Unannounced Project: One Rule - Team Nessassity's new Mass Effect related Stellaris project! (Patreon)

To start with, I'd like to profusely apologise for the terrible code name! I'm really, really, really bad at names and if there's anything that will change almost for sure before we announce this to the general public, it's going to be the name! n_n

But without further ado, here's the main thing we associate with a number of rules that's greater than 0 but fewer than 2.

You may remember this work-in-progress portrait from one of my earlier teasers! We'd been wanting to add a good Aria T'loak portrait into The Asari Civilisation for a long time so when I finally made one, we started thinking how best to release it.

Originally we just wanted to ship it along with a few other portraits in an upcoming cosmetic update, but... it didn't feel quite right. That would have been disappointingly low-key for the single best character in the Mass Effect universe! (yes we may be eeeeever so slightly in love with Aria) so along came the idea of giving her her own prescripted empire and an Omega initialiser. Just a simple one, using a red-tinted retexture of the Asari asteroid habitat model (which we were also working on at the time) to depict Omega.

And that's where we left it at for the time being and switched back to more pressing matters - Utopia Megastructures. We promised ourselves that we'd return to the Omega initialiser once those were all finished.

But one does not simply leave Omega for later. While Nessa was working on the (recently released) Sentry Array megastructure model, we ended up tinkering with Omega a bit more. We'd learned a lot from working on megastructures and we saw potential for improvement.

We started thinking... this Omega doesn't look right, it's certainly inspired by it but it looks too clean, too symmetrical, too new and shiny and one look at the source material would show that we diverged pretty far from it. So... while we were supposed to be taking a little break after releasing the Sentry, Nessa couldn't resist putting our idle musings into action:

And that's when it happened. We started getting ideas. A LOT of ideas! What if we didn't have to give up on the shiny and glowy? What if Omega could be upgraded over the course of the game from a glorified habitat to something on the scale of a megastructure? With GLOW 2.0 and all that? What if we put more care into this initialiser than others? Unique planet models, modifiers and deposits? How about bringing some life to Aria with a custom AI personality and diplomatic dialogue? What if...? How about...? Let's try...

It was then that we realised how much potential there was in Omega! What was originally supposed to be just a medium-sized Asari Civ update ended up taking on life of its own and eventually we decided to separate it into its own mod. Project One Rule was born!

Utopia Megastructures are still our priority and we will most likely not work full-time on One Rule until those are finished. However we have so many exciting ideas that it's hard not to dedicate some development time to it once in a while! Right now, here's what we're planning:

• Omega expansion and upgrades!

Over the course of the game (tied to tech progression) you will be able to expand Omega, adding more habitable tiles and (possibly) some other features later on. The upgrades will confer not only mechanical benefits but they will be depicted visually as well, on the station itself! Starting with this, the iconic rugged and improvised look:

And growing out from there, becoming bigger and more hi-tech looking!

• Omega prescripted empire!

With its iconic Pirate Queen at the head and a unique civic that would allow you to start with pops of many different species on Omega! Because, let's face it, it wouldn't feel right without all the Vorcha, Batarians and other friendly and reputable members of the galactic society n_~

• AI support!

I designed The Asari Civilisation mostly with the player perspective in mind. But for Omega, we want to make playing it as fun as meeting it in the role of an NPC empire. That means setting up a properly behaving AI personality, unique diplomacy dialogue and, of course, the ability for AI players to take advantage of Omega's unique mechanics.

• Unique assets for the Omega Nebula!

This is something we also want to retroactively add to Asari Civ initialisers: planets that more closely resemble how they  originally looked in Mass Effect games!

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At least this is what we have in mind so far! Everything is still subject to change and the project is very, very early in development. It's not currently on top of our priority list but as we get closer to finishing the remaining megastructures, we intend to put more and more time into Omega!

So if you have any thoughts or suggestions, now is the best time to offer them! If we like them we'll add them to the list! <3