New Starting Galaxy?

I don't know how to do this, but I know where I would look for examples: there are files specifically for the campaign that comes with the game. If you peruse those files, perhaps this will help.

Alright, I'll try taking a look there. Would it be possible to bypass the lack of a menu option by just creating all the race files in the mod as well? I had the civilization working just fine with the defaults so I was a tad reluctant there.

The campaign gives pre-defined races so I see why you could not make your own campaign type mod.

Well, I'm not necessarily going for a new campaign or anything like that, I just wanted to add some new starting locations for my custom races.

Here's hoping you find a solution but the only advice I can offer is to be patient and wait for the dev's to expose more of the game settings to the xml files.  I have looked at what you are trying to do and have tried to do similar things myself and it appears that certain functions are hard coded into the game engine.

As near as I can tell, you cannot add new starting star systems, you can edit the existing ones but adding anything does exactly bupkiss.  The same is true of adding new planet types via PlanetTraitDefs.xml any addition to the file limits an entry to 4 attributes or the game simply errors out at launch and even then if you add any new types at all the game crashes to desktop when building the map.

So sadly it appears certain elements are still limited by the game engine at this time.  I would give my left arm to have this corrected, but just taking a wait and see aproach atm.

I can offer a workaround of sorts.

When adding a custom race in the custom race screen you can name their homeworld whatever you like. Choose one of the existing homeworlds and name it as you wish.

In combination with this add a new ability entry to the AbilityDef.xml with the following two triggers in it.

<Triggers>
<OnEvent>OnStartTurn</OnEvent>
<CriteriaTurnNum>2</CriteriaTurnNum>
<PerformAction>
<Action>DiscoverNearbyPlanetOfClass</Action>
<ValueParam>10</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>12</ValueParam>
<StringParam>DiscoveredWorldPlanetTrait</StringParam>
<StringParam>OUTREACH5_POPUP_MESSAGE</StringParam>
</PerformAction>
</Triggers>

<Triggers>
<OnEvent>OnStartTurn</OnEvent>
<CriteriaTurnNum>1</CriteriaTurnNum>
<PerformAction>
<Action>TerraformTilesOnPlayerPlanets</Action>
<ValueParam>5</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>10</ValueParam>
<ValueParam>0</ValueParam>
</PerformAction>
</Triggers>

The first trigger will add an additional world to your races starting system, you can add it to the ability as many times as you wish as set the two <ValueParam> entries as you see fit to generate as many planets as you want.  These planets will show up on your second turn this is important because if they show up on the first turn they will be affected by the second trigger and it will throw off their planetary values.

The second trigger will add tiles to your starting homeworld so you can set it up to be whatever quality you desire.

As far as adding any specific planetary traits that is not something I know how to fudge at the moment.

Hope this helps.

Thanks. I'll try and give it a go.