Diverse New Frontiers (Updated / 3.03b)

3.0 update

Recent changes to the engine in Planetary Diversity meant the way this mod previously worked no longer functioned as intended, as it disabled both regular and rare PD worlds. I’ve now changed the approach of this mod so that the PD engine is no longer disabled, but rather is materially altered to the effect that (i) PD’s regular worlds can now spawn normally, but should be very rare, (ii) PD’s rare worlds should continue to spawn – potentially slightly less often than before (difficult to gauge) and (iii) most inhabitable worlds will still spawn as vanilla or New Frontiers sub-classes. These changes make the mod harder to maintain but mean it now governs the balance of worlds being spawned (rather than this being determined by PD / RS). Let me know if you see any balance issues with the current spawn rate.

Planetary Diversity and Real Space New Frontiers are two of the best designed mods on the workshop. The art in both is fantastic and significantly improves the visual diversity of the game. It’s difficult to pick between them. My preference is, fairly marginally, for the approach taken (sub-classes rather than new planet classes) and art in New Frontiers. But the extra content and rare planets from Planetary Diversity’s sub-mods are almost impossible to ignore.

This is (at the moment) a simple compatibility patch between the two mods to try and have my cake and eat it too. It re-enables the engine spawning New Frontiers’ sub-classes on game start and (largely) disables that spawning the basic Planetary Diversity planets (the reverse of what will happen if you have the two mods installed without this patch). Planetary Diversity’s basic planets should now only spawn if they are selected as a home world on game start or as a result of guaranteed neighbouring planets. The "rare" Planetary Diversity planet classes will still spawn as normal, as will anything added by the various sub-mods. The overriding goal is to maximise the amount and variety of the art visible in game.

It also merges the changes both mods make to planetary deposits.

I’ve tested this and it seems to work well. The only real bug thrown up by this was graphical, and should be fixed. But please consider this mod a beta for the moment. Taken out of beta as no significant bugs found.

However, there definitely remain areas of – I think – relatively minor incompatability between the two mods and obviously a fair few points which overlap. Please let me know if you find anything that needs fixing. If this is popular I may develop it further.

I’m keeping a running list of areas of overlap that could be enhanced. Please see the pinned discussion. I make absolutely no promises about fixing these as most are pretty minor and require much more invasive patching than I’ve had to do so far, which will then be far more time consuming to keep updated. That said, if the change required is minor and / or significantly immersion breaking I’ll take a look at it.

Below Planetary Diversity, its sub-mods, Real Space and New Frontiers. In that order. Tested with the order and mods below. Note I have not tested this with Real Space: Planetary Exploration.

UI Overhaul Dynamic
Guilli’s Planet Modifiers and Features
Planetary Diversity
Planetary Diversity – Exotic Worlds
Planetary Diversity – Gaia Worlds
Planetary Diversity – More Arcologies
Planetary Diversity – Planetary Habitats
Planetary Diversity – Shroud Worlds
Planetary Diversity – Space Habitats
Planetary Diversity – Unique Worlds
Planetary Diversity – New Worlds Module
UI Overhaul Dynamic + Planetary Diversity
Real Space 3.7
Real Space – System Scale
Real Space – New Frontiers
Diverse New Frontiers

I do this for fun, absolutely no need to support this. But, as I’ve received a few requests now, if you’d like to support my modding donations to the link below are gratefully received.

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