Didn't these BotF galaxies sometimes look a bit empty? ^^
For every map size, there's one reference value which controls the total number of stars (including anomalies). The exact number is also subject to some sort of random generator, but it will still be close to the corresponding reference value. Their positions and default values are:
reference value for small map
position 0xAF8AB
default 0x30
reference value for medium map
position 0xAFA25
default 0x46
reference value for large map
position 0xAFA3B
default 0x5A
Their length is always 4 bytes. (should be more than enough ^^)
Minor Races "go extra", so maps with many minors will generally have more star systems than maps with few or no minors.
So, neglecting minors, there are approx. 48 stars on a small map and about 90 on a large map. But a large map contains 450 sectors. Let's see what happens if we set the reference value for large maps to 600:
Not bad. There's still a limit - we get about 200 stars, not more (further increasing the reference value does not change that).
So much for the moderate part
Remember that old topic about Galaxy Control Values?
At position
0x17D568
there's a value controlling the Galactic Density. It's 500 by default. Increasing it with the above reference values staying at their defaults did not seem to do anything, but now we have higher reference values. So let's just set the Galactic Density to some astronomically high number and see what happens:
The stars are packed so tightly that, apparently, the game has run out of system names (or slots of some kind), and the bottom area is completely empty.
Now back to that old topic. At position
0x17D538
(thanks again to Spocks-cuddly-tribble for correcting the offset) we have the star/anomaly ratio. It's 5/6 by default. We set it to 1/2, prepare for some scan values close to -200 (^^) and watch the result:
The star system limit is found at position 0xAFA49 and at position 0xAFA94.Gowron wrote:apparently, the game has run out of system names (or slots of some kind), and the bottom area is completely empty.
2 bytes signed = 32767 systems max. Default 0xE6 (230)
Note changing of the limiting value at both positions is needed!
It is believed to avert:
NOTE: If starname.bin runs out of names game will crash or freeze during map creation.