SWLunatic

I totally agree with your vision of a map full of planets. Since I wasn't able to enable having 100-200+ planets on my PC, I thought of possibly creating separate galaxy maps for each era of play (Old Republic, Rise of the Empire, Rebellion, etc.), but the lack of modded units doesn't really make it a possibility right now. Also, namspopof, I installed the Strategic Improvement Mod and tried to check out the created GC maps of 70-130 planets each. At the first option screen where you can choose which map you wish to use, I could see the appropriate number of planets in the display on the right, but as soon as I started the game, all I had on my screen were the default planets on a very LARGE galaxy map which had the scale increased. Is this the way it's supposed to be, or do I have to do something else?

I'll compile a list of all the planet models used in EaW and FoC so that you know what types are available for your mod. As for creating new models/skins, I believe you need a program such as 3dsMax 7 or 8. When I get some spare time outside of work and family, I'll try and create a basic tutorial on how to add planets, as well as a list of what utilities you will need to help you edit the planets.

namspopof, may I ask what the specs are on the computer that you are using to develop the galactic map? I run a 2.4GHz P4 with an ATI Radeon 9800 256mb DDR and 1.5GB of RAM. When I was creating a very similar galactic map using sources from the same map and the map in the back of The New Essential Chronology, I suffered from severe lag when I tried to move my heroes and units from planet to planet. I would say that I had between 100-200 planets spanning the Old Republic era to the New Jedi Order era. I am very interested to know if I am suffering from processor lag or video card memory lag.

Since I have had a decent amount of experience adding over 100+ planets to my own personal mod, I would be willing to help answer any questions you might have.

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong board. Hi - new to the boards as well as to the modding world. After getting EaW and realizing the great potential I've seen to edit the game into something even better, I decided to start modding, by learning how to edit the text in the various xml and txt files. My first project was to tackle the lack of planets as I saw the galaxy. Using a combination of the New Essential Chronology and a couple of online maps, I began adding planets and organizing them in such a way as to portray the SW galaxy as it appears. I enlarged the scale of the galaxy background map, reduced the size of the planets, and then began adding many, many, many planets. I know, nerd, huh? Anyway, I would say I had added around 100+ planets to the already existing 44 or so. After I added each individual planet, I would check in-game to make sure I had no crashing issues. I could freely move the camera back and forth to any spot in the galaxy without any lag problems. Where my problem arose, was when I started trying to play a GC and realized how much lag I had built up when I tried to simply move the Emperor from one planet to another. My question through all this is: Is the lag produced from adding planets affecting my PC memory or my video card's memory? I have about 256mb of video card memory and 1.5gb of PC memory.