Stellaris Mods - Drow Progress, Asari Narrative Updates, Omega Restructuring, And What Ancient Relics Means For Our Mods (Patreon)

You know, I feel like this isn't the first time I've been surprised by how long a post title can be... huh...

A-anyways, it's JUNE! And you know what that means, don't you? I'd like to think you don't, because I'm hoping that this month's mod report will surpass your expectations! (I've worked so hard on lowering them over the past several months after all n_n)

There's a lot of everything to talk about so let's not waste time and get straight to the news! WITHOUT! FURTHER! ADO!

Mass Effect Civilisations: Asari

Earlier today finally saw the release of the first batch of narrative content for MEC: Asari! In addition to 2.3.* compatibility and lots of small fixes and optimisations, the update added 5 early-game anomalies for players to find within Athena Nebula and Crimson Nebula.

While it may not seem like a lot, these are only the starting point and implementing them turned out to be quite an educational  experience for me. Up to this point, my speciality has been background code and gameplay mechanics. I have always enjoyed coming up with scripted functionality for traits, civics and such. However, implementing these anomalies was the first time I had to design something that is built upon a narrative.
Thankfully for us all, I didn't have to write most of said narrative. If that had been the case, I would still be agonising over the first anomaly by this time next year n_~ Credit for the ideas and most of the text goes to LostInACave who has been an incredibly helpful and prolific Team Nessassity associate for nearly a year by this  point.

Anyways, now that we have figured out how anomalies work, how they are structured and what their limitations are, we have developed a few simple templates that will make it extremely easy to add more narrative content very easily and quickly in our future narrative updates. Despite the slight delay caused by my overconfidence in approaching something I had no prior experience with, we are still hoping to stick to the originally intended schedule of one narrative update per month (give or take a few weeks) while we work on more long-term projects. Barring, of course, any emergencies such as major Stellaris expansions that require large-scale reworks. The narrative development will never get in the way of essential content and will be deprioritised as needed.
But in any case, if I can maintain a regular and acceptably frequent schedule, I would love to expand the  development of our other mods in a similar way.

Ah! But how could I be talking about narrative and exploration content without mentioning THE Ancient Relics Story Pack that just came out yesterday? With the expanded archaeology, Relic Worlds, Artifacts and a slew of other very topical additions, a couple of anomalies kinda pale in comparison, don't they?

Yups. Which is why we intend  to take advantage of those things going forward! In fact, the inaugural narrative update may have suffered a bit from some last-minute change of plans. If you're wondering why Asari Republics have access to 3 anomalies and Asari Corporate Interests to only 2, the answer is... I decided to repurpose the third anomaly into something else, inspired by the release of Ancient Relics. I won't spoil what it's going to be, but let's just say that it would have done certain planets in the Zelene system great disservice to just be done with them in the space of one event (─‿─)

And in case you are worried that the narrative updates will eventually become stale, don't worry, it won't just be all anomalies and excavations! We have a large variety of content planned out, and in fact, some of it is already written, awaiting only implementation! Here's just a little sneak peek at our narrative roadmap for the coming months:

• The Board: these will be randomly and usually passively occurring corporate events exclusive to Illium. These will encompass themes such as public opinion, corporate politics, trade with Terminus Systems, deciding how to interact with the black market, ethics versus profits, etc. The culture of Illium has so much potential for fun and unique  stories and we can't wait to explore them!
• The Ecclesia: the Asari Republics analogue to Illium's Board, Ecclessia events are what  eventually we decided to repurpose the once-planned Forum events into. These stories will broadly encompass themes unique to the decentralised interstellar e-democracies of the Asari, their people, their internal politics as well as, of course, their relations with other nations. Can the Thessian way of life be preserved as the Republics grow larger and larger and drift further apart amidst the stars? Is the system truly safe from those would use it to their own ends? Are the asari sliding down the slippery slope of decadence? Should that worry them or should they embrace it?
• Artifacts of the Precursors: the Asari have a strange relationship with those who came before them. Arguably, some of their greatest achievements, the course of their history and even the shape of their unique genome can be attributed to outside tampering. To this day, the Temple of Athame secretly houses precursor artifacts that continue to be of use.
• Ardat-Yakshi and Justicars: because every perfect society needs its dirty secrets, and when it comes to those, the asari never disappoint! As of right now, Ardat-Yakshi are present in the mod as just a small, rarely occurring modifier that makes some pops unhappy, but it was always my intention to flesh out this unique aspect of the species. And, of course, we cannot forget about everyone's favourite Space Samurai, the Justicars, who have limitless potential to act as protagonists, antagonists, catalysts, plot devices and foils in a lot of stories. Fun events practically write themselves!
• Fame and Following: reputation holds a lot of power on both Illium and Thessia. The asari culture is all about being connected, being aware and being involved. With popularity comes power, but it is also a very fragile, unreliable, transient thing. This is a somewhat better thought-out form of what the once-planned celebrity status originally intended for Illium leaders will eventually become.

As you can see, we won't be running dry on ideas for a long, looong time! The only question is, can we keep up? n_n The next couple of months are going to show whether these goals are in any way realistic. However, I'd like to optimistically say... m-maybe! >o<

Elves of Stellaris

It's been a while since we had any news on Elves, but I'm happy to announce that new EoS content is back in production!

Until recently, Nessa was away and dealing with unfortunate annoying RL stuff, but she's back and creating new shiny things with renewed energy and undying hatred for all things unglamorous!

Among the things to  look forward to are: custom Ecumenopolis models for Elves and Drow and updated city graphics to go with them, as well as more additions to the Drow fleet!

In fact, the picture you see at the beginning of the post is an early WIP of the next design in line: the Battleship.

And this is the concept (drawn by the talented and imaginative Anlaela) it is based on. So far, it's turning out incredibly faithful to the sketch and we're absolutely in love with the results. In fact, I'm going to post a bunch of wireframes just so I can look at them some more!

This is only a rought outline of course, but I'll be sure to keep you updated on the progress!

Oh! But it's been so long since the last time I got to tease you, so here's some more!

This here is meant to be the SCX Dreadnought. We're probably going to slim it down a bit vertically, to better match the sleek direction the Battleship is heading into, but otherwise, we absolutely love this shape! It's going to look so imposing in 3D!

And speaking of imposing, how do you think the Titan will turn out?

Alright, the Titan concept was originally meant to be a Carrier design, but we realised that with a little more length and a giant cannon down the middle, it will be just as good at delivering a MAH LAZORful OF BURNING DEATH OF DESTRUCTION AND DEATH!

Squeeee! <3 We can't wait to get to it! @o@

Mass Effect Civilisations: Omega

Lastly but  not leastly (autocorrect is telling me this is not a word but I spit on you, autocorrect, I defy your definition of a word  and substitute my own, because I am Alpha and I am Omega and YOU should should shut up and sit down, I'll mangle this language however I feel like!) Omega is currently undergoing a bit of restructuring, somewhat related  to the new way we're approaching MEC: Asari.

From the beginning, Omega was meant to be a heavily narrative experience, although  given our lack of experience with narrative... it... has not progressed very far. It's become really  embarrassing how much time we're spending planning Omega's development and doing preproduction, compared to how little has actually been done since the announcement.

Upon reflection, we have come to the conclusion that putting Aria's Couch Simulator and the Collector storyline at the forefront of Omega's list of  priorities was not the best idea. Insisting that it should be a full-fledged event-driven experience on release day won't amount to much if the actual core of the mod -  the gameplay, mechanics and assets - keep getting delayed.

Therefore, we have decided to reprioritise Omega's development and its release plan:

• The Omega 4 relay and the Collectors will no longer be considered core content. Instead, their development will be pushed to the post-release phase. However, ongoing preproduction will continue.
• Aria's Couch Simulator will no longer be considered core content. Instead, it will likely be handled the same way as MEC: Asari's narrative updates. The framework for ACS will be in place on release, but the actual content for it will be added episodically over time.
• The playable Omega shipset will be prioritised over the Collector shipset. Since Collectors won't be in at launch, making assets for them will not be as urgent.
• Developing the basic mechanics of the Omega habitat and the related civics, traits, planetary features and maintenance/control events for everything will resume and become the new top priority. Everything we've learned while working on the EoS and Asari reworks will be used to make the gameplay of Omega as interesting and unique as possible without having to rely on narrative content to carry it.
• Princess will learn to delegate tasks instead of trying to do everything on her own. Expecting productivity to increase by 12 bajillion % as soon as this milestone is achieved.

Hopefully, this is the last-last-for-realsies-now-last time we have to re-plan Omega, but  thankfully, at least this time we won't be starting over from scratch n_n The new structure of MEC: Asari provides what I believe will be the perfect template for the (hopefully) final vision of Omega. I really want Omega progress to become a monthly thing at last!

Phew! This was a lot! And it's not even over for June yet! Later this month, I'll be un-announcing a new Unannounced Project that we expect to become very relevant to all of our other mods once it gets put into production!

Until then, thank you as  always for your amazing support and interest in our mods! <3 Please enjoy and have fun playing Stellaris and it's new Story Pack, Ancient Relics!

Also, for miscellaneous Team Nessassity news, bloopers, memes, cats, and fun stuff, or just to poke me out of  boredom, be sure to follow me on Twitter @PrincessitySC2! We're expecting June to be very productive so I hope to have a lot to talk about!