Unannounced Project: Chocolate Toffee - All relays lead to... (Patreon)

...what? Okay, fine, it may have had a different name the last time but I FIXED it, okay? This one is much better! From now on, it's codenamed  Chocolate Toffee.

And there is a lot to talk about so let's delve right into everything that's happened between then and now!

First of all: Omega is confirmed. We have decided to commit to it, or rather, it decided to commit us to itself n_n

It's become sort of an inside joke between me and Nessa that "all relays lead to Omega". We get constantly sidetracked by it and even as we develop Asari Civ and Elves of Stellaris, every time we come up with something new we go "how can we use this when we get around to Omega?" and then end up doing just that. Even though it's not Omega's turn yet. Not like it cares. It's Omega!

Want to know just HOW sidetracked we managed to get? Welp:

• The Omega Shipset

At first, we weren't going to go that far but... let's just say the development of GLOW 2.0 had a lot to do with it n_~

"But", you might say, "Omega doesn't have ships!" And you'd be right! Except... when has it ever stopped a couple of weirdos with an obsession? Hm?

The "Omega" shipset is actually going to contain a chaotic, disjointed collection of ships from all over the Mass Effect universe and beyond. Asari, Turian, Salarian maybe even Quarian ships will all be there, repurpoed freighters, weaponised civillian ships and so on. The idea is that the Omega fleet is composed primarily of mercenaries and pirates, and to reflect that, a lot of the ships will have markings of major companies like the Eclipse, Blood Pack and Blue Suns.

"Wait... So you're making Turian ships for Omega... before turians even get their own proper shipset?"

Yes! ⊙ヮ⊙

Okay, let me explain. While this is not to be taken as another un-announcement, it very, very likely that Omega will become our test bed for future ship designs. Complete Turian and Quarian shipsets are something we would love to do in the future but that's a huge and demanding undertaking. However, adding a couple of ships to the Omega shipset will give us a good starting point. It will allow us to study their styles, figure out how they're designed and constructed and we'll be able to playtest and iterate on them on a much smaller scale. This in turn will make future development of species-specific shipsets a lot more streamlined.

• Unique Planets

"All relays lead to Omega". What started as an attempt to make Elven starts more interesting ended up finding its way into the Omega initialiser as well. And we're really excited to give every planet in the Omega Nebula a unique texture faithful to the source material.

Here's a little very early sneak peek of one of them: the Chocolate Toffee!

Or was it Urdak? One of those things! This may not be the final version but it should give you an idea of what we're shooting for ◠‿◠

• Hive of Scum and Villainy

It's one thing to make a playable Omega, it's a completely different one to make it feel and function right. And that's where narrative events and gameplay mechanics come in.

Most of it is going to be added post-release but some of it will still make it into the first playable version.

At first, we're planning on adding a civic (designed specifically with Omega in mind, but players will be able to use it elsewhere if they wish) that populates Omega with a variety of alien species. However unlike Syncretic Evolution, you won't be designing them, instead, it will grab a few random species that already exist in your galaxy! Mass Effect species will be prioritised over generic ones however.

Later on, we also want to add narrative events that bring various interesting individuals and incidents to Omega. Maybe a turf war erupts between local gangs? Maybe a smuggler lands on Omega to trade alien artefacts? What if... the Collectors come knocking and make an eccentric request? Each of those events will give the player multiple ways to respond, and some of them may even be part of larger storylines.

And on that note, this is it for today! Omega is very close to entering full production (ha... ha... well, "officially", it's been in production for some time, even though it wasn't supposed to be) soon. We are hoping to start working on it in earnest before Stellaris 1.9 but even we have no idea when the first playable version will be ready. So in the meantime, stay tuned for more news! And if you'd like to offer feedback or ideas, don't be afraid to contribute! <3