Galaxy creation

The galaxy creation menu is (obviously) the menu where you create a galaxy. In it, you can choose many options for your galaxy, like it's shape, star count, star connection type, star grid alignment, and initial empire configuration.

## Galaxy shape

### Procedural

These galaxies don't contain moving stars or backgrounds.

* **Composite galaxy** - Allows you to create multiple sub-galaxies in one map. Only galaxies from the procedural category (excluding SQUARE\_SYMMETRIC and HEXAGONAL\_SYMMETRIC) can be chosen as a generated sub-galaxy. Next to items in the list of sub-galaxies to generate is a slider that lets you control how big the sub-galaxy is compared to other sub-galaxies. Below this list are two buttons. 'Add new galaxy' allows you to add a new sub-galaxy, and 'Distribute evenly' makes the sub-galaxies have the same size ratio. Note: Even when using "Distribute evenly", sub-galaxies can have more stars than other sub-galaxies. This is because of the frequency of fractions converting to non-terminating decimals. For example, 1/3 is equivailent to 0.33333333...
* **Stretched spiral** - A barred spiral with 4 tighter arms stretched horizontally. Near the center, stars become closer together, like they do in a real spiral galaxy.
* **Rectangular** - Generates stars in a rectangle, as the name suggests. Stars do not become denser near the center.
* **Disc** - Makes a galaxy in the shape of a circle. Stars become denser and wealthier near the center.
* **Better round spiral** - A spiral galaxy with 6 thinner arms that swirl less. Instead of the core becoming gradually denser near the center after the arms begin forming a circle (and as a result, the arms retaining some density), a rapid gradient of star density takes place between the arms and the core. This causes the arms to generally be a lot less dense than a normal round spiral galaxy. Wealth does get generally higher near the center, but doesn't do so evenly; rather, lines of wealth become apparent near the center, and in the top density in a ring just out from the center usually contains the galaxy's natural highest wealth. The actual center of the galaxy is usually a hole; this could be the galaxy's central black hole's influence (and probably why this round spiral is called "better").
* **Round spiral** - A possibly barred spiral with 4 arms. The vertical arms split off thinner, then become thicker for a while, and around a quarter of the way through the arm begin becoming thinner again. The horizontal arms split out of the core starting thicker than the vertical arms, but after splitting don't thicken again,
* **Layered hub** - A hub with discs connected to the closest disc of a 6 small disc layer further away from the inital layer. The initial layer also consists of 6 discs instead of 10.
* **Hub** - A large disc galaxy connected to 10 smaller disc galaxies by tech level 5+ starlanes. Each disc has larger star density near their core, though it's sometimes harder to see in the smaller discs.
* **Grid 5x3** - Consists of a 5x3 grid of square galaxies connected by the same starlanes as those in the Hub and Layered Hub.
* **Grid 2x2** - Similar to a 5x3 grid, except it's 2x2 and stretched horizontally.
* **Heart** - A heart-shaped galaxy, as the name implies. Stars become denser near the heart's line of symmetry.
* **Hollow disc** - A disc that has no stars in the center, forming a shape otherwise known as a 'ring'.
* **Layered rings** - Consists of multiple hollow disc layers that get denser approaching the center. Unlike the hollow disc itself, layered rings do have a core.
* **Cross** - A thick X (cross) that has a core in the area where the two lines intersect.
* **Star** - A star-shaped galaxy with a similar core to a cross, though instead being a pentagon,
* **Astriek** - Eight lines that all intersect in the center, forming a core once again similar to a star and cross. The core is more circular than the former, however.
* **Triangle** - Self-explanitory. Has no core.
* **Xmas tree** - Two widened triangles with a smaller and denser one just above a larger and less dense triangle. In the area between the edges of the top triangle's base and the bottom triangle's tip are two very dense circles. Above the top triangle is a even denser star.
* **Square symmetric** - Generates a square that forces stars onto a square grid in such a way that no grid positions are fully surrounded by stars yet empty themselves. Note: does not work with any non-normal grid alignment, in which case it generates a line.
* **Hexagonal symmetric** - Same as square symmetric but instead operates on the hexagon grid. Also not compatible with grid alignments. Generates as a square.
* **Sine wave** - A high-amplitude/frequency sine wave.
* **Spaghetti** - Stars with frequency based on rectified Perlin noise. That is, the galaxy will consist of winding lines that ocasionally merge and split, most of which outline smooth "islands" with extremely low amounts of stars. For a simpler explanation, it really does look a bit like spaghetti.

### Procedural moving

Stars in these galaxies can move. These galaxies generally cause more lag with less stars than other galaxies, and with the first two, can create much more chaotic borders than any other galaxy type.

* **Moving center** - Consists of a non-uniformly rotating disc and four non-moving squares of stars on on the disc.
* **Moving frame** - A square frame containing non-uniform speed stars moving clockwise around the center.
* **Moving planets** - Three discs that start out touching each other, orbitting a point left of the leftmost disc. Due to the properties of orbits, the planets eventually begin to come into contact with other planets in chaotic lengths of time.
* **Moving spiral** - A spiral galaxy consisting ot 2 arms which are generally hard to make out. The center rotates slower than the outer areas of the galaxy.

### Maps on disk

Consists of background maps. Most of these should be self-explanitory.

* Maps of the real world
	+ **Africa** - A map of continental Africa. Sinai (far northeastern Egypt) is included, although it is generally regarded to be part of Asia.
	+ **America** - A map of continental North and South America. Likely for political reasons (being that Greenland is a highly autonomous part of Denmark), Greenland is not included.
	+ **Asia** - Map of countries in which the bulk of the population resides in Asia. This means Russia is not included (despite having most of it's land in Asia), and Indonesia is included.
	+ **Austria-Hungary** - A map of Austria-Hungary at it's peak in 1908-1914.
	+ **Balkan**[sic] - A map of the Balkans. Specifically, it includes the area of Turkey past the Bosporus Straight along with Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania.
	+ **Better Europe** - A modern map of Europe. It does not split the UK. It also has the rest of Turkey, the northern half of the Middle East, the northern portions of Algeria and Morocco, portions of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and most of Tunisia. Kaliningrad and Armenia itself are fixed, however, Nakhchivan still has the wrong ownership, owned now by Iran. This, along with Cyprus not being split, may be for the simplicity of the map.
	+ **Better Middle East** - The name of this map is a misnomer. It contains the Middle East along with a few countries that used to be ruled by empires dominating the Middle East. The exact countries included are Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.
	+ **Brit Empire** - A map of the majority of the British domain in 1921. For unknown reasons, Cyprus, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, and Malaysia are left out, while Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico are included, despite never having been a British colony at all.
	+ **British Isles** - A map of the United Kingdom and Ireland.
	+ **China** - A map of China and Taiwan.
	+ **Earth** - A map of Earth with the frequency of stars decreasing in less habitable areas.
	+ **Eurasia** - A map of Europe and Asia.
	+ **Europe** - A map of Europe in 1991 consisting of purely the continental area. The UK is split into England, Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland. Two more likely unintentional errors in the map are present, as Poland owns Kaliningrad instead of Russia and Nakhchivan is owned by Armenia while in real life Azerbaijan owns it.
	+ **France** - A map of European France.
	+ **Franco-British** - A combined map of France, the UK, Ireland, Luxembourg and Belgium.
	+ **German Confederation** - A map of the German Confederation, a politcal entity that served as one of the closest things to Germany until Prussia formed Germany.
	+ **Germany** - A map of modern Germany.
	+ **Grand China** - A map of China, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan.
	+ **Grand India** - A map of the former countries controlled by British Raj - that is, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma - along with Afghanistan.
	+ **Italy** - A map of modern Italy.
	+ **Middle East** - A map of every country having lands in the Middle East, along with Libya, included for unknown reasons.
	+ **North America** - The part of North America shown in the Americas map.
	+ **Roman Empire** - A map of Rome close to 117 AD, with an extremely unhealthy amount of straight lines replacing curved borders.
	+ **Russia** - A map of modern Russia.
	+ **Spain** - A map of modern Spain.
	+ **USA** - A map of the continental USA, excluding Hawaii and Alaska.
	+ **Yugoslavia** - A map of Yugoslavia after WW2.
* Other maps
	+ **Snowflake**
	+ **Some Galaxy**
	+ **Pentagram**
	+ **Merry Christmas!** - An assortment of stars laid in formations based on christmas-themed items.

### Categories with only one map

* **Fractal: Random continents** - Generates a random map with a background. Stars can only generate on green, despite the fact that sand exists. Wealth will be concentrated in "trade routes". These trade routes converge and become even wealthier in a connection between separate major landmasses, e.g. ismuths. Outside of these, the trade route gradually splits and mostly covers the major landmasses. For some reason, this phenomenon is confined to these maps only - wealth is distributed in larger blobs in other land maps, even when said maps have two major landmasses connected by a narrow strip of land.
* **Quickmaps: testgalaxy** - A map that has a background of the Milky Way and star generation based on it.

## Non-shape specific options

### Galaxy size

A slider that controls the amount of stars in a galaxy. The slider ranges from 0-2000 (0-1000 on mobile) stars when 'Insane galaxy sizes' is turned off. Otherwise, it ranges from 0-5000. An 'Enter exact figure' button just below it allows you to set it to anything specific. If 'Insane galaxy sizes' is on, it can even go past 5000.

### Grid adjustment

Aligns stars to a grid.

* **No adjustment/None** - Stars are placed normally.
* **Square grid** - Stars are generated based on a square grid.
* **Hexagonal grid** - Stars are placed on a hexagonal grid.

### Starlane generation

Controls how starlanes are generated.

* **Standard starlanes** - Stars within a certain distance from other stars have a chance to connect with each other given they aren't intersecting.
* **Webbed lanes** - Similar to standard lanes, but stars always connect if they don't intersect another starlane and are close enough to each other.
* **Stars on a string** - Generates starlanes in a way that makes it impossible to have a star be connected to 3 or more other stars. This results in a single 'string' of stars, hence the name.
* **As quick as possible** - Generates similar to standard starlanes, but ignores possible intersection of starlanes.
* **Totally interconnected** - Every star is connected with all other stars in the galaxy. As a result, galaxies larger than 500 stars will take time to generate, and even if they generate, they're going to be extremely laggy. This also leads to generated galaxies looking like blobs. This is the starlane generation type you want to pick if you want the map to look like the Holy Roman Empire for whatever reason.

### Initial empire layout

Determines the initial political configuration of the galaxy.

* **Classic** - Generates 3 nations with 1 star each
* **Four big blobs** - Generates 4 nations controlling much of the galaxy.
* **Death Match** - Generates 15 nations with 1 star each. In this mode, the initial empires will also generate with a different and fixed name set (these names come from the usernames of active/formerly active members of the Galimulator Discord Server). These include:
	+ Mojo
	+ Some Guy
	+ Palstal
	+ Snoddasmannen
	+ JustAUsername
	+ Crash77
	+ Nookrium
	+ Joseil
	+ Poncho
	+ Enzoci
	+ Scenario Overlord
	+ SIRENS
	+ Lism
	+ JanKaszanka
	+ Lildawg
	+ Wolf
	+ Estrect
* **Custom starting empires** - Allows the user to choose how many 1-star empires initially spawn in the galaxy.
* **Random blobs** - Generates 5-15 nations with a random amount of stars, possibly also dependent on galaxy size. If two nations generate on top of each other, the nation that generated last gets the stars they generated with. This can lead to empires spread across the galaxy controlling small blobs of land.
* **Epic gamer scenario** - Exclusive to the 5.0 beta. Spawns 6 empires that always have the same names:
	+ Humans
	+ Avians
	+ Reptilians
	+ Fungoids
	+ Insectoids
	+ Evil
* **Scenario** - Allows you to generate a galaxy with the starting configuration of a scenario you previously saved (note that instead of "Scenario", it'll say the actual scenario name). There can be multiple of these options.

## Shape-specific options

Options only availible for a specific galaxy type.

* Moving galaxies
	+ Moving frame
		- **Rotation speed** - Controls how fast the frame rotates.
	+ Moving spiral
		- **Undulation rate** - Controls how circular the galaxy is. Lower values result in less circular galaxies.
		- **Core size** - Controls how far the core extends before splitting into arms.
		- **Rotation speed** - Controls how fast stars rotate around the center of the galaxy.
		- **Orbit fudge rate** - Controls the density of the non-arm area. Effects of this are hard to see with starlanes and star regions on, but becomes more apparent when only stars are turned on.
* Random Continents
	+ Algorithm - changes the land generator to be used
		- **Hybrid** - Mix of Perlin and Simplex noise.
		- **Perlin**
		- **Simplex**
		- **Offset**
	+ Aspect - affects the shape of the outer border of the map
		- **Wide** - Rectangle
		- **Square** - Square
		- **Panorama** - Extremely wide rectangle
	+ **Seed** - Just a way of being able to play the same map when you finally get an interesting map.
	+ **Draw land** - If set to false, the background does not draw. Regardless of if this is false, stars and starlanes will not be visible if on mobile.
* testgalaxy
	+ **Density factor** - Controls how large the galaxy generates. Note that this does not mean the galaxy expanding in a space bigger than it, but instead the stars appearing smaller. Lower values result in stars being farther apart.
* Earth
	+ **Density factor** - Controls how far apart the stars/provinces generate. The lower the value is, the harder it is for empires to expand.