Mod to make it easier to see which hexes are visible to your ships/starbases/whatever?

The graphics were changed when 2.8 was released.  I had a lot of problems just like you are having, so I made a mod to fix the graphics.  You can get the current version here.  I think it will solve a lot of the problems you are having.  Unzip it into your mods directory.  It will work on saved games.

EDIT
When Retribution was released, the mod in the link no longer worked correctly, so the link has been removed.  See reply #15 for the link to the updated mod.

Hmm, I'm not seeing a change. I've installed the mod on the following path, C:\Users\[my name]\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\OS Graphics Fix for Intrigue 3200 which seems to be correct. I tried an existing save game and also a new game. Did I put it in the wrong place?

Ah, I got it working. I simply put the two files in the appropriate folders in the game folder, rather than the My Games folder. It isn't exactly what I was looking for, or rather what I thought I was looking for, but it turns out to be pretty helpful . Thanks!  

That's the right place.  Did you enable mods?  Try loading an older save where you've exposed a lot of the galaxy.  Are you using any other mods?

I'm glad you got it working.  I agree it's not the best, but it is a lot better than the default setting, at least for me.

Wow, what kind of dummy would I be if I added a mod and didn't have mods enabled? Well, it turns out I'm that kind of dummy . I enabled mods and now it works from the mods folder. Thanks again!

I'm not laughing at you.  I'm laughing with you.  

I played around with your mod settings in the ColorDefs.xml file and tweaked them to make the contrast greater, it works pretty well now, at least for the Yor. Thanks for your comment lines in the code, it made it easier to understand what you had done.

Funny story regarding comments... back about, oh, forty years ago, back in the dark ages when I was coding for the Byzantine Empire (actually it was the Space Shuttle program) we were working with a language called GOAL, Ground Oriented Aerospace Language. Mostly systems engineers were writing code, rather than dedicated software engineers, and it was decided that by using comprehensive comment blocks the software would be self-documenting. In other words we would go from requirements documentation right to code, without writing specification documents. NASA eventually decided this really wasn't a good idea, but by then we had already launched several missions and our software was pretty stable. Still, we had to spend months writing specification documents to tell us how to write the code that was already written. I guess it made sense to someone.

I started using comments soon after I first began modding because I couldn't always remember what the original values were and why I made the changes that I made.  They have been very helpful to me.  I soon realized that if I ever released a mod to the public, the comments could be helpful to anyone using it.

I still use comments mainly for my own benefit.  

Well, bummer, I just installed the Retribution DLC and gave it a try and now the mod doesn't work. I even put the two files directly into the game folder instead of the mod folder, just to see if the game was just looking at the wrong place, but no help. And I do have mods enabled, and I ran the resync mods option as well. I finally used the Steam client to validate my files, which oddly enough replaced eight of them, and tried again. Still no luck. I'll go over to the modding forum and see if folks are having issues there.

The update to 3.5, with and without Retribution, has completely broken mods.  There is no way for you to get them working.  Stardock is working on it.

Ah, thanks for the info!

There is now an opt-in that fixes mods not working.

Thanks for the info. I've also printed out the whole Retribution and 3.5 update list. I'm seeing some things that might, or might not, be something that changed in 3.5, or maybe I just never noticed it before  

The version of the mod you have doesn't work right with Retribution.  You can get the correct version here.  Just delete the version you have and use the new one.

Weirdly, I used your old mod and tweaked the numbers to make things stand out in more contrast and with the opt-in patch it is working in Retribution. I'll probably juggle the numbers a bit later on, but it works with the blue of the Terrans.

The problem is that the older mod doesn't include the colors for the Drath and Korath, so they are all black.  You should probably transfer your changes to the new mod.

Oh crap, yeah, that would make a lot of sense! Thanks for letting me know