The power vs range aspect is a feature that will be necessary if we're going to implement the "research by scanning" features.
I'd be pretty annoyed if this system wasn't in for the random events. I'm not saying any more than that though...
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At first glance, some people may think the XML code that has been posted is pretty daunting from a modding point of view. But once you start to really read and take in what it says, you'll realise just how moddable this system will be. For simple mods, it's a simple matter of changing numbers - that's it!
And for more complex mods, it's a matter of adding in/removing whatever variables you need.
What could be simpler than that? I really am exciting as to what posibilities this system will mean for modding purposes...
. If you guys really want to look at what you can do with the game, start looking through the data files that come with the demo. The 'Resources\Data' directory contains all the XML files; the 'Resources\Tables' directory contains a bunch of tables, including all of the variables used for the galaxy generator. The tables are tab-delimited, so it's best (and easiest) to just open them in Microsoft Excel.