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Did you recently buy DW: Universe and are you uncertain if all those awesome visual mods are compatible with your game because their last update was done before 2012? Are you a DW veteran and would like to make an awesome game better?
If the answer is yes, then this mod is for you! 
This mod can be downloaded in vanilla, extended, and Star Trek Picard era flavors.
The basic idea behind this goal is to compile several awesome UI enhancers, along with some additions of my own, to streamline the way the UI displays different types of information to the player: 1. Minimizing visual clutter, and 2. Using color to add another dimension to information transfer.
This mods has the following components:
1. SHIP OUTLINES INSTEAD OF SHIP SYMBOLS
For this section I used Fruitgnome's "No annoying ship symbols mod".
and based myself on Martian's GEM mod.
By now you are familiar with the symbols the game uses for denoting ship classes. These work reasonable well as long as you have less than 10 objects in your screen. Then they become unreadable. The idea is to substitute them with colored outlines that give the player information about a ship's role without adding extra clutter to the interface. Most ships and all bases have no outline, only military, construction, colony, and exploration ships have outlines:
Here you can see the vanilla vs ship colored outlines:
2. DAS CHROME MOD
If you are not familiar yet with DAS chrome mod (link forthcoming), then you are missing on THE most essential mod of the most essential DW mods. This mod will make your game look better, will make dealing with resources much, much more clearer, and will extend your life expectancy by 10 years. No UI mod is complete without it, and mine is no exception. Perhaps the most important feature is adding colored backgrounds to the games resources according to their role:
2. SIRIAN COMPONENTS
Sirian's EVE Components mod (link forthcoming) is the equivalent of DAS Chrome mod, but for ship modules. Not only it revamps the game's modules to look awesome, but it also color codes their quality and functionality:
- Quality: Grey - Green - Blue - Purple. Some items have distinct tiers, like armor or troop compartments. These tiers are color coded where possible. If only two tiers exist they are green - blue, three tiers are green - blue - purple and four tiers add a grey as least quality color.
- Fleet components: components that boost nearby ships have a yellow background.
- Race exclusive items have a cyan background.
- Reactors: red background: uses hydrogen, purple background: uses Caslon.
- Shields, Engines and Hyperdrives have a different color coding: the basic variant is grey (or blueish gray in case of the shields) Green is efficient, Red is fast (or fast recharging) and purple is the final super-technology.
- Superweapons have a bright orange background, except for the Superlaser which has... oh well, you will recognize it!
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5. INSTALLATION
The idea was to keep this mod simple and highly compatible, and more of an add-on than a standalone mod. Nevertheless, the vanilla version can be used as a stand alone and can be installed by unzipping the mod file inside your "..\Distant Worlds Universe\Customization" folder.
If you are using any other version, then after unzipping the mod file inside your "..\Distant Worlds Universe\Customization" folder, you must manually copy the files inside the "Visual Overhaul - UI" folder into the main folder of your mod of preference. Overwrite if asked.
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6. AWESOME MODS SUPPORTED
So far I have made 3 different versions (each compatible with its respective mod because each has a different set of ship families):
1. Vanilla: I highly recommend that you download first Icemania's AI improvement mod and add this mod to it. It makes the game so much better!
2. Extended Universe: Having probably checked out Icemania's mod, then you probably noticed that he recommends you to play with the version of his mod for Haree78's "Extended Universe Mod". This version is meant to be used with either of those two mods.
3. Star Trek The Picard Era: This is another truly outstanding mod you need to try if you haven't already. It's a complete conversion of DW and its scope and quality will blow your mind.
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7. OPTIONAL BEAUTIFICATION OVERHAUL
There are some wonderful mods out there that greatly beautify DW. In a separate download you can get a personal compilation of my favorite ones in case you are looking for a single quick and nice beautification of DW guaranteed to work with DW: Universe. This compilation is made using the following original mods:
- Stars, ruins, landscapes, effects, and some planets from Martian's GEM mod.
- Facilities, planet maps, some landscapes and some planets from KEBW1144's .
- Some landscapes from Astradeus graphics mod.
- Some planets from Igard's planets open thread.
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8. DOWNLOAD LINKS
- Vanilla.
- Extended.
ONLY DAS CHROME for STAR TREK PICARD ERA
- https://mega.nz/#!YolXmIYK!GnO20S73cTma9-qFKxilvkHEQAd1hVAKDbeuxR5S4XE
That's it for now, be sure to leave me feedback and suggestions. Adding the ship outlines takes days of intensive work, so I please be patient if I don't fix problems right away. I hope you enjoy this mod and find it useful.
FINAL IMPORTANT NOTE: This mod is to a great extent a compilation of the work of others, as such I have no rights to any of its components. Even my main contribution (ship outlines) is based on the proprietary artwork of the mods I created addons for. As such, any permission to use any part of this mod needs to be directed to the author of each specific component.
< Message edited by perrisloquis -- 6/10/2015 5:13:27 AM >
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