Utilities/Index

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Because the best old Stars! websites keep quietly disappearing all of the utilities below have download links from Stars!wiki itself, if you are the author of any of these files and would like a file to not be available from Stars!wiki, please contact Rick to have it removed. Where possible, links to files' homepages or original web locations are included. - feel free to add any we missed.

You can also help by writing the individual articles for the utilities that require installation or usage instructions, or just coz they deserve it.

  • see also:
downloads
Patches and versions
Related Websites
Technical Information

Uncategorised

Stars automated micromanagement

Stars automated micromanagement is an AutoHotKey program that simluates keystrokes mouse clicks to automate setting production queues.

Stars Player Colours Changer

Download at Microsoft

download StarsPlayerColoursChanger.exe 35.5kb

"Player Colours editor that edits the English (or what Americans call English anyway) version of stars 2.6jrc4 that is 3,344,384 bytes long." Purely cosmetic.

Colour Map which shows a set of colours on the Space, Scanner & Pen Scanner Coloured backgrounds, the default set creates the page using value of 0,64,128,192 & 255 for each of the components which produces 125 colour combinations but it can also be set to use a different list in the parameters such as link which create 216 based on 0,51,102,153,204 & 255 (00,33,66,99,CC,FF) For helping to find suitable colour values to use.

Game setup utilities

Genesis

A spiral galaxy creator for Stars!

Map2XY

Map2XY will take a .xy file and a .map file and modify the .xy file to match the .map file. This allows moving planets on the y axis (north/south) quite a bit, since you cannot change the order of the planets, the x axis isn't too modifiable, except you could stretch or compress the universe. It also allows renaming the planets, to other Stars! names only.

Mapper

Mapper recreates the xy universe file from a GIF file. Also allows the xy file to be exported to a GIF.

Star Name Changer

Allows you to change the names of your stars/planets in Stars! games. This only affects your XY file, so if you want the changes to apply to everyone, they will need to receive the updated XY file. Zip file contains instructions, and different versions for different operating systems.

Stars Host Editor

Stars Host Editor is an ActiveX object model for editing planets in the *.hst files via vbs scripts(or other means). Currently sufficient properties are editable for dramatic changes and PaulCr plans to keep going until everything is editable. See also #Stars Player Editor

Stars Planet Swapper

Preliminary utility for swapping planets around, open turn file and get the id for the 2 planets you want to swap, subtract one and enter them into the utility. The planets and any ships in orbit will be swapped after a gen takes place, there shouldn't be a .x file when generating since it will not be corrected for the changes. A couple of limitations noted by XyliGUN "which looks more like a bugs, but not a real limitations:"

  1. You cannot use it with remapped universes (but you can remap them after swapping), otherwise fleets will be located somewhere in space.
  2. If players' secondary planet (IT, PP) has lower id than HW then after swapping it should keep id that will be lower than HW. And if it was higher it should be keept higher. Otherwise that player will see his HW or secondary planet uninhabited until first gen.

Stars Player Editor

Stars Player Editor is an ActiveX object model for editing planets in the *.m files via vbs scripts. Currently sufficient properties are editable for dramatic changes and PaulCr plans to keep going until everything is editable. See also #Stars Host Editor

Stars Universe Selector

Allows you to create a stars game with restrictions on distances between HWs and closest planets counts

Stretched Universe

Stretched universe is a command line utility that rescales (stretches or squashes) a universe for the Stars! game.

Universe Creator

A great utility that allows hosts to not only model the galaxy off a bitmap, but also allows them to move homeworlds around. There are some restrictions as to where the new homeworlds are placed.

Universe

I have no idea what this does(it has an installer which I haven't run yet). I'm guessing its a setup util.

XY2PBM

Converts between .xy file and portable bitmap (.pbm) file.

Stars Editor

Complete component and hull editor for Stars! with a an easy to use interface (works with both I and JRC3 patches), modifications can be saved into a small .STM/MOD file, which can be distributed to players to modify their own exe's with. (Note: It's best to keep an unedited copy of stars on your harddisk)

  • (40.3kb local): "All items at zero tech and zero cost except for the cost of planetary installations and terraforming. Mass has not been changed."
  • observer.stm (40.9kb local): "Elephant scanner and nub hull are available at no tech, mineral or resource cost. They can be build in 2400."
  • [unedited.zip {6.86kb local): Mod file of the unedited Stars!

Geneticus Mod

The Genenticus mod makes sweeping changes to the game balance, including weaking ships, strengthing starbases and converting all ship slots to general purpose or combo slots.

Viper Mod

VML Mod

Verker's VML mod for which the VML Lounge at HWF is named.

Vulture Mod

References

  • See also Learn to play for a variety of Stars!wiki references for new/beginning players.

Details of Ship Hull Layouts

Get Adobe Reader!

All ship hull layouts showing each slot's options and internal slot id

Battle Movement Studies

The XLS spreadsheet results of AlexTheGreat's study on which ship moves first when they are of similar weights.

"I don't know that I'd call it a study. I just determine the correct formula, determined whether the Help file (15%) or FAQ (20%) was right by running some tests & made a simple S/S.
One thing that I have been meaning to do is check whether BS has an effect. eg. Ship A has BS=2.25 & Ship B has BS=1.75. In battle round 1 Ship A is capable of moving 3 spaces but Ship B is only capable of moving 2 spaces. I suspect that it makes no difference, i.e. that Ship A always moves 2 spaces & Ship B always moves one space & only then that the odds are calculated for their final possible movement. However I have not gotten around to confirming that suspicion."

Denham's spreadsheet and graph support the results of AlexTheGreat. It includes results from 1072 battle simulation last moves with ships of two different speeds.

Pben - Stars! Population Growth Rate Study

Results from the Population growth rate study performed by Paul that resulted in the Population Growth Rate Formula calculator.

Stars! Bitmaps

The bitmap resources from the Stars! executable. (aka - all the pics from the game)

Stars! box icons

Icons (.ico) of the <tooltip text="Stars box cover" x=xoffset y=yoffset></tooltip> with white and transparent backgrounds. Stars! box covers gallery.

Stars! Help File

Stars! help file in Word 6.0 format for Stars! version 2.0b.

Officially called Stars! Player's Guide, the last produced Stars! help file was for versions 2.6/7i. It is know to contain many errors and omissions, but is still a useful resource.

Stars! Strategy Guide

The official Stars! Strategy Guide in html format. With or without frames. Only chapters 1-5, and the text of ch 6 have been translated in the Russian version.

Techitem.doc

Complete list of tech items(hulls,components & terraforming) sorted by tech field and level. Each item is listed in every tech area it requires.

from Stars! CD

Stars! Credits movie

An avi format movie of the Stars! credits from programmers to play testers.

Stars! Manual

Get Adobe Reader!

The official Stars! game manual in pdf format.

Calculators

Battlesim Testbed

Set of game files for conducting battlesim testbeds in, allows for most PRT/LRT combos and all races are at max tech with all MT components. Unzip into a new directory and edit the links to suit your own directory structure.

Blue's Scout Report

Report for 19kt Scout

A little program to show possible early scout configurations and their tech requirements based on ship mass.

Chaff Sweeping Calculator

A program that estimates the number of chaff needed to "chaff sweep" a minefield.

Dogthinker's HabCalc

Similar to Craebild's Stars! Overall Planet Habitability and Race Econ Calculator, you plug in the hab values of your race, and it tells you what the planets you would get would look like... If you went into a universe with a universe where each possible star appeared it's statistical average number of timesonly a a whole lots less pretty and a more accurate. Unlike Craebild HabCalc, this calculates based on the complete set of possible planet values rather than a random sample or a theoretical distribution. To use: edit input.txt, run habcalc and the results will be stored in output.txt.

ForceUser's ISAR Calculator

"Inner Strength and AR Population calculator. (It's a dos program but should work fine in Windows) I wrote it using Turbo Pascal in Grd 11. It's a simple math equation that you could easily reproduce in Excel or similar spreadsheet. I like it coz it's simple. Asks the right questions and is a small background program."

Opt Move

  • author: LEit

Utility that allows you to enter max warp and distance and it punches back the optimal warp settings and distance for travelling that distance. Very useful for ship movements that are fuel-limited or time constrained like shifting population or orbital adjustors.

Packet Damage Calculator

Program for calculating the impact and effects of packets at different speeds and at different sizes

Packet Flinger Calculator

A program for calculating optimal packet size & speeds. "Mass Destruction Made Easy"

Packet Location Calculator

Program for predicting the future location of mass packets and fleets. Accurate over multiple years.

Released under GNU Public Licence, source code included in zip file and now hosted on github

RWCalc

Graphically displays resource,population,mines & factory growths.

Stars! Calculator

The single most useful calculator for Stars! around.

Stars! Xpert

The Xpert is a calculator for cloaking, bombing, packet damage, weapons damage (with respect to capacitors, deflectors, computers and jammers), fuel consumption, and planetary resources.

Spreadsheets

These all require Microsoft Excel of varying versions. A viewer is available from Microsoft downloads

Attractivness Calculator Spreadsheet

Spreadsheet for calculating the relative attractivness (for targeting order during battle) of ship designs

Bombardment Spreadsheet

Russian excel file for calculating packet damage(I think)

description at Olden Stars Host: Рассчёт бомбардировок в Exel

Bombing Spreadsheet

Excel file for calculating population & installation kills from mixed bombing fleets.

Dog's Multiple-Packet Calculator

For calculating the damage done by multiple packets and bombs.

Inner Strength ORGY Calculator

It tells you how much pop you need to hold at 300% with your orgy, as well as telling you how many resorces you will produce. It also has a ground combat calculator to tell you how many babies you need to drop out of your freighters to destroy your enemies HW. Includes calculation for population required on Red planets, as well as planets below 5% that have the capacity of 5% worlds. [1]

Per's Terra-Hab-Tool

Click a button and automatically your and your allies p-files get loaded, sorted and a hab-value-comparison of the planets will be calculated for you and/or your allies (extremely helpful in alliances and much easier to use than the other tools I know). Additionally see how much improvement 1-10 units of terraforming gives you and several other features.

Population Growth Rate Formula

Excel spreadsheet for determining the effectiveness(vis a vis population growth) of exporting population between two planets. Includes an explanatory html file on how growth works.

Race Information

Feed it race screen info and get max factories/mines/resources/hab clicks/starting tech levels

S.B.Posey's Spreadsheet

Possible correction pertaining to ship/starbase cost might be required in this version. [3]

Expansive spreadsheet for calculating most of the guts within stars, including jamming, movement, cloaking, colony projection, planet habitability, tech trade probabilities, research timescales, minefields and more.

Terraforming Spreadsheet

Spreadsheet for calculating the most optimal order for terraforming planets in an alliance.

TeamTT8

TT8v2
  • author: overworked(OWK)

This is the second generation of the Ugly_TT spreadsheet for calculating terraforming values and "best race" to colonize a given planet.

In-game information processing/sharing

Combine.exe

  • author: LEit

Utility that combines multiple pxx or fxx reports into a single output file.

Information Trader

Allows players to transfer gaming information without compromising their own security.

mSplit

mSplit is a small command-line tool to split a multi-year M file into it's consitutent 1-year parts. Includes source code and compiled binaries for both windows and linux.

Secret Intelligence Reporter

Program for recording information about your opponents(prt,lrts,etc), can also import .pxx files and display them as a map.

Stars! Log

The Stars! Log program is designed to help players manage large and complex games by enabling the player to write notes and assign them to specific planets, fleets. Each note can also be made specific year, and you can also make notes and record information about the other players or races.

Starmap

Allows players to pool player information to create a graphic representation. Dos based, Nice output.

Besides slight differences in the starmap.exe size and date, I can't tell them apart.

StarMapper

Get Java now!

StarMapper takes reports generated by the game and generates a map showing approximate empire territories.

Stars! Host Creator

Download at Microsoft

Stars! Host Creator allows you to create a .hst file from your m, h and r files for testbedding scenarios. Paul has warned that the starshosteditor.dll included in this zip is different to the dll from Stars Host Editor and should not be used separately from Stars! Host Creator. Also, as Paul is still developing this:

  1. Please report any issues you find back to PaulCr at HWF.
  2. The offsite download may link to a newer version than those listed here.
  • download admiral2.zip 34.9kb
    xml dump of Paul's m file for Fledgling Admirals 2 from last year along with a script for grabbing the battle plans from it and saving then into a csv file.

Stars! Message Reader

The Stars! Message Reader automatically scans Stars! and reads all messages. It stores them into an internal database, or you can save them as a plain text file. You can easily read messages from previous turns and filter player messages.

Stars! Notebook

Stars! Notebook is a program for recording information about your opponents. Can import and visually display information from .pxx and .fxx files.

Stars! Report Processor

A program for managing/visualising existing/potential fleet movements, scanning capabilities, distances and more.

Starstat & Starinfo

Starstat & Starinfo are otherwise identical DOS and Windows programs, respectively, that report on various aspects of the Stars! gamefiles such as the version, the presence of multiple turns in a .m file etc. Both incorrectly, but consistently, report the Stars version for v1.1a(reports 1.2a), v2.0a(2.65), 2.6i(2.81j) and 2.6JRC4(2.83) game files.


Strategist

Get Java now!

Strategist allows you to import data from every turn and then watch how the universe changes. It also has some simple charting and graphing abilities.

Territories

Territories is a Free Windows 95 mapping program for Stars! It imports the text data dumped by the Stars! program and based on that information, displays a map for you.

Xtreme Borders

Xtreme Borders Screenshot

Xtreme Borders is a mapper program which allows players to combine and analyse data extracted from the game, including the visualization of each players influence over a territory, mapping of stargate networks and the display of allies scanner data, while providing a convenient place for keeping notes on the other races in the game.

Habitability Filters

For filtering/sifting .pxx files to determine habitable planets.

Hab

Dos(commandline) program that outputs a list of inhabitable planets from the .pxx file present. Syntax:

Hab <game> <gravmin> <gravmax> <tempmin> <tempmax> <radmin> <radmax>

Contains two example .bat files that pipe the output to a file.

Hab kit

Hab kit is an excel macro to filter the New Player Reports for habitability. Contains instructions.

Habs

Similar to Hab, except that Habs prompts you for your hab settings, and then the hab of each planet.

Using the following data it reports 0% ?!? Grav: 1 to 1.2 Temp: -40 to 40 Rad: 80 to 100 Planet: 1.1/0/90

Planet Sniffer

Stars! Info

Displays the information from a .pxx file in an interface similar to Stars, showing you the 'localised' planet values.

.m/.x file management

AutoHost Client

Get Java now!
note: v2.2 program incorrectly reports v2.11

The AutoHost Client is a program to automate the interactions with the Stars! AutoHost web site, as well as some other common actions such as making backups of turn files, launching Stars!, and dumping fleet and planet reports.

Stars! Backup for Hosts

  • The original: download starsbackup.zip (starsbackup.zip, 4.25MB)
    • contains: courier3.exe, dump_p_file.zip, emptyfolders_2400-2500.zip, emptyfolders_2501-2550.zip, Home World Forum- Hosting forum =- Idea for a new utility.url, index.html, rebuild_h_file.zip, starsbackup.box.zip
    • Author: Micha
    • Announcement: Idea for a new utility at HWF (you need to be logged into your Stars! autohost forum account)

Stars! Backup! consists of dos batch files, a vbs file, an email client & mailbox file, with instructions that enable a host to

  1. keep backups of all the players' turns
  2. automate rebuilding a current history file should a player drop out

Once setup you only need to start the email-client from time to time. Everything else happens automatically: downloading the emails with the m-files and saving and sorting them into the proper directory.

Stars Hosting Assistant

(is apparently shareware)

StarPower

Hosting program for emailing turn files to players. Can also be used from the commandline/.bat file. Help file contains an example for integrating it into the Eudora email client to completely automate turn processing.

Stars! Supremacy Host

Download at Microsoft

Stars! Supremacy Host is an x file checker that detects some bugs/cheats. Currently checks for 22 or more superlatinum in a slot, prevents use of the 10th space dock for all races and prevents editing starbase design if there are partially completed ones in planet queue. The Dll has been written to allow or disallow each check on user by user basis basis but the test exe for it does not allow you to configure them.

Stars! TurnXChange

Allows a web server to automate the hosting part of the game. The original perl code for the web hosting services provided by Stars! AutoHost.

Warp Central

Email program for hosts and players to quickly email turn files. Does not support receiving files.

Xtreme StarMail

Xtreme StarMail Screenshot

A utility to help hosts manage the sending of turns to players (both MAPI and SMPT supported), allows for optional attachments, custom messages and alternate email addresses

Online Utilities

Alan Kolaga's Charts of habitability spread and mineral concentrations

Craebild's Stars! Overall Planet Habitability and Race Econ Calculator

Useful tool for visualising the quantity and quality of greens/yellow/reds for a given hab setting & terraforming capability. Can also calculate maximum output for a given econ/planet and resources needed to obtain tech levels.

Flash Race Wizard

Get Flash!
  • can be found here
  • requires Adobe Flash Player.
  • author: ninja_squirrel (Andrew)

Abode Flash version of the Stars! race wizard.

M.A.Stars' Stars! Trip and Fuel Usage Calculator

M.A.Stars' Stars! Packet Travel Calculator

M.A.Stars' Stars! Tech Tree and Item Table

PaulCr's Utilities

Changes the robotoid expert AI(only) and it gives it triple immunity, 20% growth, the best economic settings possible and some positive LRTs

Simple to use utilities that grant any MT item(s) or tech level(s) to any player by directly altering a supplied HST file. Also Available: PRT & Wormhole editors, (Technical) Stars! file parsers and formats

Stars! Packet Damage Calculator

Javascript website for calculating the impact and effects of packets at different speeds and at different sizes.

Wumpus's Stars! Battlesim generator

  • can now be found here

Creates an HST file for conducting battlesim testbeds in, includes most PRT/LRT combos with all MT components. Allows user defined tech levels.

Wumpus's Stars! race file checker

  • can be found here offline

XDude's Star's Online Calculator

Two calculators, one for torpedos/computers/jamming and the other for beams/capacitors/deflectors