When ever I touch these they always seem to brake my mods, is there a number of rules I should be following with what I can and cannot do?

I don't understand the question. Have you made simple mods successfully, such as the color changing one:

/#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/15795-simple-mods-you-can-do-on-your-own

The problem is that when I sometimes change the mod folder for its name, the mod refuses to load



The same goes for editing the index file, So I was wondering if there are any tips.

I don't understand "change the mod folder for its name", and the description "mod refuses to load" could mean many things. Can you create a zip file of a mod which is not working for you, and upload it? Then we can see the same thing. Can you confirm that you are not getting any errors in output_log.txt?

This mod wont load for me.

I am not sure what your mod is trying to do, so I am not sure how to test. However, I changed two things, and as far as I can tell it loads fine. (1) change directory name so it has no special characters (single quote) or spaces: igncom1_mod (2) Change index.xml lines:

[code]





Igncom1's mod description





[/code]

I am not sure which, if either of these is needed. But when I make these two changes, I get a load screen which has "Igncom1's mod" in the lower left hand corner. I suspect if the Name/Description are left as the default values, then the game doesn't display this text. But it may or may not load the mod anyway.



I highly recommend that you use "standalone=false" and only include the changed mod files. This works fine for me, and it will make your job much easier the next time the dev team releases a new version.

davea wrote:
I am not sure what your mod is trying to do, so I am not sure how to test. However, I changed two things, and as far as I can tell it loads fine. (1) change directory name so it has no special characters (single quote) or spaces: igncom1_mod (2) Change index.xml lines:

[code]





Igncom1's mod description





[/code]

I am not sure which, if either of these is needed. But when I make these two changes, I get a load screen which has "Igncom1's mod" in the lower left hand corner. I suspect if the Name/Description are left as the default values, then the game doesn't display this text. But it may or may not load the mod anyway.



I highly recommend that you use "standalone=false" and only include the changed mod files. This works fine for me, and it will make your job much easier the next time the dev team releases a new version.

It took me around an hour, I figured out that something I had done next to the mod title had caused the problem, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what I did wrong.



Bloody coding.



However thank you for the help and the tip.