Ahhh ... lots of updates and a sticky. Feels good.
The waters fine, I'll jump in... I hope people will correct what I;m writing if its totaly wrong. But this question does come up once and a while.
16.# Combining MODs
16.#.1 Always put each mod in its individual subdirectory. If the mod changes a file, the subdirectory will contain a new file. If the mod subdirectory doesn't contain a certain file, SE4 uses the file from the default directory.
16.#.2 Once you've the MODs in their own subdirectory, you can see two MODs side by side.
16.#.3 If they don't modify the same file, it's easy to put them together. Just copy files over. Or create a new mod folder for your merged MOD.
16.#.4 If they do modify the same file, now you have some work to do. The data files are all text. You can cut and paste, but you have to be careful.
16.#.4.1 Definitely create a new folder for your new mod.
16.#.4.2 You have to check if there are redundant items, or incompatible items in the text files for your merged mod, and make some decisions about what to include.
16.#.4.3 Putting extra blank lines between text blocks and at the end of a text file has been known to confuse SE4 and cause it to not load the file.
16.#.4.4 Altering the order of some components has been know to affect the AI's ability to use a component. This is especially true with the colonization techs.
[ November 10, 2002, 13:15: Message edited by: Arkcon ]