Stellaris Mods - Progress, Starbases, Defence Platforms, Lens Flares, Oh My! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to May! Sol 3's natural satellite has completed another orbit and that means... It's time for the monthly progress report!

As you know, the Cherryh update reworked a lot of things. The one most relevant to our shipset was of course Spaceports being repurposed into Starbases and their redefinition into one of the game's most central and interactive aspects of empire management.

For the last month, we've been working on Starbases for both Elves and Asari, along with their defensive systems - platforms and ion cannons. So, in today's report we'll go over the final(ish) results!

Elves of Stellaris

The Elven starbase was in planning long before we laid our hands on Stellaris 2.0 and from the start we knew that it was going to inherit the floral design of the old spaceport but would be a lot more expansive and impressive.

As one arrives in an Elven system, they would be immediately assaulted by all their signature splendour. Our Elves don't settle for half-measures when it comes to making an impression. To them, the form is a function all of its own!

Pictured here is Tier 4 - a Citadel - but of course, just as with our Asari Starbase which we previewed last month, the Elven starbase will also go through all 5 tiers, from Outpost to Citadel, and you will be able to see the progression reflected in its appearance, as it grows and expands in an organic way.

This time, we won't be going over each individual stage but I would like to highlight the important aspects of its evolution.

The Elven Outposts are very similar to the Asari ones in the sense that they're designed to be simple and practical, something that can be built easily and cheaply to establish foothold and set up for further expansion in the system. It is a seedling from which a proper Starbase can sprout if the system is valuable enough.

As the starbase goes through its progression, more and more habitats are added to the core section, reflecting its growing population and new facilities. Nessa happens to be a big fan of Cities: Skylines and you can probably imagine how much fun she had designing the environments. In fact, even though players probably won't notice it, the environments feature a lot of distinct little buildings. Some of which... might be meaningful if you know Nessa's love of references n_~

But let's not forget that there is more to starbases than just the starbase itself! We consider the defence platforms that will be accompanying them an integral part of them and we decided that we wouldn't release one without the other. We had to make sure that they both looked like they belonged together. We've kept you waiting (and may keep you waiting a few more days ^^) but hopefully you can forgive us when you see the results in game <3

But because I'm not done teasing you yet, here's some pictures!

Mass Effect Civilisations - Asari 

Last month, we went over the design behind the asari Starbase and explored each tier in detail. So today I'm going to focus more on the defences - platforms and ion cannons!

But first, let's have a look at the progress we've made since the last report:

In the last report, Tier 3 and 4 were still untextured and the jury was still out on the details. They've gone a long way since then n_n But there's one plan we ended up cancelling. After a long struggle with the design of modules, we realised we didn't really... know what we wanted from them. So rather than waste any more time solving a self-inflicted problem, we decided to ship the starbase without visible modules. Perhaps we will come back to the idea in the future, but not unless we have a solid idea of what we want before we attempt it again.

On the bright side, that did allow us to accelerate the development and we'll be able to release the update much sooner than originally projected!

So, with that out of the way, let's have a look at the final version of the Ion Cannon! It hasn't really changed much since the last time I teased it except the texture. After having finalised the Tier 4 Starbase texture we went back to the cannon and adjusted the pattern for consistency.

The design behind the ion cannon was "what if we took the Mass Relay principle and turned it into a giant gun?" and the model practically made itself ^^

And finally, last but not least, the defence platforms!

...

they're not finished yet! >//< I'm so sorry! Our plan was to wrap them up today(ish) which is the reason this report was a bit delayed, but we weren't quite happy with the results so we decided to go back to the drawing board on that at the last minute. Still, we do have something to show! Unfortunately, not yet mapped and textured but this is the version we'll be going with and we'll try to get it done as soon as possible! Even though we're slightly ahead of schedule thanks to skipping modules, I still feel really bad that the impromptu redesign pushed us back ._.

Nevertheless, I believe it was the right decision in the end. Here's what our original idea looked like:

And this is what we redesigned it into:

While the progress on it has basically been reset, it definitely matches the style of the Starbase a lot better and we're very excited to finish it! And hopefully it won't take long n_n

That said, we're going to keep the valve-like-station model around just in case we find a more appropriate purpose for it in the future. Perhaps in another shipset? We'll see ┐(￣ヮ￣)┌

And I'll see YOU again soon! Provided we don't randomly decide to scrap everything and start over, updates to both Elves of Stellaris and Mass Effect Civilisations: Asari featuring the new Starbase models should be coming in a matter of days!

Until then, have fun playing Stellaris and look forward to more posts on all kinds of things over the next couple of weeks. This time for realsies n_n