Team Nessassity Mods - Wait Are You Telling Me These Are Actually Perfect Circles This Time? (Patreon)

I'm starting to think I should probably move these to the start of the month again so I could pretend I'm always early instead of late >.> BUT! At least we're slowly getting closer to summer! And that means I'll have a lot of free time and fix my sleep schedule and... ahahahahahaha... ah... that was a good one.
ANYWAYS, to be serious for a second, I am actually determined to make the most out of my summer, now that I'm done settling in my new job and actually have some control over my schedule at long last! OR I might end up catching up on Elden Ring and waste all that potential for productivity. Who knows? Life truly is a box of chocolates...

But do you know who's been incredibly productive since Overlord's release a few weeks ago? The foundries of Nessa Shipyards haven't even had a chance to cool down after forging the Elven Juggernaut, and already another colossal project is in the works!

OH! But we haven't bid adieu to the ado yet. Can't forget to do that! You let one tiny part of your routine slip, and next thing you know your life is absolute total chaos! Nothing makes sense, time no longer exists, you wake up at 10 pm and realise you'd run out of coffee, but it's now too late to buy more so you wait until the next day, but now your sleep schedule is so desynced that by the time you're ready to go shopping, you're feeling sleepy again, so you go to take a little nap, and when you wake up, it's almost closing time again, but this time you're determined to make it! So you force your half-asleep, confused butt to put on a human disguise and do some responsible adulting AND YOU DID IT! You got a fresh bag of coffee! So you come home triumphantly and... oh... you realise you'd forgotten to buy milk and you can't stand bitter coffee so you curl up in a corner and cry aaaaaaAAAAAAA!

So anyways: WITHOUT FURTHER ADO!

MEC: Asari & Elves of Stellaris

As I was saying earlier, we have some new models coming up, and this time, MEC is getting it as well!

But... I must disappoint you right here, it's not the Jugs, not yet! The good news is, we have finally settled on a design! The bad news is, drawing of the blueprints has been delayed because my tablet is borked so I'll either have to get a new one or work on my mouse-drawing skills. BUT! There's another bit of good news: we found something else to pass the time and warm us up before facing The Big One.

And that thing is...

...a ring that looks a little painful to wear?

Oh! Wait! I'll fix it!

There! This makes a bit more sense!

It's an orbital ring! Planets wear it to feel extra posh!

So you may or may not remember that the last megastructure we incorporated into any of our shipsets was the Ringworld. Quite honestly, we did not find the results very satisfying. Because of various quirks with scaling, inconsistent placement of entities within systems and a lot of other annoyances we kept running into, we ended up having to compromise a lot on our designs. That in turn drained what was left of our motivation to work on megastructures ever again. Too time-consuming, difficult to design, Stellaris keeps adding more and more to the point where if we'd committed to covering all of them, we'd never have time for anything else.

So, you may be wondering, why are you looking at a new megastructure right there? And one suspiciously ring-like, at that? Who are we and what have we done with the real Team Nessassity?

Well... we're making an exception! And... the reason actually goes back to our roots. The first "megastructure" Nessa designed was before we even formed the team, before megastructures were even an official thing in Stellaris, back when she was developing the first iteration of Elves of Stellaris. And it was actually an orbital ring!
It was mostly cosmetic, its functions restricted to speeding up the production of ships (who remembers planetary shipyards? XD) because the game wasn't yet as complex as it is now.

Over time, EoS has changed and the orbital rings went through many many iterations, ran into various issues and struggled to find their place in modern Stellaris, until eventually they kinda wound up being softly phased out.

Until now! With Stellaris itself bringing the concept back, and also giving it interesting and unique functionality that resonated with us and gave us a lot of ideas, we were inspired to resurrect the Elven orbital rings... but redone from scratch, and extended to our MEC projects as well!

The one you saw above is the Asari design, and here's the initial draft of what we're planning for the Elves:

(Or, as I like to call it, the biggest bracelet visible from space)

But... you might look at these and perhaps think that despite the unique designs, they both look a little bare and empty and... missing a certain something. After all, isn't one of the orbital rings' selling points the ability to build modules and see them reflected on the model?

As it happens, that's exactly what we're planning to do as well! BUT! We wouldn't be Team Nessassity if we allowed modules to ruin the pretty silhouette of these beautiful pieces of jewelry. SO! We've also come up with a unique way to have the cake and eat it.

What you see here is a close-up of the asari orbital ring; specifically, one of the space elevators. And you might notice that most of the ring is actually hollow inside, and looks a bit like a panoramic fishtank.
And what goes inside a fishtank? Well... other than fish?
Exactly! Squids!
But also! Little seashells and rocks and cute little castles and stuff and... um... THE POINT IS! Since we don't want to put ugly bulky modules on the outside of the ring, we've decided to put them inside! And the translucent GLASS 2.0 walls will allow you to see all the different modules you decide to build! We are still in the process of deciding how to design each one, but I can't wait to show you some of the ideas we've come up with! >O<

The same principle will apply to the Elven (and later Dark Elven) orbital rings as well!

It is not rendered yet but hopefully the masterpiece of mousework on display here gives you a rough idea of what we're going for. The plan is for the ring to resemble a vine-shaped ring inset with gems, and each of those gems will house the modules!

It's still early in development, but I hope the WIPs you've seen make you as excited as I  am to see these in game!

And you hopefully won't have to wait long! Unlike the older megastructures or the Jugs, the orbital rings have turned out quite easy to work with! Normally, a ring wouldn't be the most stimulating thing to design (and given our lingering resentment of ringworlds, we'd be avoiding it like fire) but the module system has inspired us to get creative with it and... perhaps pushed us to rediscover some of the initial joy we felt when we first started developing megastructure designs for our shipsets.

That said, once we are done with this little detour, I believe it will be time to finally start modelling the long-awaited Asari Jugs! So please, be patient with us for a little bit longer <3

But that's it for today! Initially, I was also going to do an update on Veiled Realms, but because of all the buzz surrounding the release of Overlord and our excitement over the orbital rings, I ended up getting hopelessly distracted and did not meet my milestones for May >.< BUT I do still want to start that public beta sometime in summer, so once my part in designing the models is done, I'll lock myself in my dark sunless office and not come out until I've made some progress on Veiled Realms that's worth talking about @o@

Until then, thank you for continuing to follow and support the development of our mods! We love you and we hope that you are, as always, having fun playing Paradox games!