Does anyone got a guide for custom Race and system creation? I'd like something different from the standard sol start.
As in ideas or as in "how do I functionally do this?"
For the latter:
1. Start a new game, under Starting Race select "Create Spacemaster Empire". At this point, all the population, species and starting empire parameters are junk because they'll be tossed out anyways. Everything else is still used though.
2. Create your game.
3. Start the game. Go to Game, Select Default Race, and choose "SM Race" (your only option). Then go to SpaceMaster and select SpaceMaster On.
4. Press F9 to get to the System Display screen. Start hitting "Create System" and/or "Create Nebula" (if you turned Real Stars off).
5. Keep doing so until you find one you like with a suitable world (must have a sufficient amount of either Oxygen or Methane, and no hazardous components such as ammonia, sulfur dioxide, etc.)
6. Select that world, click "HW Minerals", then "Create Empire". From here you can set up your new race. Be sure to select "New Species" and it will generate a species whose tolerances are centered around the temp, gravity and atmosphere of the world you selected.
Now as for ideas:
1. I often like to go back in and add Sol and populate it with an NPR Terran Federation.
2. Methane breathers can be an interesting change of pace. N-O worlds will be poisonous to you, but there's somewhat more methane-bearing worlds out there than oxygen-bearing ones. This is counterbalanced by the fact that these will tend to be in the outer reaches of a system, so more travel time between planets in-system. Another consideration is that I don't think NPRs are EVER generated as methane-breathers, so if you want to try a pacifist run you could do this and try splitting systems with the air-breathers ("you take Earth and Mars, I'll settle Titan"). Your ideal temperature range is liable to be WAY lower, meaning more habitable rocks with a bit of terraforming.
3. Tolerance ranges are calculated as a percentile so starting on a high-gravity world will give you a wider gravity tolerance range. However, there are more rocks in the <1G range than there are in the >1G range. So starting on a smaller planet may open up a wider range of settlements.
4. Keep in mind that certain characteristics tend to "clump" like low G and low atmos. If you start on a high-G world with a thin atmosphere or a low-G world with a thick one, you may have trouble finding suitable worlds without serious terraforming.
5. Gravity is the real stumbling block. Barring atmospheric hazards, atmos gives you a max of x2 colony cost. Temperature can give you a significant malus if it's extreme (a Venusian hellworld with 1300C for instance) but typically a fairly weak effect on most somewhat habitable worlds. Gravity is either a yes/no, not a cost modifer (which is a bit silly). If your gravity tolerance range stops at 0.3G and you find a lovely rich world with 0.29G, it's not colonizable unless you do some genetic modification.
6. With that in mind, I often play *either* a race of terraformers or a race of gene-tinkers, but not both.
7. As far as custom systems, try starting in a nebula. You'll need to dump a lot of tech points into armor early on to manage decent in-system speed. But this also means that your home system is relatively safe for the first 100 years or so, as enemy invaders hit the nebula and are left slow and blind. And when your ships venture outside the nebula, they're going to be over-engineered in terms of armor and sensors.
8. Alternately, with a trinary or quaternary system, you could spend a century just developing your home system (especially with hyperdrives still broken). Craptons of resources if there's plenty of moons and/or asteroids.