after playing the game for around 20 hours now and dived into the modding part of the game.
The game is currently still in its baby steps modding wise. There are some basic things you can do currently but nothing extraordinary. There are a few major issues the modding system has that will most likely cause big issues later on, so ill just jump right into it.
One major issue is, that a new save has to be created everytime you change values in xml, because the game saves all values in the savegame and doesnt reload them. It would be great if non critical parts of the xml get refreshed on every game load, id rather wait a bit longer for the game to load instead of having to restart after many hours of playing.
Major issue 2: Manual ID assignment on orbs, bases and basically everything. If modders have to manually assign IDs to their structures, we will have a major mod conflict source. Minecraft had this issue a very long time and it was frustrating to say the least. A better system would be, to automatically assign Ids by the game not the mod authors themselves. Have the game check for empty slots and just place the object id there. Another major issue is, is that mod authors also have to connect research projects and facility types via IDs. Instead of using IDs, have the modders use a unique identifier, which again removes one of the largest sources of mod conflict.
Another big issue that will come in once the modding scene has grown a bit larger, is the 255 orb id limit. It might sound big, but it isnt. We currently have 39 orb types in the base game, lets say normal dlcs add another 25 or so. Then we might get a megastructure dlc that adds ringworlds or habitats, then the base game uses up around 60-70 ids alone. Now lets take an example, a mod like planetary diversity adds another 54 planets alone and then another 30 sub planet types. which already puts the count up a big amount. Then mods like legandary worlds or unique worlds again add 40 special planet types together and we really get close to the limit there. I know that increasing this id limit would also increase the memory overhead of the game, but it will be needed in the future.
Something i already pointed out, we need a way to patch xml files without overriding them.
Thanks, btw the game i great, cant stop playing
