Expansion Hack #2

Earlier, I presented an expansion hack using Charles and/or Cheat Engine.  It was possible to do that hack using only Cheat Engine, but you had to refresh the game after each expansion.  There's a way to modify the method slightly to avoid refreshing (but it's still not as nice as using Charles).  This modified method will be of interest to those of you who are familiar with Cheat Engine but not Charles.

Suppose your expansion build icon looks like the one at the top of this article.  


Step 1 - Set Up Cheat Engine

First, set up Cheat Engine by using the button in the upper left to select the process belonging to your browser.  I used Opera, so you can see I selected the process "000000D4-opera.exe" in the image below.


Step 2 - Set Required Liberty Bonds to Zero

Next, change the "Value Type" to "Text".  In the "Text" field, enter "xk01" (this is the code for Liberty Bonds).  DO NOT enter quotation marks for this method.  Hit "New Scan" then "First Scan".  The results will show up in the box on the left side.

Highlight all the results (select the first one, hold down shift, then either press the "End" key or keep hitting "Page Down").  Hit the red arrow button to move the results to the bottom box.  Highlight all the results in the bottom box (select one of the entries by left-click and then hit Ctrl-A).  Hit the Enter key.  In the pop-up, enter "xk0100000" (5 zeros at the end) without quotation marks.

This is what Cheat Engine looks like after you've done all this:

In the game, if you select "Build" and look in the "Expansion" tab, you'll see something like this:

The required number of Liberty Bonds has been set to 0.

Step 3 - Change "x01"

This is the key step that makes the whole expansion hack work.  The code for a regular expansion (i.e., non-crewed, non-EP-paid-for) is "x01".  The trick is to change it to "x10".  I hope you know how to do this at this point, but I'll give you the details anyway.  

Clear the results in the bottom box of Cheat Engine by hitting the button with the red circle with a line through it.  Hit "New Scan".  In the "Text" field, enter "x01" without quotation marks.  Hit "New Scan" and then hit "First Scan".  The results will show up in the box on the left side.

Highlight all the results.  Hit the red arrow button to move the results to the bottom box.  Highlight all the results in the bottom box.  Hit the Enter key.  In the pop-up, enter "x10" without quotation marks.

This is what Cheat Engine looks like after you've done all this:

This step is also the reason why when you refresh the game, your Coins and Liberty Bonds are restored to their original amount.  

Step 4 - Set Required Coins to Zero (Optional)

If you have enough Coins to do as many expansions as you want without refreshing, you can skip this step.  Otherwise, I'm assuming you don't have enough Coins to do many expansions at once.  This step is really for doing many expansions at once when you don't have enough Coins and don't want to refresh your game too many times.

In my other article on the expansion hack, I explained how to get many Coins using Charles.  It's possible to handle this a different way using Cheat Engine, but it's not as nice as using Charles because you have to repeat it for each expansion.

Clear the results in the bottom box of Cheat Engine by hitting the button with the red circle with a line through it.  Hit "New Scan".  In the "Text" field, enter the number of Coins required for the next expansion.  In my example, it's 71852.  Do not use quotation marks or commas.  Hit "New Scan" and then hit "First Scan".  The results will show up in the box on the left side.

Highlight all the results.  Hit the red arrow button to move the results to the bottom box.  Highlight all the results in the bottom box.  Hit the Enter key.  In the pop-up, enter "00000" or as many zeros as there are digits in the original number.  I used 5 zeros since 71852 has 5 digits.  Do not use commas or quotation marks.

This is what Cheat Engine looks like after you've done all this:

In the game, get out of the Build menu and select "Build" again to refresh it.  In the "Expansion" tab, you should see this:

The required number of Coins has been set to 0.

Step 5 - Build Expansion and Repeat

Now do the expansion!

When you look back in the Expansion tab of the Build menu, you should see something like this:

The required number of Liberty Bonds is still 0, but the required number of Coins has been reset.  No problem!  Repeat step 4 with the new number of required Coins.  You don't have to repeat steps 2 or 3 unless you refresh the game.

When you refresh your game, all the expansions you've done should still be there and your Coins and Liberty Bonds should be back to their original amounts.