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Stay In Line

A simple mod enforcing common "fair-play" rules found in multiplayer games, both for players and AIs.

This mod is new and therefore to be considered EXPERIMENTAL. It has not been play-tested much yet, so constructive reviews are welcome!

Latest mod version: v0.0.1 (compatible with Stellaris v3.4.*, tested with Stellaris v3.4.4).


This mod prevents players (both human and AI-controlled) from doing the following actions:

• Making claims that are not in-line: a claim can only be made if a neighboring system is already claimed or owned by the player making the claim, one of their federation members, or if the neighboring system is controlled by a neutral party (i.e. not the owner of the claimed system, or one of their federation members).
• Performing an hyperdrive jump into ennemy territory: ships cannot jump into systems controlled by war ennemies. A system cannot be hyperjumped into if either the starbase or any of the planets is controlled by a war ennemy.

All of the above rules can be separately enabled or not, or further configured by the host of the game. See the configuration section below for more information.

Additional rules will be added in future versions of this mod, and suggestions are always welcome.


In short: Smoother multiplayer games, and less player drama. :)

This mod was designed for use in competitive and semi-competitive multiplayer games.

In those environments, Game Hosts often ask their players to follow extra rules and restrictions on what the vanilla game allows, in order to try and provide a better and more "fair" experience to all of their players. In-Line Claims and Hyperdrive Jump restrictions are amongst the most common.

While these rules are indeed often good for the game itself, they can be complex or frustrating for players to follow: because the base game doesn't know about these rules and can't tell them what's valid or not, players have to make quite a few actions and spend a substantial amount of time and brainpower to figure out if their action is valid.
This is even more critical in wartime contexts, where fast, tactical thinking is often required.

This makes even well-meaning players prone to mistakingly break the rules, and also makes well-meaning witnessing object to rulebreaks, which will slow the game down and create unneeded tension between the players, even if it is later found that no rule was broken in the end.

Additionally, AI-controlled Empires also have no knowledge of those rules, and will often be found happily breaking them.

This mod fixes these issues by encoding the rules right into the game itself, making breaking them impossible. This means:

• AIs have to follow the rules, as the game now knows that illegal actions are impossible to perform
• Ill-meaning players cannot use rule breaking to their advantages, whether their behavior is noticed or not;
• Well-meaning players cannot break rules by mistake, and do not have to spend time double-checking if their action is valid or not: the game will show them what's possible or not, and they can intuitively adapt their tactics accordingly;
• The host and/or other players do not have to check if an action they witness is valid or not: they can trust the mod to do so for them;
• If a rule-breaking action is believed to have happened, players can blame the mod instead of each other. The mod does not yet have any ability to get its feelings hurt by players.

If you are invited into a multiplayer game, you have nothing to do besides installing this mod. :)

If you are hosting a multiplayer game, or playing a new singleplayer game, this mod's "Game Rules Configuration" window will show up at the start of the game, which you can use to input the rules you have decided.
See the configuration section below for more information.


At the start of the game, the host will be prompted to input the rules into the "Game Rules Configuration" window. The host can also open this window again at any point in the game by using a special "Configure Game Rules" edict, which costs and does nothing but make the configuration window appear again.

All changes made in this window are applied immediately when selected, and are saved inside the save game file as you would expect. This means you can test, try out, and change all of the settings in the middle of a running game, to see which ones suits you and/or your players best.

The individual rules can be configured in the following ways:

• In-Line Claims can be configured to only be enforced until a given year (available options are: 2220, 2230, 2250, 2300, 2350, 2400). Starting at and past that year, the rule will automatically not be enforced anymore, so players can claim to their heart's contents.
  
  It can also be set to "Always" (which means In-Line Claims will be enforced during the whole game), and "Never" (the default, which simply disables the rule and lets players claim like without this mod).
• Hyper Jumps can be restricted to systems controlled by:
  
  • Allies only: only allows your ships to jump into systems you or your federation members fully control;
  • Neutral Empires: like "Allies only", but additionally allows your ships to jumps into systems controlled by players you are not at war with;
  • Everyone: the default, ships can jump anywhere within their normal jump radius, like without this mod.
  
  Additionally, the "Allow jumping into adjacent systems" can be activated to also allow your ships to jump into a system if any neighboring system (by hyperlane) is validated by the rule selected above (as your ships could already freely enter the system by hyperlane anyway).

In order to enforces these rules, this mod overrides the following game system rules (in common/game_rules):

• can_enter_system_by_jump
• can_add_claim

Any mods that also override these rules will either be broken or break this mod (depending on the load order), and are therefore incompatible with this mod.
Specific popular mods that present compatibility issues with the SIL mod will be added to this list as I find them.