Stellaris - Summer's Over And It's Back To Schoo- SPACE! (Patreon)

Hi, hello and welcome toooooo another exciting episode of "Princess Loses Her Mind Over Things We Won't See For A Few More Months"! Except hopefully it won't be quite that long this time around n_n

I am so happy I set up Visual Studio Code workplaces for my Stellaris mods before holidays. It's made juggling multiple projects so, soooo much easier! Well... it didn't help much when I opened it yesterday, looked at the WIP files and had to ask myself "WHAT IS THIS FOR? WHO FORGOT TO COMMENT TH- O-oh... these are all mine..."

Um... yessss... so... that's awkward. BUT! I did manage to figure it out eventually, which is a very good thing because I desperately needed some material for this month's Mod Report that wasn't just another showcase of Drow ships!

(But yes, we have Drow ships too!)

...WITHOUTFURTHERADO!

Elves of Stellaris

As much as I would love to show off the Drow Titan in its final form, I'm afraid we weren't quite able to make up our mind on what it should even look like just yet. In the interest of not delaying this monthly report any more, I'll instead show you what we were experimenting with!

As you may have noticed, neither our Elven nor Asari Titans had much thought put into the design of their main weapon, the Perdition Beam. There are good reasons for that - the Elven model was created long before anyone knew playable Titans would one day be in Stellaris, and with the Asari one, we were more focused on faithfully recreating the Destiny Ascension rather than designing a Titan specifically.

However, Drow is our first shipset being developed from scratch in the post-Apocalypse era of Stellaris. We want to bring not only our previous experience into its development, but also to spread out space wings and explore new horizons.
With that in mind, we decided to give a little extra consideration to the Drow Titan's Giant Gun of DOOM. Up to this point, we never really tried to incorporate weaponry into our ship models and even refused to let turrets be visible as they would have ruined the sleek and smooth look we love so much. The only exceptions we've made were for the Colossi whose weapon was... basically all they were.

So...

UwU what's this?

Um... well... let's just say it was not our intention to create a literal space tank. We were joking about just running with it and strapping on some space treads to perfect the look, but ultimately we had to go back to the drawing board. While we have not completely given up on the idea of a GIANT SPACE GUN BARREL, we definitely feel that this one clashes with the established aesthetic a bit too much. We are currently thinking of maybe making it bulkier, curvier,more organically shaped?

It's still up in the air (well... up in the void of space at any rate). Hopefully we'll have something more final to show you soon! If you have any suggestions, we'd definitely love some ideas!

Mass Effect Civilisations: Asari

So... narrative content that was supposed to be coming out every month or two. What happened to it?

The short answer is: I got distracted by so many things over the summer that the little time I spent on modding all went into Omega (more on which later!)

That said, the narrative series is by no means getting cancelled! Now that summer is over and I need to actually have a schedule and priorities, I'll be resuming work on Asari, and in much larger installments than originally planned to make up for my slacking off during the holidays! Starting as soon as I'm done with my current Omega priorities, I want to begin digging through the enormous backlog of text LostInACave <3 wrote for us. There are more events already written out than I can count, awaiting only in-game implementation!

Aside from that, there are some minor code improvements to (hopefully?) resolve various reported issues that we couldn't reproduce on our end, specifically related to weird system generation glitches and our custom anomalies not always working. Overall, we do not currently have anything big planned for MEC: Asari, but that's a good thing. It's been in the spotlight for long enough and it's time to shine it on some of our other projects n_n

Mass Effect Civilisations: Omega

Speaking of the space devil, Omega! You cannot imagine now happy I am to have finally made tangible progress on it! Well... most of that progress was made before I took a break so I came back to a lot of unfinished code, but at least it's beginning to take shape!

What kind of shape, might you ask?

Kinda like a mushroom, with little whiskers sticking out and- OH! Right! Gameplay systems! In accordance with the plan outlined a while back, Omega's gameplay is centered around exploiting space resources and making the most out of habitats. So far, this is how the development version is trying to achieve it::

Civic: Omega Orbital Oasis (Yes I know it's bad, still subject to change!)

• Start the game with the ability to construct Orbital Habitats
• Pops living on Habitats require less housing (currently 50%, subject to change)
• Pops living on Planets require more housing (100%)
• Planetary Buildings and Districts have 100% increased cost and build time
• Mining Stations and Research stations have +50% output

In addition to the above, I'm also considering making habitats easier to build earlier in the game. This is actually my next highest priority: find a way to either reduce the Alloys cost of Habitats specifically (without affecting other Megastructures) or to refund a portion of invested Alloys upon completion. If I'm able to do that and it plays in a satisfying way, I will also probably counterbalance it by introducing further hurdles to planetary habitation.

However, that is not to say that players will be punished for trying to settle planets. Rather, I want them to see planets more as... large mining sites to exploit, rather than population centres to urbanise and develop culturally.
To that end, I'm thinking of introducing special feature tentatively dubbed "Planetary Strip-Mining". At this point in development, I'm still not sure whether it would be better to implement it via special Buildings, Decisions or some other means, but the gist of the idea is: using a small number of pops to acquire a large amount of raw/rare resources while greatly damaging the planet's environment, making it a very unattractive place to live, most likely reflected in reduced Habitability, Amenities, Unity, Science and Trade Value output.

As mentioned, all of this is still under active development and very much subject to change and (very likely) getting smacked all over with the Balance Bat (the lesser-known sibling of my trusty Nerf Bat which has been utilised many times in addressing various issues with SCX Carriers).
But! For now this is the direction I want to continue exploring. It has a lot of potential for developing a playstyle very unlike anything else Stellaris or Team Nessassity have ever done before. I'm happy we've finally found a promising way to achieve that and I can't wait to share our progress with you! Preferably as soon as next month, when I also want to discuss another big part of Omega: Omega itself and how its in-game development will shape the Sahrabarik system and perhaps even one's whole empire!
Anyways, Omega is at last in full production and this time we intend to take no breaks and let no distractions get in the way! The plan is to have at least one major piece of Omega news every month and, Aria willing, have a fully featured, playable release before the heat death of the universe, or at least sometime in 2020!

This concludes today's Monthly Mod Report! As always, thank you for your continued interest and support! Now that we're getting back to our usual routine, we'll have a lot more to show in the coming months! Thank you a million times and until next time, have fun playing Stellaris <3