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No Clustered Starts

On the Game Details screen, set Empire Placement to Clusters.

Updated for 3.12.*, if that is not the latest version please post in the comments!

The latest and past versions of the mod can also be found on Github: https://github.com/Potawto/no-clustered-starts/
Some old versions can be found on the Workshop, links below.


The mod works for multiplayer.

Clustered Players and Distributed Players should both work to spread empires evenly, but how they affect players spawning in relation to one another I don't know for certain. People have told me Clustered Players seemed to put players closer together.


This mod also makes the following 3 slight changes:

1. All galaxy shapes are enabled for small and tiny galaxies. No effort has been made to clean up the generation, so the shapes may be a bit messy.
   
2. Allows you to select 0 empires on the Game Details screen à la Singleplayer Game by oriramikad.
   
3. Allows you to select more than the standard number of empires and fallen empires.

These changes only affect the galaxy options screen. These changes were made to allow people to play with this mod despite compatibility issues with other mods that made these changes.

Additionally, the old map/galaxy/base.txt file is still in this mod. It might cause warnings in the Stellaris logs during startup but I have not seen it cause any problems, as the game no longer uses it as it was replaced by galaxy_shapes.txt. Leaving the file in makes the mod easily compatible with many more older versions of Stellaris without extra work by users.


This mod is very likely to work for future patches without a mod update, so after a major patch (or a beta update) try using the mod even if the launcher yells at you for using an out-dated mod. Mod updates still continue to come if only for the compatibility flag. I might be slow and forgetful, though, so leave a comment.

There are old versions of the mod available for earlier versions of Stellaris:

• 1.4: http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=950690151
  
• 1.9: http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1309681830
  
• 2.0: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1392398852
  
• 2.1: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584392090

If I break the mod with an update, try this version:

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3245695961



This mod functions by changing the cluster mechanic. It sets the number of clusters to 1, the center of this cluster to the center of the galaxy, and makes it almost as big as the galaxy. This puts all empires in the same cluster. The next thing it does is set the distance between empires much higher than normal to try to force the game to place empires as far apart as possible.



If you have a mod that adds galaxy shapes and want them to be compatible with this mod, give me the names as they appear in the code (eg: spiral_3) and I will add them.

The mod is unlikely to be compatible with any mod that affects the galaxy map, including number of stars. Specifically, the mod is incompatible with any mod that edits the base galaxy shapes file (map/galaxy/galaxy_shapes.txt, this used to be map/galaxy/base.txt) or any of the galaxy size files (map/setup_scenarios). If you want to use an incompatible mod, I recommend making local edits to that other mod: explanation of how to do this can be found in the pinned discussions.



To help with this, here are a few mods that do what this mod does and more!

• PEST Multiplayer Spread aims to further improve empire spread primarily for multiplayer games.
  
• Epic Galaxies offers galaxies with more stars, among other things. Hasn't been updated in a long time.
  
• Fallen Empires Expanded by Surfacerunner improves Fallen Empires. Hasn't been updated in a long time.

The screenshots featured above are almost but not perfectly accurate. In the current version of the mod, empires do not spawn along the outer edge of the galaxy (specifically the outer 20% of the galaxy radius). They are also from a time when borders were blobby circles instead of around individual stars.