer or tags to identify their stuff. Unfortunately, in practice, they frequently don't.)
This is 100% one of the reasons Roider Union does not have multiple manufacturers. I would absolutely have some ships be by "Korovin Shipbreakers", some by "Rockpiper Engineering Society", and so on, but nobody would know those were from Roider Union unless I spelled it out in every name. And who wants to look at "Rockpiper Engineering Society (Roider Union)" - holy character count, Batman!
Ended up doing this:
https://imgur.com/a/WzBbFMRIcon is a placeholder; works for everything except for planets, where it gets way more complicated because there's no spreadsheet where you can easily tag the rows with where they came from, so that's not happening. This took way longer than I was hoping it would, so hopefully it's worthwhile
For the fighter section, though, I'd like if it also displayed the flux stats since the only way to view them right now is to go into the files and they're actually kind of important (ex: Broadswords don't have anywhere near 2x LMG of kinetic DPS because they have ~10 flux dissipation, instead they just have a decent bit of burst). This is particularly useful for modded fighters, so I can understand if it isn't high on the priority list, but it would definitely be appreciated.
Hmm, it's actually a (long-ago) conscious decision not to show fighter flux stats on the stat panel. I don't think it really conveys enough about how the fighter performs anyway, you really just need to see them in action to get a sense of how they work. Plus the values can just be weird-feeling to see as actual numbers, since they're all over the place with not necessarily any consistency between similar-feeling fighters.
One feature I just thought of: click on the ship sprite or the mounts list (or simply a "preview ship" button) to get a pop-up window with a refit-like display, where you can see all the mounts and their angles.
Doesn't need to be a refit display, but even just a toggle box in the ship image's window for "show firing arcs and mount types" would be very useful. Looking at a ship in the current codex (or store) often leaves me wondering things like "Okay, this has two medium missile and two medium ballistic... but which mounts are which?"
Ahh, this is one of those "sounds like a good idea in theory but I'm really not liking the effort-to-value ratio and it feels like my time would be more effectively put in elsewhere" things, unfortunately! And then putting that in would raise the question of, can you run the simulator from there? My answer to that is a very definite "no" but it's a bit of a slippery slope in terms of creating player expectations. Though I suppose that part of it depends on exactly what the hypothetical weapon mounts and arcs display looked like and how much it recalled the refit screen. Just seems like it *would*
Would it be possible to view codex entries on things while I am flying through a system? For example, I see a fleet coming at me, then I look through all its ships on the codex. Or maybe planets, stars, and other phenomena? Not sure how it would be implemented.
Hmm, possibly in some cases, I'm still working through a few details there. For fleets, though, I shouldn't think so; it's an awkward fit for it since there's no such thing as a "fleet" entry.
Looks good, one thing I think should be added though in addition to ships/weapons/etc. is Factions. It would be nice if I could read in greater detail about the Hegemony/Tri-Tachyon and get links to the planets they control. It would also provide an area to access info on some of their sub-factions such as the Knights of Ludd and Lion's Guard as well as unlisted factions such as [REDACTED] and even the old Domain itself.
And if we were to get really clever with it, having additional information unlock when you take a commission with them would be a nice touch.
Agreed. Factions should absolutely be part of the Codex.
I've thought about it, for sure, but it gets rather troublesome. First off, the Codex is something that needs to work outside the campaign, and with the exception of fleet members, the information there is static. Second, there's already a faction info screen in the intel panel; having two separate ones would be weird. Third, for viewing faction planets - the way the visuals for those are customized would make it a fairly sized pain to try to reproduce in an outside-the-campaign context. I could see expanding it in this direction at some point, and I certainly understand why one would want that info there, but it's also something that's fairly well outside the scope of the feature.
Yay! Another HUGE QoL improvement. New Simulator, New Codex, New Intel Screen... (what's next, the Refit Screen? 
)
Whether you need the encouragement or not, these are kind of items that often go overlooked but are vitally important to the overall polish and longevity of a game. They're not as sexy as a new ship, mechanic, or campaign mission but they're fundamental to the player experience. I, for one, am extremely glad you've spent the dev time to refine these.
As for the Codex itself:
F2 from anywhere is a very good move. Everything is a click away. I'm not sure how much you play the Civilization games but the in-game Civlopedia is a godsend when you're not sure how certain things work. To that end, are there entries for more, shall we say, "abstract" items like fundamental game mechanics? Like, if I type in "Shield" is there an entry for how shields work? Or Armor? or Combat Readiness, Deployment Points, etc? I'm not saying you need to do that for everything (and honestly, I can only think of maybe 5-6 off the top of my head anyway) but for a new player, those kind of items would probably be very beneficial.
Linking everything is super cool. If nothing else, it may inspire folks to go "hmm, why is that related?" and then they make a connection they hadn't thought of before.
I like that the Codex is unlocked across all saves. That's a small detail that would be annoying if untrue. Unlocking it via the config settings is also good.
Again, I'm just very happy this kind of stuff is getting a makeover. It really elevates the quality of the game.
Hey, thank you so much, I really appreciate this! <3 It does feel a bit... not wrong since as you say it IS important to work on (and, honestly, I had a great time working on the Codex and was/am super excited about it!), but I feel like spending this much effort on QoL stuff might be taken amiss, so it really does help to hear this.
Funny, someone I showed it to immediately brought up Civpedia! Which I hadn't seen before, I *think*. I played some of the very early civ games back in the 90s, so it's all very hazy
About game mechanics stuff in the Codex - I've been looking at it and it's a 50/50, I'd say. I've already set up a category for it (thinking of naming it something like "Spacer's manual", to frame it in an in-fiction way) and set up a simple text-based format for easily typing out text with some formatting and highlights and doing entry linking (and making it so mods can easily add text-based entries this way, too). The main issue here is actually creating the content, it needs to be good enough and enough of it and I don't want to have it be something that explains every little detail (and is horribly dry as a result), so there's a balance to strike there.
The plan is to work on it on and off in the coming months and then see where it's at, whether it's worth including or not. *Very* much open to suggestions about what would be good to talk about there, and what specific points might be helpful to mention! In my mind, it should be aimed at a player that just got the hang of things - so, not completely new, but someone that's found their footing but is still very much early-intermediate and would be able to both understand some simple advice and benefit the most from it.
