This add a lot of flavor indeed, congrats to you having the courage to tweak all these files!

Excellent and fun! That's funny because I'm doing the same exact thing in another game at the moment!

And thanks again for your excellent mod. I wish you could help also fixing vanilla issues, like you said in another thread that many events are not weighted properly, perhaps these things, you can fix in your mod? 

Here is a screeny for you, I guess you like when people play your mod:

Hey there! I do enjoy a screenshot! I'm glad you are enjoying the mod... I don't get to play very much sadly, so I never have time to come up with fun descriptions lol!

Is there a particular vanilla bug? If you are talking about events and their results... well, I do try to balance those a bit, but it's in the eye of the beholder after all.

AH yes, the early events have a duplicate file... but in my last released I largely solved that, by taking one file and removing all but 1 entry, and leaving the other file active with all of the entries. (They are named different files, so if I just removed one or the other, the game would default to using both again). 

Anywho... regarding anomalies.

Here are the active categories, their likelihood (weight score, which I admit, I don't fully understand) and number of events (actually this is my current count, which is slightly higher because the next version of GRM will be adding about 4 Salvage variants and 3-10 new Encounters).

Encounters (20 Weight) 35 events

Salvage (20 Weight) 12 events

Ship Graveyards (15 Weight) 14 events

Precursor Anomalies (5 Weight) 12 events

Default GC3 has less of all of these and removed ship graveyards and still has some standard "artifacts" that are not defended/not precursor artifacts. I rolled those artifact events in the Encounters category and then disabled it.

What you are noticing is that Precursor Anomalies have been set much, much, much lower. A weight of 5 means that I typically only see one or two in a large map. They currently all use the same model, a crystal techy thing surrounded by a cloud. I chose to do this for two main reasons. 

1) The precursor anomalies were very common in the past, and extremely powerful.

2) The game's AI players never explore guarded anomalies such as ship graveyards or precursor anomalies and the auto-survey command largely ignores guarded anomalies.

This means that they represent a GROSS advantage for the player if these things are common. The ship graveyards are not nearly as powerful, so I brought them back, but the precursor anomalies are so broken I didn't really consider them worthwhile.

If you really love them, just go into 

C:\Users\User\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\GRM-Anomalies\Game

Find "DLC4_AnomalyDefs" and open the file. You'll see this entry:

  <AnomalyGroup>

    <InternalName>PrecursorAnomaly</InternalName>

    <DisplayName>PrecursorAnomaly_Name</DisplayName>

    <Weight>5</Weight>

Change the 5 to say 15, and you should start seeing many more of these.

As for Horemvore, I don't know exactly how he modified these events/etc. as I can't get his downloaded file to open/etc. (I was hoping to learn from some of his work on diplomacy/etc.). It's not the first time Horemvore has gotten fed up and stopped supporting his mod, so you never know, he might come back.

Regarding the anomalies... I obviously converted many of the default anomalies into my style/etc. but probably ALL of the Encounter category is new... so that's about 35. There definitely is something weird about "weights" though, because I often find the same events are biased towards showing up repeatedly despite all the events having the same weight score. Well... almost all... there are some extremely rare ones... space mollusks for example.

Regarding colonial events... yeah I converted them to my style, but I only probably added 5 or so brand new events. 

... Continuing to work on dialogue... the weighting of speech options is so incoherent and haphazard. Some have values like 1, 2, and 3... others have 3001, and many at 100/200. 

It's not that it doesn't function, because the sets of values are usually used within a particular group of choices... but the inconsistency makes it very hard to work across multiple files that need to cooperate. So I'm having to set a new standard.

In addition, to relax... lol... I've tweaked the Ideology buildings.

• Added back in a Neutral (Individualism) ideology producing building.
• All ideology producing buildings generate .25 instead of .1 points per turn. Also made them cheaper to build.
• Startup ideology buildings grant an artifact bonus and upon gaining cultural outreach tech, can be upgraded to gain another 2 charges and increase ideology point production from 1 per turn to 3 per turn.

1) Are you using any other mods... ones that perhaps modify anomalies as well? Would probably throw things off.

2) You could certainly open the files and tweak the weights to your liking.

3) As for salvage... I disagree... the salvages are almost always a few credits which is very needed in the early game to keep you from hitting 0 cash too quickly. Additionally they very often produce upgraded engines/weapons/scanners for the survey ship, keeping them relevant into mid game.

4) Trelkarian use the Minzari shipset which is a attempt to recreate the Minbari ships from Babylon 5.

5) I also don't really like the Arkborne Redeemers... I almost never play with them in-game. Their ships are too samey and are just space-submarines. They were an experiment to utilize the spin-drive component I devised and it didn't work out. BUT my favorite fighter was made for them and I subsequently placed that into the Terran Sovereignty, so some good came of it!

Latest anomaly...

I have been playing with occasional anomalies. I can't say I'm checking what the salvage anomalies does, they all give 5 xp and 20 credits for me more or less. Perhaps if the flavor text was different ? Or they do something slightly cooler? An occasional durantium or resource?

The encounters, I have one every 1000 parsecs I will probably not play again in occasional, but then I fear to be swamped in a game of whack a mole with anomalies if I crank up probabilities ... So encounters, I might have seen 4 different (in a game where I control 20.000 parsecs). They are very rare.

Precursor anomalies: Never had or even saw a single one. Same game. 140 turns. Big empire.

Conclusion: yes the weights play weirdly. And anomaly frequency jumps quite a big between 2 settings.

Colonial Events: I think they play a bit part in the fun, to have a lot. Horemvore added a lot. Perhaps you can borrow some from his mod? 

Quick update: 3.6 Opt-In seems fully compatible with GRM, no need to update GRM and you can safely use 3.6 Opt In.

Galactic Trade Commission is a one per empire building that greatly increase trade income.

Interstellar Travel Bureau is a one per empire building that is essentially the same as the Import/Export Center (tourism).

Blackmarket Hub is a Starbase Module. -.1 mining (so negates your initial mining module) in exchange for +10 credits per turn and +10 influence per turn to the Starbase.

Master Merchants are a promotion of Entrepreneur, they continue to act as Entrepreneur but increase factions Trade Route and Diplomatic Trade values by 20%. Increase trade routes by 1. Costs 5 Promethion and Viriles. So cheaper than a Mogul (because a Mogul is far better frankly). Limit of 5 total Master Merchants.

Enables Tourism... earlier, cheaper, and via economic tech (commerce) instead of a cultural line.

"edit, citizens: if you can manage to have all citizens recallable, that would be a boon."

Yeah I'll see about it, but so far it is eluding me... and I'm glad you like the Black Market Hub!

I'm now working on "Isolationists" which will be intended to be a race that wants to build tall and not wide. I just got a neat little setup to work for them... they get +300% to Growth, Research, Military, and Social production on their homeworld. They get -50% to those stats to all other worlds. Furthermore they get 10 interceptors on their homeworld and first shipyard but nothing else. They also are very hard to culture flip (I think there rebellion resistance is a +20 stat... not certain how it translates, but I copied the ability from a default one.

They'll be very broken on smaller maps... but on larger ones I'm hoping it will even out. 

2) are you sure there is enough tiles on the planet grid? how the game determines which ones are unlocked

3) I would favor having them as colony ships, so they can't escape orbit without penalty. Think like an emergency retreat, you need 1B on each. Can be 'fun'

5) The one problem there is to solve here is AI colonizing in your turf. And then losing planets through flip. So you still end up with many planets. I guess the commonwealth will be the answer here too. But it means you'll be drawn into wars I guess!

Seems a very interesting race to try. Can it be adopted by any race or it will be locked to only a few? 

Alrighty. Done with Isolationists.

They get some hardcore bonuses to homeworlds and -80% to all other worlds to most stats. They also get ship components for orbital labs, research, and mining. They also get a one of a kind +1000% sensor range to homeworld ship component.

That with the crazy terraform techs I think makes it feasible to play a one-world empire. I'll probably add a lot more to these later, but for now I think its enough to feel really special. I should note that I wouldn't really give this ability to AI players... they won't use the ship components, and while they probably will use the Techs... they will still try to colony rush and it'll be counter productive.

I'm only having one species use this trait by default... just to see how it goes and they are a "minor" faction in my opinion. (Elo Sequesterary)

Moving on to the "Veteran" trait now dubbed "Militarists".

+50% Homeworld Military Production, Double legion quality, start with War Machine tech and a Commander/etc.

this ability will get numerous military themed techs and ship components, but none of them are likely to be related to ship-to-ship weaponry. For example, one of their earlier items gives them the ability to produce the Planetary Defense Network, which assists morale, ship building, grants 3 garrisons and 3 interceptors. Furthermore they have a tech or two that simply improves soldiering and rewards 10 legions (and later 20). No durantium costs or wasted citizens here in this man's army!

Ship components will likely be things that simulate commander bonuses but at the cost of admins. So I'm thinking a command module of +25% logistics and some flat bonuses to fleet move/defenses for an admin. Later a component that is one per empire, and doubles the capacity and HP of a single ship (Flagship). You get the idea.

A few other tweaks... Industrialists will be the next ability to add to, but I also just gave it +50% homeworld social production. Furthermore the ability that grants interceptors on every world/etc. is now interceptors, start with 10 legions, +1 Agent and is called "Guarded". It won't have unique techs or anything.

You sir, are either an evil man or, given your avatar, a good Dalek   

Looks - and sounds - wonderful!