Scope

Section titled “Scope”

This page covers the colours, text styling and map symbols of the game’s windows and maps, and the colour data a player can edit. The game shows no application-wide palette selector. Its look comes from colours set one by one on each window and list, a small shared colour set, and colours that change with what a list entry or map symbol means. Naming themes, rank themes and the ThemeID column of FCT_Race are no sign of a visual theme system.

Shared palette

Section titled “Shared palette”

The game defines the following shared colours when it starts. The three-channel RGB values and the named opaque colours below have alpha 255, so the ARGB value is FF followed by the RGB hex value. The names describe the look. What a colour means depends on the list or map that uses it.

Colour RGB Hex Appearance and principal use
Dark navy 0, 0, 64 #000040 Repeated window and list background
Pale yellow (two entries) 255, 255, 192 #FFFFC0 Common text and fleet markers
Light green text 128, 255, 128 #80FF80 Values and selected meaning categories
Dark turquoise 0, 206, 209 #00CED1 Civilian fleets on the tactical map
Lime green 50, 205, 50 #32CD32 Shared named colour
Hostile red 255, 0, 0 #FF0000 Hostile contacts
Neutral light green 144, 238, 144 #90EE90 Neutral contacts
Friendly pale green 152, 251, 152 #98FB98 Friendly contacts
Allied forest green 34, 139, 34 #228B22 Allied contacts
Dark orange 255, 140, 0 #FF8C00 Components that can be converted to a known equivalent
Gold 255, 215, 0 #FFD700 Commander in a lifepod
Cyan (three entries) 0, 255, 255 #00FFFF Repeated copies of one cyan
Dark grey 80, 80, 80 #505050 Dark grey
Medium sea green 60, 179, 113 #3CB371 Medium sea green
Bright blue 0, 50, 255 #0032FF Bright blue
Mint green (two entries) 0, 255, 160 #00FFA0 Ring around populated systems on the galactic map
Light sky blue 135, 206, 250 #87CEFA Supporting unit or ship category
Orange 255, 165, 0 #FFA500 Supported unit or ship category

These are separate settings that the game can change while it runs, not one fixed theme. Many windows repeat the RGB values directly instead of using the shared set, so a change to a shared colour would not reach every window that shows the same colour. Entries with equal RGB are still separate entries. The table lists the shared set as the game defines it, and not every entry appears on every screen.

Forms controls fonts and selection

Section titled “Forms controls fonts and selection”

Windows commonly set a navy background and pale yellow text on the window itself and on its drop-down lists, lists, trees, buttons and tabs. Text boxes that show values often use light green text instead. Examples are the population summary list and the background of the Race Information window, the Naval Organization window, the Class Design window, and the time increment buttons of the tactical map.

Repeated styling does not mean every element sets its own colour. An element can take its colours from the window around it or keep the standard Windows colours, and buttons differ in whether they use the standard Windows button look. The toolbar, zoom and pan buttons of the tactical map show their icons on the standard Windows button background. The coloured time increment buttons do not, and show navy with pale yellow text. The Text Input Window uses light green text in place of pale yellow on its navy background.

The game has no single font setting. Some elements set their own font instead. The design summaries of the Class Design window use Microsoft Sans Serif 9 pt. The ship design summary in the Naval Organization window also uses 9 pt. The unit class name, class summary and formation element description boxes of the Ground Forces window use 9.75 pt. The medal name box of the Medal Management window uses 12 pt. Other elements take the font of their window, or the Windows font, when none is set.

Ordinary list selection has no game-wide selection colour. The list of system bodies in the System Generation and Display window draws its column headers itself, in navy with pale yellow text, and leaves its rows and cells to standard Windows drawing. Those header colours therefore do not apply to selected rows. Button selection is different. Clicking a time increment button resets every button in its group to #000040 and colours the chosen button RGB 0/0/120, #000078. The sub-pulse buttons of the tactical map behave the same way.

Economics exception. The Economics window holds a white style that sets the window and every element nested inside it to a white (#FFFFFF) background with black (#000000) text. Nothing in play applies it, so it does not make a white theme a player can choose. It would change only element colours, not the meaning colours of list entries or the map drawing, and it has no matching return to the dark look and is not saved.

Semantic status colours

Section titled “Semantic status colours”

What a colour means is local to one report or one map drawing. No rule in the game makes every positive value green and every negative value red.

Context Rule and precedence
Contact markers on the tactical map Allied forest green, hostile red, neutral light green, friendly pale green. Every other status (civilian, none and combat) is white (#FFFFFF)
Commander names in the tree of the Commanders window A commander in a lifepod is gold first. A prisoner is magenta (#FF00FF) next. Otherwise the risk score decides. Below 5 is pale yellow, below 8 is orange (#FFA500), and anything higher is red (#FF0000). The risk score is the commander’s health risk plus, for a commander older than 61, (age minus 60) divided by 2 with the fraction dropped
Alien population details in the Intelligence and Foreign Relations window Each detail line needs current or maximum intelligence points above its threshold. The thresholds are more than 100 for population and total installations, more than 200 for factories, mines, spaceport and cargo shuttle station, more than 300 for refineries, maintenance facilities, ordnance transfer station and refuelling station, and more than 500 for research facilities, ground force training facilities, naval headquarters and sector command. The line is light green when current intelligence passes the threshold. When only an older maximum passes it, the same information shows in red
Ship components carried as cargo, in the transported items trees of the Naval Organization window A component the race can disassemble for research is light green first. Otherwise one it can convert to a known equivalent is dark orange. Otherwise one with alien technology the race can research is cyan. Otherwise it is pale yellow
Fuel and MSP columns of the Repair / Crew Report tab in the Naval Organization window A rounded fuel or maintenance supply percentage below 40 is orange. Below 20 it is red, which replaces the orange
Armour damage in the Repair / Crew Report tab Damaged cells / (armour width x armour thickness) x 100. The unrounded percentage is orange strictly above 25% and red strictly above 50%, replacing orange. Exactly 25% keeps the normal style and exactly 50% is orange

Age adds nothing up to 61, and a commander aged 62 or 63 adds 1. The states behind these colours are covered under health, retirement and casualties, lifepods and captivity and colony intelligence.

Each warning threshold keeps its own units and rounding, so the thresholds do not merge into one colour legend. The fuel percentage is fuel carried divided by fuel capacity (without commander bonuses) times 100, rounded to the nearest whole number with an exact half going to the even neighbour. The report colours that rounded percentage, not the unrounded fraction. Exactly 20% is orange and exactly 40% keeps the normal style. The maintenance supply column is rounded the same way.

Tactical and galactic maps

Section titled “Tactical and galactic maps”

On the tactical map, fleet markers, labels and movement tails start pale yellow. A fleet with any civilian function switches its marker, label and tail to turquoise. A movement tail is drawn only when the fleet last moved at the current game time and the Movement Tail box is checked. Range rings have their own colours, display boxes and dash patterns (dash length and gap):

  • Active search ranges use light blue RGB 176/226/255 (#B0E2FF), dashed 15 and 5. They need the Active Sensors box and the fleet’s Display Sensors on Tactical Map box in the Naval Organization window.
  • Fire-control ranges use RGB 238/220/130 (#EEDC82), dashed 10 and 3. They need the Fire Control Range box and the fleet’s Display Weapon Ranges on Tactical Map box.
  • Weapon ranges use RGB 255/185/15 (#FFB90F), dashed 10 and 3. They need the Weapon Range box, the same fleet box and a map scale below 100,000,000 km per pixel.

Passive sensor range rings use light coral (#F08080) for thermal sensors, thistle (#D8BFD8) for EM and alice blue (#F0F8FF) for ELINT, dashed 12 and 4. They mark the detection range against the target signatures 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 picked with the Passive vs Signature boxes and need the fleet’s Display Sensors on Tactical Map box. These colours denote sensor families, not diplomacy.

System bodies on the tactical map have blue (#0000FF) fills. Fixed bodies, the fixed points the game makes for deep-space populations , have yellow (#FFFF00) fills. Comets have cyan tails and outlines, and body labels are lime green. Optional overlay rings are white for surveyed bodies (Surveyed Bodies box), yellow for bodies with known minerals (Mineral Concentrations box) and lime green for colonies (Colonies box). Each further ring is wider than the one before by 40% of the first ring’s size. The body-type display boxes and the race’s survey and colony knowledge still decide whether these features appear. Markers for alien contacts, missile salvoes, detected ships and detected alien populations all take the shared contact status colours from the table above. They do not use the race’s stored contact status colours.

On the galactic map, a system’s fill starts green (#008000). A known black hole changes it to purple (#800080), selection then changes it to lime (#00FF00), and an elapsed supernova then changes it to white. Later conditions therefore take precedence. The outline is lime. A planetless system, one with no bodies other than comets and asteroids, gets a navy inner dot three quarters the size of the marker unless a supernova has elapsed there. When the System Icon Only box is checked, the drawing stops at this point. Otherwise display-enabled badges and rings carry distinct meanings:

Galactic feature Display box Colour
Habitable-world count / low-colony-cost count / medium-colony-cost count Habitable-Range Worlds / Low Colony Cost Worlds / Medium Colony Cost Worlds, each with a Normal Gravity Only and an Include Low Gravity box Blue / cyan / slate grey (#708090) badges
Planetless-system comet count / unexplored jump count Number of Comets in Planetless System / Unexplored Jump Points Cornsilk (#FFF8DC) / orange badges
Incomplete jump survey / unexplored jumps / population Jump Point Survey Status / Unexplored Jump Points / Populated Systems Red / orange / mint green rings
Possible dormant jump / naval headquarters Possible Dormant JP / Naval Headquarters Yellow rings. The headquarters ring is dashed, 10 and 3
Pending ground survey / maintenance location Ground Survey Locations / Maintenance Locations Light steel blue (#B0C4DE), dashed 4 and 2 / deep sky blue (#00BFFF), dashed 5 and 2
/ blocked routing or military restriction / Blocked Auto-Route Systems or Military Restricted Sys Dark orchid (#9932CC), dashed 4 and 2 / magenta, dashed 6 and 3 for blocked routing and 2 and 1 for military restriction
Known alien forces Highlight Contact Systems The race’s stored colour for the system’s contact highlight status, dashed 3 and 2
Mineral search result Mineral Search Flagged, with the system flagged by the search Dark sea green, dashed 4 and 3
NPR system value No separate display box. The system needs an NPR value above Insignificant Low light blue, Medium orange, High dark orange, Extreme and the capital tier red. Dashed 1 and 1
Wreck count Wrecks, with a positive count Dark orange cross and count
Sector border Sectors Stored sector command colour, a ring 5 pixels wide on the system marker

Status rings stack outward in the order jump survey status, unexplored jump points, populated systems, possible dormant jump, pending ground survey, maintenance location, naval headquarters, , known alien forces, blocked routing, military restriction, then mineral search and NPR system value. Each ring’s diameter is marker size x (1 + 0.25 x ring's place in the stack), counting the first ring as 1. The first ring is 1.25 times the marker size, and each later ring adds 0.25 of the marker size. Only rings that are drawn count. The possible dormant jump ring marks a system whose ClosedWP value in FCT_RaceSysSurvey is 1, as described under possible dormant jump point flag. The jump point display panel of the galactic map draws the primary star in its stellar type colour, red markers for jump points and orange markers for jump points with a jump gate, numbered in pale yellow. The stellar colour comes from the Red, Green and Blue columns of DIM_StellarType, loaded with the game data, and is not a fixed entry of the interface palette.

Customisation persistence and defaults

Section titled “Customisation persistence and defaults”

Event colours

Section titled “Event colours”

The Events window has Back Colour and Text Colour buttons for the type of the selected log event. The colour choice belongs to that event’s race and event type (DIM_EventType), not to the single event. When the race has no colour set for that type yet, Back Colour creates one with pale yellow text (255, 255, 192) and Text Colour creates one with a navy background (0, 0, 64). Each button needs a selected event and a colour picker closed with OK.

The picker offers sixteen custom swatches. They are navy, pale yellow, red shades (#FF0000, #CC0000, #990000, #FF3333), orange shades (#FF8000, #FFB266), yellow (#FFFF00), greens (#006600, #009900, #00CC00), and blues (#000099, #0000CC, #3333FF, #66B2FF). These are picker presets and give no event type a meaning of their own.

Copy Colour copies the selected event type’s existing colours to every other race. It replaces a colour those races already have for that type or adds one. It stops with a message when the event’s race has no colours set for that type. Export Colours writes the selected race’s colours to a CSV file, one line per event type with the event type ID, the background ARGB integer and the text ARGB integer. Import Colours reads such a file into the selected race. It skips lines with an empty first field or fewer than three fields and event types the game does not know. It replaces only the types in the file and forces alpha to 255. Import is not a global palette replacement and not a full reset.

When the game is saved, it deletes the current game’s rows in FCT_EventColour and writes one row per race and event type, with EventTypeID, RaceID, GameID, AlertColour (the background) and TextColour as ARGB integers. When a game is loaded, it rebuilds the race and type colours from those rows and forces them opaque. In the event list of the Events window only the event type cell of an event’s first line takes the colours. Continuation lines of a wrapped message use the ordinary style. The event overlay on the tactical map works the same way. It fills a rectangle behind the event type in the background colour and draws the type in the text colour, while the race, system and message text stay pale yellow.

Map labels and fonts

Section titled “Map labels and fonts”

On the Map Labels tab of the galactic map, New Label creates a label reading “New Label” in pale yellow and Microsoft Sans Serif 12 pt. Copy Label makes a copy that keeps the colour and font. Change Font opens a font picker with colour choice turned on and updates only the selected label and its preview. Delete Label removes the selected label.

FCT_MapLabel stores the caption, colour as an ARGB integer, font name, size, bold, italic, race, position and game, in the columns Caption, Colour, FontName, FontSize, FontBold, FontItalic, RaceID, Xcor, Ycor and GameID. When a game is loaded, those labels are rebuilt from them, but the stored font size rounds to a whole point, with an exact half going to the even neighbour. Labels are individual annotations and do not change window fonts. The galactic map separately draws its system text in Microsoft Sans Serif regular at a base of 8.25 pt times the zoom setting. When the result falls below the race’s minimum map font size, the minimum is used instead. The minimum starts at 6. The survey summary on the map uses the base 8.25 pt. The Minimum Map Font Size box accepts any value that reads as a positive number and changes that race’s minimum, which is saved with the race settings in the MinMapFontSize column of FCT_Race.

Persisted race and sector colours

Section titled “Persisted race and sector colours”

Each race has colour integers in FCT_Race: Colour, Red, Green and Blue, MapRed, MapGreen and MapBlue, and the contact status colours Hostile, Neutral, Friendly, Allied and Civilian. A save writes them with the race and a load restores them. On load the game builds opaque contact status colours for the race from the five status integers, and the known alien forces rings on the galactic map use those colours. No window in play lets a player set these race colour values, so their presence in the database is no sign of a player-facing colour picker or a documented factory default. The fixed tactical contact colours of the shared palette are not substitutes for these database values.

A sector command colour is saved as an ARGB integer in the Colour column of FCT_SectorCommand and restored on load. When a population gains its first Sector Command installation, the new sector command takes the system name followed by “ Sector” and the colour red. The galactic map draws that colour as the sector border. The Sector Management window has no sector colour picker.

Examples and caveats

Section titled “Examples and caveats”
  • A civilian fleet stays turquoise even though a neutral alien contact is light green. The two come from different drawings with different meanings.
  • Changing one event type’s text colour changes that race and type’s label, not every event row, map label or window element.
  • A selected black hole system is lime, but an elapsed supernova makes its fill white because that colour is applied later.
  • The catalogue mixes repeated copies, colours read from game data and picker swatches. Equal RGB does not mean a shared setting, and stored integer colours can differ between saved games.
  • No global colour reset was found. Reopening a window restores its standard colours, while stored event, label and race colours survive a save and a reload. The white style of the Economics window has no setting or save that was found.

Concept map

Section titled “Concept map”

Resources

Section titled “Resources”

Related community documentation and developer posts. These may describe a different game version.