Installation and Technical FAQs Thread - Enhanced 4X Mod for Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion

Q: How do I install the Enhanced 4X Mod.

The Enhanced 4X Mod is installed like any other Sins mod. First, you must locate your mod folder. For Windows 7 and similar operating systems, this is usually located in the "C:\Users\Nathanael\Documents\My Games\Ironclad Games\Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion" directory. You will then find the mod folder for the current version of Rebellion, at the time of this writing would be "Mods-Rebellion v1.80".

If you cannot find either of these folders, try launching Rebellion and immediately go to options. Click on the mod tab, and click on the "Show Mod Path" button. If will show you the full path of your mod folder, and will create a mod folder if you were missing one for some reason.

Once you have found the mod folder, put the zip file you downloaded from moddb into the mod folder and extract it. It should appear as a folder that says something like "Enhanced 4X Mod 1.701".

Now launch Rebellion and go to the options. Click on the mod tab. You should see the mod as one of the options on the left. Click on the mod and hit "Enable Mod", then hit apply changes. Congratulations, the mod should now be installed and running, and you'll notice a new loading screen, new music at the main menu and the E4X logo on the main menu.

Recommended: It is HIGHLY recommended that you reduce your texture quality settings (Planet/Ship/Structure detail) before starting a game with the Enhanced 4X Mod. This is because Rebellion is a 32 bit application and can only use 2GB or RAM as a result. All large mods, E4X included, make it easier to hit this limit simply because of all the added content, and reducing the texture quality settings are the easiest way to free up RAM. Failure to follow this step will often lead to the random crash problem described below.

Just how much your settings need to be reduced depends on each computer, but highest settings in particular almost always causes problems. A combination of high and medium settings will probably work for most users. Other graphics settings like shadows or filtering are mostly handled by your graphics card and do not need to be lowered.

Q: I think I enabled the mod correctly, but I do not notice any changes. No new loading screen, new main menu music, renamed factions etc.

Go back to the mods tab. Make sure under checksum it gives a number other than 0. A checksum of 0 means the game did not detect any noticeable gameplay changes, in other words the mod was not really loaded. This is usually caused when extract the mod from the .Zip file and your extraction software generates an extra folder. To fix this, go to your mod folder. Then click on the Enhanced 4X Mod folder. In that folder you should see several more folders including one called "GameInfo". If you instead see another folder, usually with the same name as the first folder, you have the extra folder problem.

To resolve this problem, go into the duplicate folder, cut the "GameInfo" folder and everything else in that folder, and paste it into previous folder. Your folders should now be arrange so that you can go form "Mod Folder" -> "Enhanced 4X Mod 1.701" -> "GameInfo" etc.

Q: I enabled the mod and hit apply changes, but I get a crash in the loading screen. What do I do?

Start up Rebellion again. Once again enable the mod (and only the Enhanced 4X main mod), but before hitting apply changes take note of the checksum. Double check that this checksum matches the one given in the download description here on moddb (not the one in the general file information). If the checksums do not match that means there was a corrupt download. Delete the Enhanced 4X Mod and download the .zip file and repeat the installation process again.

Another thing that can cause this issue is when using older versions of mods with newer patches of Rebellion. Mods are usually Rebellion patch specific, so if the mod starts crashing on startup after an update, it probably means the current version of the mod is out of date and I will already be working on a new version for it.

Q: I get crashes seemingly at random once I started a game.

Random crashes, especially if they happen after the same arbitrary time interval, are usually caused by Sins hitting its 2GB RAM limit. As noted in the installation step, it is HIGHLY recommended that you reduce your texture quality settings (Planet/Ship/Structure detail) before starting a game with the Enhanced 4X Mod. This is because Rebellion is a 32 bit application and can only use 2GB of RAM. All large mods, E4X included, make it easier to hit this limit simply because of all the added content, and reducing the texture quality settings are the easiest way to free up RAM. Failure to follow this step will often lead to the random crash problem.
Just how much your settings need to be reduced depends on each computer, but highest settings in particular almost always causes problems. A combination of high and medium settings will probably work for most users. Other graphics settings like shadows or filtering are mostly handled by your graphics card and do not need to be lowered.

Q: I am getting a crash, but it seems to be triggered by a specific event in game (colonizing a planet). Reloading the game from a save/autosave always brings the crash at the same point.

Fixed issue crashes are usually caused by a much deeper problem with the mod, from bugs to conflicting code if multiple mods are enabled. The exact fix causes vary wildly, so in this case the only thing to do is to save the game right before the crash, upload it to a file hosting site like dropbox or mediafire, and either post in this forum or send me a PM with the link to the save file and a description of how the crash comes about. These types of crashes are the hardest to pin down and are vital for diagnosing problems with the mod, so if you get one please do not hesitate to inform me about it!