Sins of a Solar Empire: Cheating by Modifying Game Files and Using an Exploit
Sins of a Solar Empire
Sins of a Solar Empire is a real-time strategy game set in space which allows you to compete with various alien races for domination of a galaxy of planets and asteroids. You’ll battle for control of metal and crystal resources, which allows you to develop and build new technology. In addition to colonising and developing planets, you can construct a wide array of space ships and defensive structures and fight epic real time wars.
The game was released back in February of 2008 and received high review scores for its open ended single player campaigns and enjoyable multiplayer options. Read this Sins of a Solar Empire review to find out more. For now, what you need to know is there are no official cheat codes for the game and you can’t enter commands into the console or activate a devmode, so if you want to get an advantage in the game you’ll need to use an exploit or - if you are feeling brave - modify some of the game files. There are also mods and trainers available on the web, but trainers generally cost money and mods will change various things about the game, so check the full list before you install one.
Exploit
A cheap trick you can pull off if you find yourself struggling for resources is to save your game, start as another empire, and use the diplomacy to send your resources to your original empire. Quit back out and load the original empire, and you’ll find yourself much better off. You can repeat this as many times as you like.
Modifying Game Files
Navigate to your installation folder for Sins of a Solar Empire and find the folder called Galaxy (probably here - C:\Program Files\Kalypso\Sins of a Solar Empire\Galaxy). You can edit the files in here by right clicking on them and opening in notepad. As you can see, there are individual files for the various maps within the game.
At the top of each file you’ll find the upgrade levels for your home planet, and listed below are the initial settings for each planet in the map. It is probably best to save a version of each file with _old at the end in case you want to switch back to your original settings.
The default set up for your home planet will look something like this –
- homePlanetUpgradeLevel:Population 3
- homePlanetUpgradeLevel:CivilianModules 1
- homePlanetUpgradeLevel:TacticalModules 0
- homePlanetUpgradeLevel:Home 1
- homePlanetUpgradeLevel:ArtifactLevel 10
- homePlanetUpgradeLevel:Infrastructure 2
You can edit these numbers to give yourself a starting advantage. Ignore the Home and ArtifactLevel entries but feel free to tweak the following -
- Population will affect Civilian Infrastructure
- Civilian Modules will affect Logistics Capacity
- Tactical Modules will affect Tactical Capacity
- Infrastructure will affect Emergency Facilities
In addition to tweaking the settings on your home planet, you can also tweak your starting resources. Scroll to the bottom of the file and you’ll see an entry with player settings in it. Player 0 will be you, and you can change the following entries to give yourself a maximum starting level of up to 9999 in each resource.
- startingCredits 3000
- startingMetal 800
- startingCrystal 250
This post is part of the series: Sins of a Solar Empire Cheats
A collection of cheats, exploits, mods and trainers to help you in Sins of a Solar Empire.
