Stellaris Mods - Progress, Lhûren Update Coming Soon, Way Too Excited About Victollaris 3 (Patreon)

Time sure flies by when you have no time-management skills whatsoever. BUT! Thankfully we have the monthly progress report to keep us on track and put in perspective just how little we managed to get done over the last couple of weeks as we lounged all day on the beach (*cough cough*) while the less fortunate of us had to do with the swimming pool and drowning our jealous tears in the sweet oblivion of ice cream...

AHEM! That is to say, we've been enjoying our holidays to the fullest and trying to refresh and recharge for the busy year to come ^▽^

Joking aside, despite the incredible burden of having more free time than we knew what to do with, we have managed to get some work done and we are happy to say that all of our mods will be getting updates soon! No exact ETA but we're hoping to start releasing them after the current beta branch (2.1.2) of Stellaris goes live.

So, today, let's go over the immediate release schedule! Beyond that, I'd also like to talk a little about the upcoming planet and pop rework that Stellaris is undergoing and how it will figure into our mods (spoiler: a lot!) So, without further adoooooooo...

Elves of Stellaris

After a very, very... very very very long time in development, being shifted up and down the priority list more than any of our other projects, the Lhûren - our ancient China inspired elves with their unique appearance and wardrobe - are almost release-ready! Admittedly, we're a bit off from our originally projected release date that was supposed to coincide with the Lunar New Year... But our projects have a tendency to... blow up mid-development and it's become sort of an inside joke that we're incapable of ever doing anything minor n_n

Still, I think the extra time in the oven was for the best and I hope you will agree when you finally get your hands on the Lhûren! Even though it took longer, the end result is also a lot more comprehensive than originally planned, adding multiple new faces for both genders and a library of outfits that rivals that of the regular elves! The initial Lhûren release will focus on portraits but that won't be the end of it. There are some very exciting things we want to do with their home system, among other things, but given that planets, pops and maybe even empires in general are changing with the next major Stellaris update, we're going to hold off on those aspects for now so we can get the Lhûren into your hands sooner rather than later!

Until then, I'll leave you with one last little teaser... THE HAT!

Nonetheless, the Lhûren are not the only ones who have benefitted from Lhûren development. Those of you who intend to stick with the regular Elves, Drow and Lunari will be happy to know many of the phenotypes have been polished and the selectors have undergone a consistency pass to reinforce the identity of each species by emphasising their unique features. Which is an unnecessarily convoluted way of saying that we're working towards giving each elven species more exclusive outfits, hairs and phenotypes and reducing the amount of assets they share. It's an ongoing process with the end goal of making each flavour of Space Elf look like an independently evolved civilisation that can be distinguished from the others at a glance, yet still offer a lot of options and diversity internally. It's an ambitious plan but... as you should know, we're incapable of ever doing anything minor ~_n

Anyways, here's a little sample of the upcoming improvements:

Drow complexion has been normalised across all phenotypes and there are now two main gradients: drow (pictured) and dunmer (paler, more ashen-looking, not yet implemented in game)

The Lunari became roughly 26.41% prettier and have 11.54% less creepy zombie eyes syndrome.

And most importantly of all, the cold weather coat is getting a matching, super cute cap! It's still very WIP (the in-game test was put together literally today) so keep in mind that the hair is most likely going to change. Right now you can see it doesn't actually go inside the cap but that will be addressed before release. The fuzz, colours and texture aren't finished yet, but it's presentable enough that I couldn't not show it off! <3

I love hats, you love hats, everyone loves hats! In the future we want to add more hats until the holy word of hats has reached the farthest corners of the universe!

Mass Effect Civilisations - Asari

While Omega continues to be our priority project right now and the Asari don't currently have anything huge coming up, we do have a number of small things that we've compiled into a larger update. The highlights include: compatibility with Planetary Diversity, more static hyperlane generation within the home clusters, a couple more diplomatic lines and, something I've been wanting to do for a long time, a complete overhaul of trait icons, remade completely from scratch, significantly more distinct and closer in art style and quality to our Elven icons! In fact, in the course of making these, we ended up with a surplus! We have no idea what we're going to do with them yet, but it would be a shame to just throw the rejected designs away so we'll definitely think of some ways to use them eventually! Maybe the upcoming pop/tile rework will give us some ideas? n_n

We also came up with some... miscellaneous silhouettes that may or may not work so well as icons. We'll see where inspiration takes us ^^

Aside from that, we definitely haven't forgotten about the long-promised coloniser and mining/research station rework as well as, of course, the Colossus! The shipset won't be complete without them and we're not going to leave it unfinished.
We're hoping to get back to ships once the Lhûren are out (very soon now!) Especially since we recently had a little breakthrough on the colossus design! For the longest time we've been pushing the Colossus down and down the priority list simply because we were drawing a blank on how to design one that looked like it belonged with the rest of the shipset while also looking the part of a Colossus.
Although it might seem easy to just take any asari ship and stick a giant cannon in that central tube... honestly that would have been boring. We considered and shot down a number of simple and obvious designs in search of something more impressive, with elaborate animations that properly convey the magnificence and terrifying purpose of a planet-melting superweapon.
I won't spoil it and it's a bit early to promise that we won't change our minds but I'll just hint that the inspiration came from something I saw in Mouretsu Pirates! n_~

If this idea works out, I'll finally have an excuse to pass off my out of control anime addiction as productive research! Ohohohohoho!

Mass Effect Civilisations - Omega

Surprisingly, Omega ended up having the least progress made over the last month as most of the attention was on covering the last stretch of Elves development. That said, an associate of the team, Vale, has been working on more variants of Collector portraits. They're still very WIP and we are yet to finish developing the custom portrait mesh, but it's slowly beginning to look like the Collectors might get a wide variety of portraits for different contexts. However, we do still want to keep them as a non-playable crisis-type faction as of version 1.0 of Omega, with a limited shipset and portrait selection. In the future, we might expand the Collectors into a playable Mass Effect Civilisations species in their own right, but I want to make it very very clear that it is not on our roadmap at this time.

Regardless, we're very happy with the direction the Collectors are going. Interacting with them is part of the Omega experience so they definitely benefit from the additional art and physical presence.

The Omega station itself continues to be in a stasis while we're waiting to get our hands on the planet/pop rework that Wiz keeps mercilessly teasing. The more we learn about it the more excited we are for the functionality it's going to bring to our mods!

We're especially interested in districts and pop jobs because they're just the thing we need to properly bring out the unique society and infrastructure of Omega, not just in the narrative sense but with actual in-game mechanics! It was always our intention to have an upgrade system for Omega, allowing the owner to expand its size and maybe add some bonuses here and there throughout the game, a system we'd already successfully tested with the Drow Tulshar.
However, the upcoming changes are going to open up SO many more options! Tentatively, we are planning to tie the upgrade system to districts. As Omega is being expanded (which will also be reflected in its in-game model) it will gain more district slots and access to custom districts and buildings offering (possibly, depending on our needs) special pop jobs. From there, we want the owner of Omega to decide how they want to develop it depending on what they build. Do you want to invest into the station's galaxy-famous nightlife, attracting tourism and trade to become... Las Omegas? Or would you rather resume Omega's mining operations, exploiting the natural wealth of Sahrabarik's asteroid belt? Or maybe you're interested in unifying the various scum and villains who call Omega home under your iron fist and turning them to more productive ends such as... conquering a thing or two. Maybe something in between?

The new system seems like it's *made* for Omega and, even if not all of that turns out to be possible, the addition of more granular economic secotrs (pop jobs) alone will allow us to marry the flavour of our unique home systems with actual tangible functionality.

But that's the future (we don't know how distant, Stellaris has not offered any ETA yet) so for now, Omega's development will soon be shifting to the feature I tentatively call "Aria's Couch Simulator" (please don't leave! I'll come up with a better name I promise!)
It is the system I outlined in the initial Omega announcement which basically boils down to periodically offering the owner of Omega various narrative events to resolve. Omega doesn't go out of its way to explore the universe. Instead, denizens of the universe come TO Omega with various goals in mind. It's a hub which attracts all kinds of characters, upstanding, unsavoury and completely enigmatic alike.
As the ruler of Omega, the player will have the opportunity to observe and, if they wish, interact with those characters and the events they set in motion. Those little events can range from dealing with everyday hive of scum and villainy matters, to events involving the Collectors, other empires in the galaxy, nearby enclaves, and so on. Some of them (like said empires and enclaves) will be contextual, drawing from the generated galaxy to fill in roles and provide event targets, others will be more static. Some will offer simple outcomes (get +x energy, lose -x minerals, get a temporary modifier) while others might involve alien artifacts and technology, opportunities to gain or lose leaders and pops, discover unknown systems, gain insights into Omega 4, and more.

The goal is something along the lines of vanilla Shroud events or recurring anomalies that come to you rather than being found. The ACS system is opt-out so if you don't want to deal with it or if your empire isn't the kind to allow strange visitors free access to your space, the player will only need to set the appropriate policy and thus avoid both the complications and benefits of ACS events.

As much as I hate writing anything that isn't code, I'm looking forward to this! And the team now has two associate writers whose help will definitely speed things along and preserve my sanity! I can't wait to get them started and see what they come up with! ≧∇≦

And you can look forward to a lot more from Team Nessassity in the foreseeable and unforeseeable future! As a reminder, we're planning to release a couple of small updates once Stellaris merges the beta branch into the live branch, presumably once Paradox is back from their holidays. Until then, have fun playing Stellaris and thank you for following the progress of our mods! <3