Hey, I wanted the same thing as you, and I found a solution that has been working great so far and I'm currently at ~mid-game. Personally, the ship selection forced upon some empires is probably the only actual complaint I have about the mod, as opposed to "things I just want". I really love this mod though...but I don't how anyone thought it wouldn't be completely immersion-breaking to play as a Sith Empire that uses Mon-Cal ships. Anyway...

You are going to have to edit just one game file, and it will be super simple.

1. Open the mod file, go to the "events" folder immediately after opening, then search for a file called "swp_country_formation_events".
2. Save a copy outside of the mod folder, because you are responsible. Personally, I keep a back-up file on my desktop for every file I edit, so I can stare it and blame myself when my game crashes...and know where to start looking. (But it won't crash from this.)
3. Open the file within the mod, and use CTRL+F to find all 3 instances of "the_centrality" and replace each one with "ciutric_hegemony". Technically, you could use any faction with any ship-set you want, but I don't know what kind of chaos would reign on the event scripts if the game had no Galactic Empire.
4. Technically, you can stop right there, save the file, then start a new game as the Ciutric Hegemony and you will be able to become the Sith Empire in exactly the same manor as before but you will have ships that don't look unbecoming for a Sith Emperor.
(Or, additionally...If you want cool imperial uniforms, the ability to make the Death Star, and the option to have Admiral Darth Vader...)

5. After you replace "the_centrality" for the third time, you will see the third instance of "kissai_remnant" just a couple lines below that after the phrase "set_country_flag". If you replace that third instance of "kissai_remnant" with "galactic_empire", it will turn your new Sith Empire into one the game confers many elements of the Galactic Empire onto. The Empire will still exist and diplomacy and everything else still proceeds as if you are two seperate entities. And you can just save, and stop right there.

(Or...additionally...you can change your ethics to make yourself more militarized...)

6. Within the same file, CTRL+F "swp_country_formation.22.a" and you will see a list of all of the types of ethics, copy that exact list. Then go back to where you just changed the country flag, and delete the smaller version of that list of ethics and paste this new one in its place.
7. Under your new list you will see the two ethics that the Sith Empire adopt when you change your empire into that one. Personally, I'm not a big fan of those ethics because they get in the way of my tyranny, slightly. So I replace them with "ethic_fanatic_militarist" and "ethic_authoritarian". Now you have a Sith Empire with both the proper look and attitude to conquer literally anything. Save the file. Enjoy.

Some answers to a couple obvious questions:

1. Even though the Centrality has the only two Sith pops when you start the game and the Sith Empire formation seems to be predicated on this detail, it actually has nothing to do with changing into the Sith Empire, so you don't need them.
2. Yes, your humans will all be turned into Sith upon creating the Sith empire even if you never had Sith pops to begin with.
3. Obviously, there is a lot you can edit about the formation of your new empire, and there are different ways of doing it than what I did, but I have also had zero problems with my way. In fact, one more edit that I made was to add the planet Dathomir to the list of planets that trigger the transformation into the Sith. By doing that, I could do the whole process faster and only have to expand one system outward from my starting border, so I didn't have the awkward sprawl you get from the original options. Dathomir is also a lore-plausible planet for the purpose of the "story" of how the Sith Empire was revitalized. You can edit the particulars as you see fit.
4. Changing the new country flag to galactic empire like I did has been of minimal negative impact to my game. Like I said, it gave my empire their uniforms (except the Sith Species, who retain their clothing regardless), I am currently researching the Death Star, and if Darth Vader is killed, you will get the option to resurrect him as your own admiral. If you don't resurrect Vader, he will eventually be resurrected back into the GA. If you steal him for yourself and change your mind about keeping him, just dismiss him and he will be snatched up by ol' Palpatine again.
5. There are ways to change the ship-sets instead of the country like I did, but one way requires you to know the game files intimately like the authors, and the other way might break the game. I have truly had no issues, but I haven't completed the game with these adjustments yet. Still, it will have been better to have played and crashed in a Star Destroyer than to have won looking like the Sith Empire was conquered by fish-hobos. I really hate those ships.

Good luck, let me know if you have any issues or if I can help.

Hey man, that's amazing. I couldn't have asked for a better response. Just so I understand your majesty correctly, this makes it so I can start a game as the hegemony rather than the centrality to rebuild the sith empire.... right?

No problem. Making a better Sith Empire for myself has been a minor obsession for a couple weeks.

And yes, you are correct. This will make it so if you start a game as the Ciutric Hegemony they will take you through the Sith conversion quest that is normally for The Centrality.

As I mentioned, you can technically use any empire as a foundation, so long as you edit it--although you should avoid major factions. That's why I chose the Ciutric Hegemony, since they have the Imperial Ships and are closer to Sith Space than the Centrality...and it is an empire that is just as generic and unimportant as the Centrality.

I have a different solution. Start as the Centrality, save your game, and edit the save file.

The save files for me were in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\28325265\281990\remote\save games

You'll need 7-zip and Notepad++.

Extract the text files from the .sav file first using 7-zip. Open the gamestate file with Notepad++.

Search for the first misc_03 in the text in Notepad++. You can change this to imperial_01, though I recommend misc_04 (this is the same as other Imperial minors).

It will look something like this first

graphical_culture="misc_03"
city_graphical_culture="mammalian_01"
room="the_centrality_room"

And this after in my case:

graphical_culture="misc_04"
city_graphical_culture="mammalian_01"
room="the_centrality_room"

Save the file.

Follow instructions for making new save files here:

https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Save-game_editing

After you've zipped the files into a new .sav file, you're ready to go.

I haven't tested it thoroughly, but in my ship designs I have all the ships from the misc_04 ship set (Venator star destroyers, dreadnoughts, etc) instead of misc_03. The starting fleet is still the same as before, but this would likely take a lot of effort to change.

I also tried editing the graphical culture for the Centrality in the mod folders:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\281990\2195523300\common\solar_system_initializers\canon_initializers

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\281990\2195523300\common\solar_system_initializers\sandbox_initializers

But this just didn't work. The save game edit worked. There are likely more files controlling the Centrality's culture. Hopefully the mod makers change it to misc_04 some day. I'll post again after I've played a while and formed the Sith Empire.

EDIT: I'm not sure this method is actually easier than the other one, but it does allow you to play the Centrality with Imperial ships, so there you go.

So...why you ultraovercomplicated folks don´t just use alt+e and edit the races to your liking at gamestart? is the savegame editing a form of theraphy? :-D

Originally posted by kaneeden:

So...why you ultraovercomplicated folks don´t just use alt+e and edit the races to your liking at gamestart? is the savegame editing a form of theraphy? :-D

That's about as rude a response as you could make.

First of all, why do you assume everyone already knew that? I've never seen alt-E used that way in Stellaris, and looking into it I'm not finding anything. So this isn't some common knowledge thing you're talking about.

Second of all, testing alt-E in this mod, it does literally after starting a game. I think you meant to say to use it at race selection where it does work, but of course you assumed everyone knows about it. If you're going to give a method, say what to actually do.

Third of all, there's no telling what impact this could have on scripts. It would have to tested. There's a reason the mod doesn't have a race editing option. The solutions above don't break anything, but the alt-E trick could very well break something. You're basically overwriting a race in the mod files that has rather specific scripts.

Figuring out what files in the mod are needed to change Centrality would be a permanent, working solution. Since we haven't figured that out, these suggestions are basically alternatives. Next time don't be so rude.

Also save game editing is really fast once you know what you're doing. It's just complicated to explain it. I edit save games all the time in CKII, and Stellaris isn't much different.

Originally posted by Reichmar:

Hello! I was wondering if there was a guide/method for editing the shipset used for the centrality. I want to do a Sith playthough with them, but I don't want to use Mon Cal ships.

Anyone have a solution?

p.s. mod is dope, thanks for your work

in the middle of a playthrough you can use the console :

effect set_graphical_culture = <key>

the keys are

imperial_01
rebel_01
hutt_01
mando_01
corellian_01
cis_01
csa_01
hapes_01
misc_01
misc_02
misc_03
misc_04
chiss_01
yuuzhan_01

Make sure to not have selected any structure when using the command.

Don´t use the old gfx_culture effects just in case you stumble upon them.

Only newly build ships and structures are affected,

that means you can use it to build star destroyers for example and you are still able to avoid those ugly "placeholder" ships by switching the culture to another where the devs already have a real model implemented before building.
(Also don´t use brackets for global or country effect commands any more, only for e.g. planetary modifiers like effect add_modifier = { modifier = lush_planet }

Hopefully we will see a sith_01 shipset in the near future as it already exists as a separate mod but has not yet found his way into this authors mod compelation.

just wondering is there a way to remove the option of using the default fighters from stellaris instead of from SWFR fighters?

Originally posted by justpatrickm:

I really love this mod though...but I don't how anyone thought it wouldn't be completely immersion-breaking to play as a Sith Empire that uses Mon-Cal ships.

Easy, because they are not a Sith Empire, they are an empire made up of Sith from the 27,000s BBY who make use of whatever ships they can get their hands on. As they are right next to the Mon Cala, the easiest they can get are Mon Cala ships.

We are looking into a custom shipset for them but it is not a priority at the moment. Once it comes around, it will be based on the Derriphan-class ship.

Originally posted by kaneeden:

Originally posted by Reichmar:

Hello! I was wondering if there was a guide/method for editing the shipset used for the centrality. I want to do a Sith playthough with them, but I don't want to use Mon Cal ships.

Anyone have a solution?

p.s. mod is dope, thanks for your work

in the middle of a playthrough you can use the console :

effect set_graphical_culture = <key>

the keys are

imperial_01
rebel_01
hutt_01
mando_01
corellian_01
cis_01
csa_01
hapes_01
misc_01
misc_02
misc_03
misc_04
chiss_01
yuuzhan_01

Make sure to not have selected any structure when using the command..

thank you, this works perfectly!!!!

Just as an FYI, changing the graphical culture will not work as perfectly as it appears; some stuff will break and any unforeseen issues are possible from this sort of editing.

Ships in SW:FR are not as simple as in vanilla where everything is tied to a single graphical culture, there are additional techs and bits of code involved to ensure everything is working properly.