Yep, this old mod kills Star Children altogether. You don't spawn in. Ah well, the mod author is kinda gone, so not recommending trying to use it.

The mod is old enough that it may not be compatible with the latest version of the game.

I'm having trouble getting starchildren to work with this mod, as in I don't spawn in the game at all...

How close to the original ship design mechanic does this mod come? My understanding of why that mechanic was changed was due to many players not grasping the system, not due to problems with the mechanic. Is this correct?

Hexes is how many hexes a subsystem contains, which means it's never going to work with hull subsystems. :P

Ah, that's interesting.

Either way, the variable as I was trying to use it wasn't working, so I made a new one to replace it to see if that would help.

So far, it works, but not perfectly, so I'll have to test it out some more and work through the problem before I continue on.

FreeHexLimit is simply a hex that doesn't count towards the size calculation. To use an example from the base game:

Getting the Progressive attitude up to T5 will increase your flagship hex limit by 14 hexes. This, under the previous system, would have been pointless - it would, as I said before, give you the same strength for more effort.

FreeHexLimit helps bypass this. Progressive increases HexLimit by 14 hexes, yes - but it also increases FreeHexLimit by 14 hexes. The result is that HexSize is still calculated with the 128-hex limit, but you can design ships with the improved 142-hex limit. Which means they're stronger.

Alright, after some testing, I got the FreeHexLimit variable to work as it seems it should.

For some reason "hexes" wasn't cutting it, so I made the FreeHexLimit equal to ShipTotalHexes - ShipExternalHexes. The Ship.HexSize is equal to Size / Hexlimit - FreeHexLimit, which appears to have been a recent addition indeed.

Now when one adds more weaponry and other subsystems, other stats on other subsystems will change according to the HexSize. I actually like this change, it makes the editor more of a balancing act and doesn't punish the player for not using all of the hexlimit, as a ship of size 200 using 50 hexes will (barring the obvious stuff such as design choices, weaponry, and so on) be as useful as a ship using 100 hexes by principle.

Though, this does effectively make this mod more cosmetic than anything, but it does change some of the mechanics behind the game's ship design now. I rather like that. I'll upload the changes momentarily.

Yeah, it doesn't seem to be working like it looks like it should be. This is something I'm gonna have to toy with some more, it seems.

FreeHexLimit. Hmm.

That would be quite important for point 1 as well as point 2 - you'll have to make the extra hexes apply through FreeHexLimit instead of HexLimit.

Like I said, not really sure where the AI get's its "randomized" designs, but it appears to not be necessary anyway...

As for point 2, looking at the calculation, that doesn't seem to be true. There's a FreeHexLimit in the calculation that doesn't punish players for not using hexes out of the total limit. I'm not sure if this was a recent change or not, but I don't remember seeing that before Heralds. I could be mistaken though.

Though that is a nice addition, helps balance against the Ai, but makes this change a bit of a cosmetic one than anything, so in the end, I suppose it doesn't matter either way. Me, personally, I like a lotta guns on my boats of death.

So I guess I'll see about addressing the grid size problem in a more reasonable fashion. Reasonable being not making the grid so big that scrollbars magically appear in the editor.

2. Yeah, I just wanted to comment on what exactly would happen if you exceeded the grid size.

3. It's easy to test. Enter the sandbox, open up a design with the Colossus Hull (just to make the results really obvious), and then generate a random design. The design generator will never create a ship with over 128 hexes.

1. No. I suspect it's a common error among those who look at the way that part of the game works, because it seems a tad counterintuitive.

How this works is that the 'Size' of a subsystem (which is the primary factor in determining how effective it is) is calculated from the amount of hexes (intuitive) and the size of the hexes (intuitive). The size of the hexes is determined from the ship's size (intuitive) and the hex limit (either 'intuitive' or 'holy crap, what is this?', depending on how you look at it).

By increasing the hex limit, you make each individual hex smaller. By decreasing the hex limit, you make each individual hex larger. By changing the size of each hex, you reduce its effectiveness and force the player to add more hexes to compensate.

All fair points, but allow me to counterargue them.

1) It's not pointless, with more hexes being used up one can have more shielding, more power generation, more crew for repairs, more weapons of varying sizes. It generally improves all aspects of a ship at the cost of making them even more expensive. A ship of the same size in vanilla would be weaker to one with the variable hex limits.

2) This formula goes up to a set limit, and I did offer ideas regarding making the grid size a little variable as well. So that's not much of an issue to address, though I'll look into the how.

3) I haven't done any AI-modding, so I'm not sure how the AI treats its designs. You're likely right in this regard.

I'm no stranger to hex limit modification, having done it with several of my shipsets (simply to ensure that I can match the shape of the hull without being a lot weaker or a lot more expensive than I should), but there's a few flaws with what you're doing:

1. It's pointless, you still get the same ship strength, just with more work.

2. If at some point you do run into a ship that has more internal space than the grid will allow, you essentially have a ship that's not running at peak performance.

3. The random design generator used by the AI doesn't even handle Destroyers, Titans or Colossi - of course it won't handle your stuff. Even the Oko, who just upscale their default designs, will fail to adapt to this and encounter radically weakened ships later in the game.