Stellaris Mods: Progress Updates + 1.8 Plans (Patreon)

Actually you probably don't because I haven't officially done monthly updates up to this point so welcome to the first one! I hope you're all having a wonderful Caturday and are ready for some exciting nyaws!

The Asari Civilisation - Utopia Megastructures

Furst of all, let me a-paw-logise for once again jinxing everything with the cursed "soon" (╥﹏╥) My estimates for the release of the next megastructure maaaaaay have missed the mark by an... itty-bitty kitty bit. I've really gone and tripped in the litter box, haven't I?

After how awesome the Sentry Array turned out, the "very clear and straightforward" concept we had for the Science Nexus ended up... leaving much to be desired. Neither meow nor Nyassa were convinced that it would live up to the new standards of quality and OOMPH so we went back to the clawing board. After some deliberation, we've come up with a new blue-purr-int, but un-fur-tunately that means the work on the Science Nexus will start over.

BUT! There's some good news! Because the Science Nexus had to be rescheduled, the Ringworld was bumped up the priority list slightly and... here's a little sneak peek n_n

It's still an early draft, nothing is kitten in stone just yet but we do like the base shape so far and plan to use it for the tech section of asari ringworlds.

But that's not all! The really exciting part is what we have planned for the habitat sections! No pictures yet but if our evil purr-ans come true, it will be something Stellaris has not seen before!

The Asari Civilisation - 1.8 Čapek and Synthetic Dawn

Although we're still wrapping up Utopia support, we have never lost sight of the future! I have been following the development of the next Stellaris update very closely and even suggested some API additions to the devs that should make my work easier come 1.8.

• Over the last two months I've been hard at work in purr-suit of a solution that would fix asari leaders sometimes being generated as males (resulting in wrong purronouns being used in events and ruler titles). An expurrimental spawn-control system did almost make it into the last Asari Civ release but having encountered some last-minute impurrfections I decided to disable it for the time being. I've been working on impurroving it ever since and managed to make significant purrogress, but only to a point. Hard-coded limitations of the game ultimately stood in the way of flawless impurrementation... Until recently! Seeing no other options, I contacted Wiz and brought the issue to hiss attention. He was kind enough to add the function I needed on the API side of things which means that in 1.8 I can finally set the asari up as a truly monogendered species! Nyaaaan!
• Now for something slightly different, as you may know, Synthetic Dawn is going to bring a lot of improvements to Synthetic Ascension and robotic lifeforms in general. What does it have to do with Asari, you might ask? Synthetic Asari portraits! I've been wanting to do this forever and the time has finally come! n_n As we get closer to the release of Synthetic Dawn, expect to hear more about it and possibly see some previews! I'm so excited about this!
• Another little pet peeve I've had for a while has been my inability to properly depict asari longevity in Stellaris. It's a minor and mostly cosmetic thing but thanks to another feature coming in 1.8, it will now be pawssible to control not only the maximum lifespan of a species but also the starting age of its leaders! And Wiz also confirmed it tabby fully accessible to modders. What it means is that the asari can finally have their full 1000 years lifespans and the leaders they recruit will be far more likely to start already several centuries, rather than decades, old. But that's not all! With this, I may actually be able to develop a proper, dynamic Maiden-Matron-Matriarch progression system for asari characters! This little feature offers so much potential and I can't wait to lay my paws on it! <3

Ship Classes Extended

Although SCX is one of our minor purrojects and we never wanted it to consume too much of our attention and resources, it is still important to us and we want it tabby as functional and fun to play as it can be.

Unfurtunately, it hasn't been performing as well as we'd hoped. Compatibility issues with other mods as well as limitations of the Stellaris combat frameowork and ship designer have led to many annoying hissues, such as invalid component errors, imbalance and weird AI behaviour.

To resolve these issues, we will have to make sweeping changes to not just numbers but to fundamental roles and functionality of the classes. Some of these changes may seem drastic but hopefully it will lead to better and less problematic user expurrience in the end:

• Carriers will be made slightly squishier, as currently they are surprisingly good at operating in Carrier monofleets which was never the intention. Making them more vulnerable will hopefully increase their reliance on escort ships for defence.
• Due to multiple issues with the Nova Cannon and Nova Reactor, they are being removed for the time being. Those issues are currently unsolveable due to inherent bugs with hardcoded AI ship design autogeneration. We'll see if 1.8 fixes it; if it does, the Cannon may return, better and better implemented.
• To compensate for the loss of its main weapon, the Dreadnought is being reworked. It will now have inherent armour-piercing capability that will apply to all equipped weapons. Its behaviour will also be changed from "artillery" to "defensive" which will bring it closer to frontline (but it will still attempt to hang back, protecting the backline). I hope that this change will not only carve out a new and unique niche for Dreadnoughts, but also reduce their overlap with Battleships, allowing both classes to coexist with less redundancy.
• The Superdreadnought will remain largely unchanged but some of its auras may receive a minor balance pass.

That's all for today! If you're excited about any of the news or have any questions, please let me know! I'm planning on posting comprehensive status updates like this one at least once a month. In addition, of course, to the usual unscheduled updates any time there's something interesting to announce!