Sins: Rebellion Modding guide
Enabled Mods
Full conversion mods may crash the game if enabled and run without first restarting the game. This may be due to the engine's 2GB RAM limit. The game has already loaded all the original assets and once it starts to load the mod's assets, reaches the 2GB limit and soon crashes. This is easily avoided by restarting the game after you enable a full conversion mod, or editing the EnabledMods.txt manually.
Extracting
Community-made mods are shared by uploading a compressed archive to file hosting services like ModDB or FileFront. Once you have selected and downloaded the mod, it will require a program to open the mod archive for extraction.
7-Zip[http://www.7-zip.org ] (free open source)
WinRAR (trial)
WinZip (trial constant pop-ups)
Once you are able to open the compressed archive and view the files and folders inside, it is time to find where to place your new mod.
Where to put the Folder
The easiest way to find where to place the mod is through the game menu. Select "Options" in the main menu the select "Mods" then "Show Mod Path". Pressing "Show Mod Path" should create the folder if there is not one already.
Win XPC:\Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\...
Win 7 and greater: C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\...
There are 2 different folders for Rebellion mods, the released folder with version, and the developer folder with version.
Regular EXE access --> ...\Mods-Rebellion vX.XX
Developer EXE access --> ...\Mods-Rebellion vX.XX Dev
Sins Mods are very specific to version and expansion type.
vX.XX is the version of Rebellion. There may be multiple folders for different versions of each upgrade. Place the mod in the most current version folder only if the mod was made for that version. Older version folders or the mods in them are no longer used by the game.
The Mod Tab
The mod tab of the main menu options is where most of the magic happens with enabling mods.
Assuming you've found the correct mod folder in the section above, all the mods the game can find will be listed on the left. Select the mod you want and hit the enable mod button to add it to the enabled mods list on the right.
While the mod has not yet been enabled, you will probably notice a change in the checksum number on the upper right (some purely visual or sound mods may keep a checksum of 0). This number is unqiue for every combination of mods, and is used to determine that two players are running the same mod for multiplayer. If you are having difficulty with any mod, a good first step is to make sure the checksum matches the one from the download page or the readme file.
You may then proceed to enable additional mods (more on that in the next section) before hitting the apply changes button. This will cause the game to reload with the mods you enabled activated. Assuming this is successful, your mod will now be loaded. The game will also now load the selected mods when the game starts up.
Multiple Mods, Add-ons, and Mod Order
The previous section has all you need to get a simple singular mod working. But what happens if you want to run multiple mods at the same time? It doesn't take long for them to quickly get out of hand, and a single mistake can cause your game to crash even if there are no problems with the mods.
FAQs
I installed the mod but it does not work. why?
One of the most common mistakes is having a MyMod x.x.x folder with the MyMod folder inside that.
Here is my path for Rebellion 1.82 using SOA2 0.7
C:\Users\myfist0\Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion\Mods-Rebellion v1.82\SOA2\...
... will be all the mods files
How can I move the mods folder to another drive?
(c) Copyright Stardock Entertainment. All rights reserved.