Curses someone fixed my favorite bug!

It's a cheap exploit, especially against the AI, why would you want to do it?

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Cheating and making the components produce ludicrous resource amounts in Components.txt?

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

All those exploits and cheats and I never did a single one. I'm starting to feel a little naive. I never realized how I was handicapping myself.

I don't thing this is the kind of Exploit intended.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I'd prefer to just mod the game to remove space yard limits, then go place a ton of space yards on a base ship, then go construct a starbase full robo resource collectors.
It takes time, but it gets the job done.

As for me, here's my (legal) exploitation favorite.

Use organic and/or religious tech to get access to system wide planet value increasing facilities, on top of the single planet value increasing facilities all races can get later on, plus upgrading mining/farming/radioactives facilities, preferably to the point of getting their respective system wide resource output increasing facilities, plus robotics tech to get the system wide resource output increasing facility, and/or usimng monolith facilities, preferably with the planet to be mined being huge with only a space yard to speed up building mines and the single planet resource output increasing buildings, then the rest of the space as either mines/farms/refineries, or monoliths.

Or colonizing planets in a trinary system (more likely making them out of asteroids) and building solar collectors via crystal tech.

any of those above ideas preferably done on/with a huge habitable planet with nothing but a space yard for faster building, the resource production facilities, and applicable output increasing facilities.
Then you likely have infinite resources (unless in a finite resource game), with no worry of depleting the value of asteroid fields, since you will be strip mining/farming/processing planets instead.

Toss a ring world or sphere world into the mix, and you can really churn out a lot of resources, the good old fashioned hard working effort and very effective hard earned profit explotation way, not the newer cheating cheap shortcut exploitation way that leaves someone like me feeling empty and unsatisfied inside due to having done little effort for maximum hollow reward.

find a trinary star system with planets and then make a sun, great for crystal guys =)

Why would it be cheating?
Cheating is giving yourself an unfair advantage or breaking rules for your own gain.

And why would it be hacking?
Hacking is doing something you aren't supposed to do, but SE V (and SE IV) were made to be easily modded in various ways, with the intent that it is allowed for players to be allowed to make changes to make the game suit their own styles and ideas.

Hacking would be along the lines of messing around with the exe to alter 'hard coded' data, or using a hex editor or some such thing to alter a save file.

If I have a mod to removes the limit for space yards, it applies to all players (human or AI), not just me.

It an 'affects everyone' thing, so it is balanced since all sides are effected equally.

If I were to use a mod that would change the output of mineral mines to a higher rate, it affects all players (human or AI), not just me.

Again, its an 'affects everyone' thing, so it is balanced, if not possibly awkward in some ways if you put in to large of a value.

If I make some mod with a special racial trait with uber bonuses, or even a negative cost to allow for more racial abilities, and only my race had access to it, then that could be considered cheating.
Since all players have to be using the same game version/mods, such a mod would just mean all players would have access to get the uber trait, except maybe the AI players.
So, it wouldn't be cheating/unbalanced against other players, but it could be considered cheating against the AI, but assorted settings are already akin to having the AI cheat by giving it bonuses to assorted things.

Ha, ha, ha!

Murphy's Rules?
(Its an old gamers book )

Any limit to the number of suns?

In one of the old versions the game would crash completely if there were too many planet/asteroids.

Small side note: If you use a warp order on a sector with multiple warps, a message window will pop up to ask you which one you wanted. The same is true if there are multiple planets in a sector and you give orders involoving the planet.