Team Nessassity Mods - The Saga of Elven Jugs, The Finale (Patreon)

IT'S NOT MAY YET! And you know what that means, right?

The April Fools Monthly Mod Report!

Oh? Oh... Mhm I guess it is a little late for that...

Okay, fine, whatever! I've successfully used up my ado quota for this intro, so let's just skip right to the part you're waiting for!

Elves of Stellaris 

So first things first...

THE JUGS! Is finally complete and ready to ship!

And what a ship it is! It's certainly enormous, so why don't we go over the details... in detail!

We would be amiss not to mention the largest concentration of detail, which is the top deck! Being the final ship that wraps up the whole shipset (barring a few possible redesigns in the far future) we allowed ourselves to be a little nostalgic and throw in a few throwbacks to the long history of Elves of Stellaris! If you can recognise those giant wi-fi towers and the little buildings underneath the domes... you get a space cookie!

BUT! At the same time, the Jugs also represents the pinnacle of the shipset's evolution, so it includes a few experimental features we'd never tried before. The obvious one is, of course, the turrets!

But before we finalised their design, we had to figure out where to place them...

Initially, we planned to have them in the front... but quickly realised that no only did it make the midpoint a bit crowded while the wings looked a little bare... but also that the turrets did not have a clear 360 angle of fire... unless one were to shoot through the bridge.

Understandably, the crew went on strike and would not let that blueprint go into production unless it got fixed, and two additional wi-fi towers were installed.

Joke's on them, the towers are in danger now! Oooo-hohohohoho~ ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡

ANYWAYS, the next step was to refine the turrets themselves, and that was its own little journey.

In earlier MMRs, we went over how the final concept came to be and everything that got rejected on our way here, but even the final iteration went through a lot of last-minute tweaking as we tried to strike the right balance between artistic consistency, SHINY, and functionality.

The first concept was very minimalistic. Immediately, we noticed that it needed a bit of functionality - something to plausibly adjust the firing angle on (space swivel? I don't know, I don't speak rocket science), as well as a bit more volume in the back to represent all the tech of mass destruction that should be there.

Okay! This one looks a bit less like a decoration and more like a weapon! But we also discovered that it was slightly too slim to be visible in game soooooo we fed it a bit more metal AND replaced the "inner whiskers" with glowy neon tendrils.

That's more like it!

Another thing we really REALLY wanted to do since the start was like... a REALLY big thruster. It's a big ship, after all! It needs a big kick to get moving! BUT! You know what's better than a big thruster? A whoooole row of them, making a pretty trail!

OH! And I guess that's a good shot to point out, yes the ship hangars are actually in the back of the ship! Not only does it make the front look smooth and slick, but also, in combat, presumably the ship would be facing the enemy and taking a lot of fire, so do you really want your shiny new fighters to get scratched as soon as they leave the bay? Of course not! Someone put a lot of effort into that silver paint, you know!

Anyways, that's all the major points we wanted to cover. There are a few more fun little things we put in, but we'll leave them for you to find n_~ For now, let's have a few more renders!

SO! You may be asking, when can you expect it to arrive to the Elven shipyard near your homeworld?

We cannot, for the moment, commit to a precise schedule, but we'll probably release a small compatibility patch (including the Jugs) shortly after Overlord drops, and more content sometime later, but hopefully before the next DLC n_n

Unfortunately, Teneb, who usually produces most of the gameplay content for EoS is currently unable to work on the project due to circumstances outside of anyone's control, so in the meantime, Nessa and I will try to fill his shoes to the best of our ability.

As for things you can look forward to in the (hopefully near) future, I am personally quite interested in diving into Overlord's mechanics and integrating some of them into EoS!
The Lhùren, in particular, will receive more mechanics related to subjects - and now that it's easier than ever to customise and interact with them - I'd love to flesh out their relationship with the Celestial Mandate.
Other civics and origins might also gain access to some new mechanics related to subjects. Subjects are a very fitting and fertile area for imperious space elves to explore but we're still trying to decide to what extent we want to make it an important element of their fantasy. At the very least we do have one Ayleid-inspired civilisation that has been in need of some... unique OOMPH! for some time, and perhaps Overlord is exactly the missing piece we needed! We'll see!

PORTRAITS 2.0

Oh! And one more thing related to EoS! Well, technically, related to all of our mods, but we've decided that the smartest and most efficient way to get it done would be by rolling it out in smaller segments. And Elves would be the perfect hosts for the first phase.
Specifically, the Lhùren, who are a very self-contained variant of elves, with a limited selection of clothes and a very clearly defined theme.

So, you can expect the first phase of PORTRAITS 2.0 to replace all the assets related to Lhùren portraits with our new custom paper doll, as well as clothes, bodies, hair and new selectable accessories (HATS! BIG FANCY HATS!) we're planning to add, all in higher quality and largely remade from scratch.

Afterwards, the plan is to go over the other smaller Elven sub-species one at a time and finally tackle the largest pool of assets that constitutes the basic space elves.

Yes, it may seem a bit backwards, but I feel it's necessary to approach it that way if we don't want Stellaris 2: Revenge of the Blorg to come out before the portrait redesign XD

Okay! That's all for today! BUT! ACTUALLY! I was originally also going to go over MEC and Veiled Realms in this MMR, but the things I wanted to discuss are as huge as the Elven Jugs, but not quite as complete, so I feel it might be more prudent to revisit them in the May Monthly Mod Report. WHICH hopefully won't be as delayed as this one, fingers crossed!

In the meantime, thank you for continuing to support us and follow our projects! I love sharing these things with you almost as much as creating them and I'm planning to continue doing that for the next... at least 500 years or so. We'll see if it still holds my interest past that, but we definitely got the short term covered!

And you know what else you can enjoy for the next 500 years? Playing Paradox games, of course! <3