Stellaris Mods - Panic Mode Over, Back To Regularly Scheduled Modding! (Patreon)

HI! Suddenly it's April and you know what this means! We're back with another Team Nessassity Monthly Mo-

Hmm...

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We're back with another Mod Report!

Okay, okay, let's maybe start with a recap...

As you might remember, updating our mods to the Le Guin update proved... a little complicated. By which I mean, it condemned them to months in development heck. Between Le Guin's initial moddability issues and our own misplanning, we had to keep our major mods in the oven far longer than we'd originally planned.

Happily, that crisis came to an end early last month and we were able to release Megacorp-compatible updates to all our mods, along with a slew of additional features that we took advantage of the extended dev period to put in. Over the rest of March, we were releasing bugfixes, balance tweaks and various other small updates.

We also finally got a chance to actually play Megacorp with our own mods which was both fun and inspirational! Despite the difficulties along the way, I feel that we have grown as modders and as a team as the result of the experience.

While we were focusing on development, we wanted to avoid distractions and stick to priorities, so we ended up not having much to say in Monthly Mod Reports. Until... today!

As of this post, we are officially... no longer in Total Absolute Panic Mode! Which is great for many reasons, not the least of which being the preservation of our last remaining vestiges of sanity. BUT ALSO! It means we're free to move on and start creating new exciting stuff again! Which is what I'd like to, without further ado, mercilessly tease you with today! >O<

Elves of Stellaris

Being our largest project, Elves required a gargantuan overhaul in the wake of Le Guin. It took the undivided attention of Nessa and Teneb and help from one of our associate writers, #TRIGGERED, to accomplish that task. Over the course of its development, working on the EoS update led to a lot of breakthroughs in our understanding of Stellaris modding and improvements in our workflow as a team. But most importantly, its transition into Le Guin finally allowed us to dive deeply into each Elven archetype's intended flavour and bring out unique gameplay in ways previously impossible. Planetary Features were the big focus of the update, cementing the uniqueness of Elves' many starting options and their inherent connection to the environments in which they evolved or created in their image.

Regrettably, not everything we wanted to explore could be finalised in time, so that will be the focus of the foreseeable future. One thing we'd like to work on is more events. We are extremely happy with the initial implementation of Drow's Tekartas system - games of deadly intrigue that can unexpectedly topple one's carefully cultivated hierarchy - and we'd very much like to iterate upon it, and add more civic and planet-related events, in future updates!

Beyond that, with the gameplay foundations now firmly established, Nessa is planning to resume working on art assets, including Ecumenopolis models and the Drow shipset, as well as... something tentative we aren't quite ready to talk about yet, but keep your pointy ears open for announcements in the coming months! n_~

Mass Effect Civilisations: Asari

I cannot describe how happy and relieved we are that users seem to like version 6.0! Nearly everything has changed to accommodate the new rules and functionality of Le Guin and Megacorp. Illium has finally come into its own as a proper Megacorporation, Thessia benefited from the expanded diplomatic and economic systems, Biotics has at last gained a unique identity and become independent of Psionics, and traits, civics, even starting planets have received an injection of ludonarrative synergy that used to be impossible to achieve under the old system.

But we have only begun to tap into the potential we now have at our disposal. With the general framework in place, we now want to fill it to the brim with content! To that end, over the coming months we'll be releasing smaller updates that expand upon the features of MEC: Asari 6.0 with narrative events unique to the two prescripted archetypes, even more fleshed out systems and planets complete with unique anomalies and planetary features, additional interactions with asari empires played by the AI, and whatever else we come up with!

To assist with this ambitious endeavour, Team Nessassity will be working alongside the incredibly prolific writer, LostInACave, who has already furnished us with so much material, waiting only for implementation! Some of his work is already part of the mod - most of the planetary features and their descriptions on Thessia - and we cannot wait to squeeze every last drop of creativity out o- I MEAN... ahem... to have him help breathe life into our Stellaris Asari!

Mass Effect Civilisations: Omega

Assuming nothing else suddenly requires a complete rework Anytime Soon™, we would like to resume working on Omega once again. From the coding and content side of things, Stellaris now contains everything we need to develop the core of our envisioned Omega experience and we have already laid down most of the groundwork. Fingers crossed, this means Chocolate Toffee's development can get back on track and stay there until it's done.

At the same time, we will also be resuming work on the Omega shipset. Developing it alongside the Drow shipset just seems to make sense given certain stylistic similarities (mostly in the scary-looking and red-glowing sense) and both will be quite a departure from the opulent, sleek, Apple-shaped designs we're used to working on. But don't worry, neither will be lacking in Team Nessassity's patented SHINY™ technology!

To avoid any more distractions and derails, we've decided not to work on Asari and Elven models for the megastructures added in Megacorp for the time being. Instead, we wish to invest our focus and Nessa mana into the new shipsets. Once they are done or at least approaching completion, we'll see about megastructures again. As much as we love them, they are the most time-consuming art assets to design and develop, often taking weeks or even months to reach their final form. Ships and basic stations take a lot less time per unit, so shifting our priority to them will hopefully turn out more efficient in both the short and long term.

Unannounced Projects

GASP! Yes, they're back! I mean... they aren't! They're not announced yet! I can't wait to continue to not announce them for a while yet, but please look forward to no news whatsoever in the near future! <3

And speaking of the near future, I should probably wrap this up before this turns into a May post! As always, thank you for your continued support and for using and enjoying our mods! We love making them so I guess it was meant to be! <3 Anyways, please look forward to more in-depth news soon and in the meantime, have fun playing Stellaris!