Team Nessassity News - December Monthly Mod Report FINALE - HAPPY NEW YEAR! AND HAPPY FUTURE AHEAD!

Woah, time passes fast! I can't believe the 245th of December is already here! And just in time for...

THE DECEMBER MONTHLY MOD REPORT ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ FINALE ⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖ !

We were cutting it a bit close but, somehow, we made it, phew! HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! <3

There's SO much I want to talk about, and if I was better at writing intros, we would probably be talking about something fun and meaningful already. Unfortunately, I'm me, so before we get to the interesting parts, let's slog through our usual (not really, we almost never do those) end-of-year recap!

SOWITHOUTANYFURTHER... ADO!

✧ RECAP: Elves of Stellaris

And speaking of big slogs... I cannot express in words just how relieved I am to finally have been able to finish the Lhùren rework! (Which is too bad, because words is all I have here; the interpretative dance I tried to record got put on hold indefinitely due to the unexpected expenses and war reparations accrued during production.)

It took around two years in total, including a very... very... very lengthy period of procrastination, which... ultimately amounted to very little because almost all the ideas, prep-work and even partially implemented content made during it ended up not being used at all >.>

BUT! You know what they say, right? Five or so times the charm! If at first you don't succeed, throw it all away and do something completely different, then repeat until your perfectionist brain has given up and is no longer screeching at you incessantly! Oh? Nobody says that? W-well! Maybe everyone should read more books, I'm pretty sure it says so in a book somewhere! Ahem! >.<

Ultimately, the rework suffered so many delays that it got put on a direct collision course with the 4.0 compatibility update, at which point, the two kinda merged into this huge mess that HAD to be sorted out within a reasonable timeframe. As it turns out, that was... exactly what we needed to finally commit to some decisions and drag the Lhùren, kicking and screaming, out of development limbo. Phew! Isn't it always a great story when the main character is driven into a dead end and forced to tap into some kind of source of inner strength? It's just like that, except you also realise that you're not the main character; just a disposable extra who isn't experiencing the climax of long development, but instead desperately grasping for tiny scraps of existential relevance, just like everyone else...

Wait, what was I talking about?

SO ANYWAYS! The result was a completely new Origin storyline with three branching paths and very different rewards, designed to help launch your Celestial Throne campaigns in interesting but still thematically appropriate directions.

One route facilitates the familiar tall, isolationist and hyper-defensive playstyle. One incentivises building megastructures and the supporting infrastructure that will stand the test of time. And the last offers a complete break from the initial setup and frees you to blaze your own path in the galaxy... as long as you're willing to pay the price that freedom demands.

And to complement the Origin overhaul, we also reimagined the Civic, Celestial Grace, to offer gameplay with a bit less worrying about touching borders with the wrong empires and a lot more focus on internal politics, giving you incentives to choose your councilors carefully and cultivate them to their full potential.

Due to the unfortunate (albeit serendipitous) scheduling, the new content came out amidst the colossal Stellaris 4.0 economic rework! Which... we had admittedly underestimated the extent of at first, so when it actually hit us, it ushered in an interesting state of... ABSOLUTE APOCALYPTIC DISASTER AND DOOM! REPENT NOW AND GIVE UP BEFORE THE INEVITABLE END! THERE IS NO ESCAPE! WE'RE ALL DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! But we ultimately managed to catch up relatively quickly, and were able to release the mod update within weeks in a surprisingly good state. That said, because the new environment was so unfamiliar, we decided to take a cautious initial approach, opting to prioritise stability for now and expansion in the future. Which brings us to...

✧ FUTURE: Elves of Stellaris

Since the release, we've had a lot more time to get familiar with how Stellaris works nowadays. In my case, that also involved catching up with like... the past year or two worth of Stellaris DLC... yes, I'm an incredible procrastinator. What can I say? It's pure skill. Anyways, there are three general observations and three issues specific to our mods that I've been able to identify, and will inform the development of EoS going forward, so let's break them down:

• Tech Progression

  • (General) The pace of the game is a lot less breakneck than it used to be. However, it does also affect the accesibility and timing of acquiring certain technologies, which we used to use as reliable milestones of progress, but now can no longer be as easily predicted. However, it seems that the means by which empires develop and evolve into stronger forms are now largely detatched from technology, or at least no longer as dependent on it. Ascension Paths now feel much more transformative and impactful than ever before, taking some of the burden off of Megastructures' shoulders.

  • (Specific) Which is relevant to us, as we tended to design content with the assumption that Megastructures were the only big empire goal to strive towards. In that outdated conception of Stellaris, Mega Engineering would pretty reliably pop up somewhere around 50-100 years in and mark the start of the midgame, so all of our content was balanced around this timing. That is... definitely not the case anymore. Depending on your starting conditions (Origin, precursor, access to ruined megas, etc.) and your build, the point at which you can start building/repairing megas may vary WIDLY. Sometimes, you get lucky and get to spend your midgame building Megas, and sometimes, it refuses to show up until you start hitting repeatables. Oh, and the "Empire Focus" mechanic is hardly a reliable milestone either. Of the 7 or so campaigns I played to test all kinds of different empires, not even once did I manage to get to the end of the Focus Tree before I unlocked Mega Engineering some other way. As of its current balancing, I feel that it fails as both a linear progression path and a pity mechanic. But at the same time, with Ascension and Crisis paths offering viable alternatives towards achieving greatness, I feel like we can perhaps ease up on our Megafixation.

• Infrastructure, Pops and Economy

  • (General) I love the more granular pop growth of 4.0, but it does have a lot of... quirks, particularly around readability, migration mechanics and job assignment logic that I imagine Paradox will be polishing up for months to come. It's similar enough on the surface to the 3.x pop system to create the illusion of familiarity, but the more you play, the more you realise that it's both more complex and more obtuse. The math and machanics are poorly documented and communicated to players, which makes it very easy to misunderstand how pops actually function.

  • (Specific) One of said quirks that can make or break modded content is how the new economic system handles jobs. More to the point, how it decides to prioritise which jobs to work and how many pops from a given group to distribute between available slots. Both player and AI are vulnerable to driving themselves into economic death spirals simply by upgrading or building Specialist infrastructre on a planet without a substantial workforce surplus. Seemingly, as soon as new Specialist jobs become available, Worker jobs will be abandoned in droves, often leading to a shortage of the basic resources required for those new jobs' upkeep.

• Vanilla Content and Potential Synergies

  • (General) A LOT of content has been added to Stellaris over the past few years. A lot of content that we've been vaguely aware of, but largely did not incorporate into our mods. Grand Archive, raising Space Fauna, playable Crisis Paths, reworked Ascension Paths, newer Megastructures, extremely unique and exotic origins like Wilderness or the Knights of the Toxic God.

  • (Specific) When we develop our mods, we sometimes end up tunnel-visioning only on vanilla content that we directly interact with in our highly staged testing scenarios. For example, since both EoS and MEC mods primarily revolve around individualistic empire types with organic humanoids at the helm, content related to... anything else ends up being overlooked. We rarely test how elements of our mods interact with Gestalt features, Origins other than our own, or even the more transformative Ascension Paths (Synth Ascension, Crisis, etc.). It is a fatal flaw in our R&D process that we need to correct, because it does limit our perspective and experiencial framework. For this reason, the month I spent playing various Stellaris campaign was with all of our mods disabled, strictly trying to experience everything we don't usually pay attention to.

SO! What have we learned, and how does it actually translate to our future plans for Elves of Stellaris? I think we've had enough of vague musings, so let's go over each specific part of the mod and discuss it in detail!

• Aurlûnor Velande (Celestial Throne/Celestial Grace)

  • Although it did just receive the biggest rework in the history of EoS, some of its elements can still be tweaked, improved or expanded upon.

  • Particularly, Celestial Throne's complete lack of interaction with Cosmogenesis feels like a criminal oversight, considering the heavily philosophyscial narrative I've written for it >.> Rest assured, that will be corrected soon!

  • Secondly, if some of the Route rewards feel a bit underwhelming... that's probably because they are. When balancing the rewards, we erred on the side of conservative estimates by... years-ago standards, unaware just how much powercr- how much the norms for mid-game-timed rewards have changed since ye olde times of "Shattered Ring" being considered an overpowered Origin that needed to be kept on 5 different leashes.

  • So, taking the previous two points into consideration, the Route endings will be supplemented with some follow-up rewards to better synergise with the three distinct paths of transcendence that Stellaris now offers.

    • Tentatively, Route A (Anatta) will keep its Megastructure focus, but receive a few more tools to facilitate that, such as guaranteed Insights into Megastructure technologies upon hitting certain Anatta thresholds. Essentially, the more minor megastructures you build, the sooner you will gain access to more advanced ones.

    • Conversely, Route B (Samsara) will have its stated commitment to confronting the universe's inherent mortality reinforced by making it easier to transition into and progress the Cosmogenesis crisis path. Lhùmar's planetary features and the Eternal Array will unlock additional properties as the empire progresses through the Crisis stages.

    • Finally, Route C (Parinirvana) will commit more thoroughly to the theme of relinquishing attachments in order to pursue inner enlightment. Rather than stopping at one enhancement, the Timeless trait and/or the Eternal Array will continue to unlock new features as the species progresses through Ascension Paths (Biomorphosis, Mind Over Matter, Cybernetic and maybe even Synthetic will all be supported.)

  • And Thirdly... the Flaming Pearl needs a little buff to bring it in line with how vanilla Relics operate now. To remain balanced but relevant, it will likely follow a similar pattern to the Relics that increase both their effect magnitude and activation cost with each activation. It might be fitting to turn it into a reliable Unity sink, since there's not much use for stockpiled Unity once all the tradition trees are finished. Details TBD.

• Serene Kingdom of Senalata

  • The intended vibe of Senalata was always meant to be "playable Fallen Empire", although every implementation so far has left much to be desired. They are implied to be the closest thing in the universe to "the purest elves" who can trace their lineage back to the original eldar with a straight line. But something happened to mar that purity, depriving them of the divine spark and leaving behind just shadows of what they claim to be their former selves. The tragedy of the Ayleids is their loss of history, and with it, identity.

  • So for their upcoming mini-rework (meaning, not on the scale of the Lhùren, but at least substantial enough to incentivise at least one fresh playthrough), I wanted to make it a galaxy-spanning journey of self-discovery. To that end, the new Elven Foundations setup will feature the following:

    • Instead of regular infrastructure, Senalata will start with a set of Fallen Empire buildings, albeit operating at a reduced capacity and reduced upkeep until upgraded.

    • When playing as Senalata, all the other prescripted Elven and Dark Elven Empires will be force-spawned at the start of the game, regardless of galaxy settings.

    • Upon gaining unrestricted access (direct ownership, Subjugation, Federation or mutual Defensive Pact + high Trust) to another Elven or Dark Elven Home System, the Ayleids will gain an insight into their own past, accompanied by a short story and granting a Faded Trace.

    • Each collected Faded Trace will unlock more features, such as a special Casus Belli on other Elven or Dark Elven empires, the ability to construct fully functional Fallen Empire buildings, more ways to produce and spend Minor Artifacts, etc.

    • Upon collecting all Faded Traces, the Ayleids will regain their immortality and gain probably some other, yet to be determined, rewards.

• Moravari Tulshar

  • Similarly to Senalata, the story of Tulshar implies lost history and identity. However, unlike the Ayleids whose fall into mortality was brought about by an eons-long descent into decadence, the Moravar's thirst for violence was a much more straightforward path to discovering and embracing the - now all too familiar - concept of "death". Locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of deception and murder, the surviving remnants of the species have no memory of ever beholding the light of the stars and bending them to their will. Or of building the Valshaquellar and becoming as gods of life and death over a galaxy of lambs. Or of turning upon each other at the apex of their invincible civilisation and driving it to oblivion and near-extinction...

    Or the likely possibility that it might not have even been the first time.

    The Tulshar's empire fluff paints it as a brewing threat, although one much subtler than your average friendly neighbourhood Fanatical Purifiers. As they accidentally emerge from their burrows, they discover - or perhaps are reminded of - the incomprehensible scope of the universe, and are made to realise how small their ambitions have been up to that point. But they are not rabid savages driven to frenzy at the faintest scent of blood. No, those who have survived long enough to gaze upon the stars are connivers honed over centuries of high-stakes subterfuge, descended from an unquantifiably ancient legacy of the same.

  • The Origin half of the rework will be, by far, the smaller one. For the most part, we are satisfied with both the starting conditions and the principal goal of the Subterranean Inception. The Moravar history and future are both largely left up to the player's interpretation, so the environmental storytelling more than does the job. So on that front, some minor improvements to the Valshaquellar and an additional reward - immortality - upon completing a follow-up project related to it, should be all the facelift it needs.

  • On the other hand, the Civic, Tekartas, is severely outdated in its design. Even though its flavour screams "please tie me to espionage", it took us a while to get around to it. But... the time has finally come.

    • Oh! And related to that, as you may have noticed, the old "Xenocidal" trait has been missing from the post-4.0 EoS. The reason for that is twofold: we found its old design too volatile in the 4.0 environment, and also felt that it should become something more than a funny gimmick. So we have made two changes: rather than being a standalone trait, it will now be tied to Tekartas and automatically apply to the founder species. Also, to better fit its new mechanics, the Xenocidal trait will be renamed to Beguiling. Henceforth, we shall refer to it as that.

    • All Beguiling pops passively generate an amount of Influence, based on their stratum. Meaning that Elites generate significantly more than Workers. This benefit is active in any regular (non-Gestalt) empire that hosts them.

    • But it's only the beginning. Most of the new Tekartas mechanics start coming into play once Beguiling pops begin to infiltrate foreign empires. And you will be able to facilitate that by launching a relatively easy Operation that generously gifts the target a few pops! No need to worry about any of those complicated migration procedures. Isn't red tape just such a hassle? Why would we ever let that come between us?

    • Once the eager xeno-loving friend-izens have made themselves at home, additional Operations will begin unlocking. The more Beguiling pops matching the Tekartas empire's parent species reside in the target empire, the more advanced Operations (tentatively dubbed "Designs") become accessible.

    • The specific Designs are still to be determined, but the overaching idea is that, unlike Operations which target empires as a whole, Designs interact with planets that host a population of Beguiling pops. They might range from doing some light sabotage, to potentially even flipping planet ownership (at a hefty opinion penalty and free claims given to the target). But not all Designs are adversarial. In fact, some might offer benefits to the recipient that might make it a powerful support tool. And performing those "positive" Designs will further increase the population of Beguiling pops.

...and more, eventually. There's no ETA for anything currently, but my personal long-term goal for EoS is to at least give each Origin two things:

• A way to either earn or lose its respective immortality trait.

• A clear goal to pursue. That doesn't have to mean a questline or anything - most Origins are meant to be open-ended and not impose a set story - but I want the player to at least have an objective that requires engaging with the origin mechanics in order to accomplish. A tutorial of sorts.

In any case, Elves of Stellaris will remain our most active project for a long time, so you can expect it to continue getting bigger, better and shinier for as long as the galaxy needs elven superiority. Because, of course, it needs it!

✧ RECAP: MEC

I had no plans to do like 80% of the things we ended up doing for the 4.0 compatibility patch. But you know what they say about impromptu complete reworks of random stuff when all they really need is just slightly updated scripts...

Nothing. They say nothing about it, because I'm the only one who routinely gets distracted enough to do it. And not to spoil the rest of the MMR, but it's not the last time you'll be seeing it happen >.>

The two biggest issues that MEC: Asari faced in the transition to the Stellaris 4.0 economy were Pop Growth changes and Trade becoming a standard resource.

• The former affected the fundamental mechanics of the asari - the Amaranthine trait that used to partially assimilate alien pops. We liked the way it worked, but it had historically been very... very precisely tuned to the old growth model, and was running on scripts that used to be triggered relatively rarely. While it would have been easy to just replace some of the old script with the new functions, and the system technically would have worked again... it also would have done unthinkable things to the game's performance, considering that pops now grow every single day, multiple times per planet, across all settled planets. That's a somewhat significant jump from a trigger that used to go off irregularly between a couple times a month to once every couple of years...

  So we had no choice but to throw the entire thing away and come up with something completely new! Fortunately for us, the new growth system actually ended up being structured in a very elegant way that kinda marries all the previous pop models Stellaris had gone through. From the OG simultaneous growth of the 1.x planet tiles (wow, that's basically prehistory @.@) to the mathematically complex but predictable logistic growth model of the 3.x job-centric economy. And the reason this turned into a blessing in disguise was because it effectively allowed us to time-travel back to the very first iteration of Blue Baby Production that was supposed to revolve around simultaneous growth!

  None of this probably means anything to you, because you never got to play the first iteration, and it's honestly an actual miracle that I even remembered it, BUT! The point is, the amazing-sounding but ultimately rejected solution that couldn't be implemented back in the day on the basis of being "WAY TOO DANK, AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING", finally could be realised in a completely scriptless and granularly scaling form! Anyways, SHUT UP, PRINCESS! Enough about this. I don't have a whole MMR to yap about a fun fact only I care about >.<

• Ahem... anyways, the second matter (Trade changes) was more an Illium-specific issue, and indirectly led to the big unplanned rework that... happened to it.

  Previously, Illium was a bit of a hodge-podge of ideas, but they were all centred around the gameplay loop of converting Trade to Influence, which you could then spend on Leverage policies to improve your economy, allowing you to invest into even more Trade to generate more Influence to sustain more Leverage policies.

  There was nothing necessarily wrong with that, but to tell you the truth, I was just incredibly bored with that implementation, so when all the scripts holding it together suddenly broke down, it provided me with the perfect excuse to try something new! And um... it kinda just escalated from there. I cannot tell you exactly how it ended up becoming this entire thing that revolved around Favours, because at that point I was severely sleep-deprived and operating on a level of consciousness that no mere mortals, including myself, can comprehend. But what came out of it turned out super fun to play! Getting me engaged in espionage, incentivising to pick tradition trees I usually ignore, and overall fitting the intended fantasy of Illium as this autonomous capitalist planet-state that doesn't discriminate between xenophile hugboxes and warmongering hegemonies when it comes to extracting profit.

  The reworked Illium à la Mode Civic and Eternity traditions thus are all about securing favours with other empires, which over time accumulate Lingering Impression, a new abstract resource that represents Illium's galactic reputation. That, in turn, translates to quite a lot of soft power in the form of Diplomatic Weight, protection from hostile Claims, Influence and Unity. It also provides an alternative way to attract Traders to your capital.

• Aside from these two big overhauls, asari have also benefitted from a big list of small QoL changes and little tweaks all over the place, that have hopefully added up to more modern-feeling campaigns. Unlike EoS, MEC: Asari doesn't offer much build freedom. It revolves around these strictly defined package deals, so we try to at least make sure that their narrow focus is counterbalanced by thoroughly exploring the niches they fall into.

And since we have so skillfully segwayed onto the topic of niches, we might as well get a little deeper into it!

Ever since our first Mass Effect-inspired mod, MEC: Asari, was conceived, we have always wanted this kind of mods to be modular and something that could seamlessly slot into the dynamic chaos of Stellaris without relying on the greater universe it was borrowed from. While the thought did cross our minds at some points, we never found the desire to commit to a massive Total Conversion project. Instead, our vague mission statement was always something like "we'll work on aspects that interest us one at a time, and if someday there's enough of them to form a bigger thing, we'll pretend like it was the plan all along. Mua ha ha ha!"

I have no idea why there's an evil laugh in there, let's just ignore that please~

Anyways, we once had big plans for the MEC series. The ambition was to eventually at least create portraits, ships, and functional Origins for all the major species and factions. However, as you can probably see by now, we have fallen a bit short of that goal...

I wish I could spin it as some kind of "quality over quantity" thing, but in reality, I think we simply ran into the good old wall of uneven interest levels. My big lifelong struggle has always been striking the balance between getting intensely obsessed with specific things and very quickly getting disengaged from things that don't interest me.

And... well... I guess it's time to admit that I don't think I've ever been a fan of the Mass Effect universe as a whole. There were elements of it that I loved - the Asari (obviously), the Geth, Omega and Cerberus - but that's about it. Nearly nothing else (including, heretically, most of the stuff the main plot of the games revolved around) has managed to imprint itself in my imagination. So, as the result, none of the MEC projects outside of my incredibly narrow range of interests ever got past the draft stage. Instead, all my energy ended up getting funneled into updating and expanding MEC: Asari.

Serendipitously, Stellaris updates have helped immeasurably with that perpetual expansion. MEC: Asari has always evolved alongside the game's diplomatic and economic systems, which still stand at the forefront of the 4X/Grand Strategy hybrid genre it helped pioneer. Because of that, we've been able to keep experimenting and iterating and coming up with new ideas over the many years since we started this project. It's incredibly rare to find offline moddable games that live this long and continue to find new avenues of evolution. Despite the heavy technical debt that Stellaris has accrued, and will likely never be entirely free of, it remains the best modding platform I have had the pleasure to work with.
Probably the biggest reason I'm still modding Stellaris is the feedback loop of being given new experiences, which then inspire me to create new experiences for people playing our mods!

So, um... how does all of that bode for the future of MEC?

✧ FUTURE: MEC

Glad you asked!

...even if you didn't!

So, Omega! I listed it among the few projects I was interested in, although the results have historically suggested otherwise. Well, I'd like to fix that >.<

Omega has been on-and-off in the works for AGES, and the problem has always been a lack of direction. Or... perhaps I should correct that: an overabundance of directions, which is functionally the same thing, BUT with the difference that each short-lived failed attempt has produced some byproducts that can carry forward.

And it's partly because of it that I'm unwilling to let go of this project for good. I refuse to let all of the assets we've created go to waste! ._.

SO, it's that time of the year again! The time to revive Omega... again! However... since this is likely the final attempt, I've decided to try something different this time. Every previous attempt was rooted in the premise that, in order to be considered a complete MEC module, Omega would have to feature the following:

• An Origin with some kind of progression mechanic, a story, or both

• A Civic that ties into the Origin and governs the day-to-day gameplay for the rest of the campaign

• (optional but expected) A shipset

Out of the three, the Origin has consistently proven to be the most... bloat-prone part of the project, with every iteration raising the bar for what we wanted to put in there.
At first (dating back to before the Voideborne Origin was a thing... yikes) it was just supposed to be an origin that would let you colonise the system's asteroid belt. However, after vanilla Stellaris introduced Habitats, that would no longer have been special, so the goalpost shifted to focusing more on the Omega Relay, which was supposed to become the nexus of a sprawling quest system (which we affectionately dubbed "Aria's Couch Simulator"). And... that's where Omega's development has been stuck on ever since.
Over the following iterations, we couldn't decide if we wanted the Relay to actually be functional and lead to a system with a boss fight you could attempt, or if it would be better to keep the "visitors from beyond the Relay" vague, mysterious and largely present only in the narrative.
Then, we had even more trouble deciding on how to implement Aria's Couch Simulator. Should the events be random? A Situation? How do we differentiate it from regular random events that Stellaris already throws at you? How do we design meaningful gameplay around such a narratively heavy system? And most importantly... will Princess finally decide on the format, so the small handful of people who volunteered to write those events actually could get started before they lea- oh...

Yeah, no, I'm afraid it's time to take our darlings out back and say bye-bye. As exciting as all those ideas sounded on paper, this project cannot move forward as long as it's being pulled apart by so many different things whose planned scope grows with every iteration.

So, here's the final, FINAL! F-I-N-A-L plan for MEC: Omega. If this one fails, it's over, we'll probably just release the assets as resources, so... let's not fail! >.<

The main premise is that your empire is an eclectic hodgepodge of various species, factions and individuals all living on the outskirts of the galactic community, largely uninterested in big ideas like dominating the neighbours or playing the galactic politics. However, due to its melting pot nature, Omega makes for a good place to meet all sorts of interesting people, contact mercenary companies and even acquire rare curios. In other words... it makes for a great black-market themed Enclave! But wait, it's supposed to be playable, right? How do you turn the Enclave concept into something that would be fun to play? Well, here's what I have in mind right now:

• First of all, no Civic! This time, all the functionality will be self-contained within the Origin.

• The Origin will change the starting home system to the Omega-themed one, featuring Omega as the system's primary habitat complex, and the Omega Relay as a... decoration. Maybe we'll come up with a way to use it, maybe not, but in order to move forward, we've decided to focus more on Omega itself and its unique society.

• Although on the surface, it might seem very similar to Voideborne, the surface level is where the similarities end. Omega will not be expanding and building habitats all over the galaxy. It can still colonise planets and build habitats, but their effectiveness will be severely diminished. Instead, the Empire will be expanding via Branch Offices.
  To that end, it will start the game in contact with a few of the closest empires that are able to host branch offices. Furthermore, establishing them will be cheaper and distance will be less of a factor. And lastly, each Branch Office building that you own will improve the efficiency of its associated jobs on Omega itself, allowing the single-habitat Empire to eventually punch far above its weight, albeit with a limited population and some diplomacy required to maintain its prosperity.

• BUT! That's not all! By itself, playing Branch Office-Building Simulator would be a mind-numbingly boring experience, and would hardly reflect the core fantasy of Omega. It is where the "playable enclave" part comes in: empires that host Omega's Branch Offices will gain access to special interactions. They will be able to post "bounties" for certain things, which the owner of Omega will receive as Situations. Those Bounty Situations will slowly progress on their own, but the player will have the option to actively pursue them, speeding up progress at the cost of some resources. Upon the completion of a bounty, both Omega and the empire that posted the bounty will receive rewards. Those may include tech insights, attracting Paragons, improving orbital deposits, temporary or permanent economic boosts, mercenary enclave capacity, etc.

Effectively, it's the ill-fated Aria's Couch Simulator concept compressed, simplified and infinitely easier for us to implement. Rather than periodically starting events, this new system will more diegetically involve other empires the player interacts with, and reward both parties for it.

As for when you can expect Omega to actually... hopefully... for realsies this time... come out? No ETA, but, as with all the other things announced in this MMR, I will be poking at it over the remainder of the year, with the hope that I can make it before the next big Stellaris expansion. I definitely don't want to be working on new content AND patching up existing mods at the same time again >.<

✧ RECAP: Velum Noctis

You know, back when I first announced my intent to create a "lightweight vampire mod" for CK3 back around... CK3's release... ouch...

Ahem... Back when I first announced the project that would eventually become VN, it was supposed to be a spiritual successor, and perhaps a bit of a redemption story, to the Vampiric Thirst mod I once made for Skyrim; half-developed and abandoned in a pretty sorry state. It had been a product of boredom combined with newfound passion for modding given an outlet, an audience, and a lot of free time that Little Brat Me (not to be confused with the Little Brat Me Special Edition of present day) had on her hands. But it was also the first of many lessons I had to learn about burning out.

Fast-forward to the post-release year of Crusader Kings 3, I was once again being pushed onwards by almost an obsessive drive. I was making progress every single day, posting teasers and hinting at all the plans I had every couple of days. Over a few weeks, I would design the skeleton of the hunger and secrecy ("Menace") systems. Then they would be expanded to tie into three entire Lifestyle perk trees that I somehow managed to conjure up and partially script before switching my attention to working on a whole bunch of "powers" and a blood "economy" that I suddenly came up with.

However, the streak didn't last. As my interest in the foundationally solid but content-bare CK3 waned, so did I find it harder and harder to keep up with the breakneck tempo I set for the development of "Court of Blood", as it used to be named back then.
Fortunately, it wasn't long before CK3 would start getting big updates and DLC, which would periodically reignite my interest, bringing me back to the project.
Unfortunately, that on-and-off pattern of development led to something terrible... The downtime would give me... time to think! @o@

<insert a horror scream here>

As the project dragged on, my fear of burning out again ironically transformed into a different kind of productivity-destroying anxiety: that the mod lacked ambition. There had to be something more I could add. Something to make it more special, so it would stand out from the multiple other vampire mods that were already out at that point. And the more time I had to think about it, the more that thought ballooned into "no, 'special' isn't good enough". It would be Team Nessassity's flagship CK3 project, so it had the potential to be another MEC or another Elves of Stellaris. And... yeah, in retrospect, it's obvious what happens next >.>

And so, the "lightweight vampire mod" ceased to be lightweight, its focus was no longer just vampires and I didn't even see it as a mere mod anymore. To inaugurate that paradigm shift, we gave it a new name: Veiled Realms.
Envisioned to one day become a "franchise" of mods similar to MEC, of which "Court of Blood" was to be only the first chapter. In the long term, the new ambition was to encompass ALL kinds of supernatural things, driven by the unifying premise of "all myths are true, but the truth is veiled by myths". Which is a fancy way to say: let's do vampires and fae and spirits and witches and whatever, but not just ONE of each! Our vampires and fae and spirits and witches and whatever are going to be modular build-a-lich kits taking parts from all kinds of cultural inspirations! Want your vampire to be a Carmilla-style seductive sucker, but feed on Qi instead of blood, and also actually be a demonic spirit possessing a corpse? Glad you asked, just pick the right combination of "banes" and voila!

...that's enough foreshadowing, right? You can probably tell how long this genius idea managed to survive before the inevitable Stress Break would bring me back to Earth >.<

Yes, I'm stupid. In other news, holy water is wet.

Following that short-lived but intensely flammable debacle, I said hello to burnout my old friend, and the entire project just... kinda fizzled out. I attempted to revive it a few times (via, for example, such embarrassing things as the "community writing project" that was supposed to reignite my productivity by outsourcing event text to volunteers...) but none of the attempts actually managed to result in any tangible progress. Just a few more design-documentfuls worth of unimplemented ideas.

I never officially announced a hiatus, but the uneventful years that have passed since probably speak for themselves.

✧ FUTURE: Velum Noctis

But... here's the thing with spooky monsters born in the dark corners of human imagination. We like to think wishfully that they can be put down with a prayer and a slice of Italian pizza, but they do have this nasty propensity to pop out of their graves and appear right behind you just after you've let out a sigh of relief.

BOO! OoO

So... I want to try again. One last time >.<

Initially, I was just going to just let it go, which is why I didn't make VN one of the main objectives of the Year of Finishing Things, but since we did end up doing this... Extra Round of Finishing Things, it wouldn't sit right with me if I didn't at least make the attempt to finish it.

The whole thing went off the rails because I'd approached it with the wrong motivations. Instead of making a mod because it was a mod I wanted to make, I created that whole narrative and mission for myself, only to fail the main objective. As the project continued to collapse under all of my self-imposed expectations, moving goalposts, anxiety over how it would be received, all kinds of extrinsic concerns, it ceased to be the one thing a mod should be:

Fun to create.

So, I'd like to start over from scratch. Well, mostly. I'll try to make it a lightweight mod again, but... I also want to more clearly define its scope, so that I don't end up changing it mid-development again!
Hence, I hesitate to label it as a "vampire mod". If there's one good thing that's come out of the whole ordeal, it's the big research journey I'd gone on to expand my horizons. I've absorbed a lot of myths and folklore along the way, not limited to just vampires, and it was invaluably inspiring! All that knowledge has already helped me deepen and enrich the worldbuilding of my indie game project, Project Charon (which we'll get to later), but in the context of Velum Noctis, I think it can also serve as the secret ingredient I need to make it special. Granted, standing out or living up to the success of major Nessassity mods are no longer things I'm worried about. This time, my motivation is simply to asses my own evolution as a creator.

Okay, okay, cut the yap! What's this overly long preamble actually leading up to?

Well, I've come to feel that "vampire" is too vague a scope. What is a vampire? How is a vampire? When, where and why? When most people see the term, they probably think of either an iconic character, a story, or a franchise that's made the deepest impression on them.
But... that's a lot of ground to cover, and when you add on top of that countless different vampire-analogues from folklore around the world, you realise that the term "vampire" has no inherent meaning. It is a concept that we are a few centuries too late to define, yet one so flexible that it can become nearly anything a writer or designer wants. But... that's not something a "lightweight vampire mod" can encompass. Even a "heavyweight vampire mod", as I experienced personally, would struggle to even scratch the surface.
So... the solution seems simple, right? Just pick one and the problem is solved, right? Make up your mind and stick to it.

Pffft... IF I COULD DO THAT, WE WOULDN'T BE HERE NOW >.<

But what if... what if I could have the cake and eat it without driving myself completely insane? What if the problem could be solved not by defining what a "vampire" should be in Velum Noctis, but rather by asking: why do humans have so many life-devouring monsters stalking us in the night? Or, in other words, what does the underlying fantasy of vampirism tell us about humans? Because no matter how creative our imagination gets, at the end of the day, humans are incapable of imagining anything that falls outside of the human experience. Every monster ever conceived is an attempt to shape our primal fears into a form we can more easily comprehend, face and, ultimately, defeat.

I have been thinking about it and I've come to believe that the universal roots which all vampire-shaped nightmares descend from are encompassed within three closely related fears: the fear of the dark, the fear of death and the fear of being preyed upon.

Be they the Lilu of ancient Mesopotamia, born of the desperate need to explain infant mortality, or the beautiful immortal baddies of modern fiction, defying the taboos of societal and natural order alike, the thread that connects all "vampires" across time and culture is woven from the recognition of our own frailty as a species.
The grief of losing a loved one forever and the allure of eternal life both come from the same emotion. The vulnerability we feel when the night descends and the serenity that allows us to fall asleep are both found in the absence of light. The primal fight or flight responses and the elaborate deceptions civilisation is built upon are both driven by the survival instinct that overrides all our other needs.
Perhaps in a way, the horrors we invent to scare children into coming home before dark are actually more than just misinterpretations of natural phenomena? Is it possible that this seemingly innate collective penchant for immersing ourselves in ghost stories is a way to overcome that frailty?
In a way, isn't it wishful thinking to imagine that the dead could rise from their graves and walk among the living? That people withering under illness would be able to recover any day now if only it weren't for those dastardly blood-suckers paying nightly visits?

Ah- I don't know. I'm not a psychologist or a philosopher, and this is probably a good time to get back to the actual topic at hand: WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO DO WITH THE MOD, PRINCESS YAPPITY?

Right! So um... all of that just to say, in this new iteration, I'd like to go a little bit meta. I'd like the monsters in Velum Noctis to, in a way, be this esoteric expression of human fears and desires. Not "vampires" per se, as that is not yet a universally understood term in the world of Crusader Kings, but rather something more vague, more eldritch, more... up to interpretation by the various medieval denizens who must fill the gaps between their small world and the great unknown as their eyes conjure up ominous shapes amidst the deep shadows in the corner of their bedroom at night.

And I'd like to reflect that in gameplay:

• First, let's define the central concept that Velum Noctis will revolve around: Folklore.

  • Whenever a particularly traumatic event occurs in a province, there's a chance it might create Local Folklore - a barony-level modifier. Perhaps the site of a bloody battle is rumoured to have hungry ghouls prowling the area in search of a feast. Or a tragic murder at the local court was followed by sightings of a revenant seeking retribution. Or maybe the outbreak of a deadly disease has left in wake stories of the dead rising from their graves and returning, gorged on blood, while their families continue to wither away each night.

  • For a few years after that, the ruler of those lands may seek to dispel such rumours (AI will decide based on traits, with majority usually ignoring it). But if no one actively works against it, once Local Folklore has taken hold, it will be upgraded into Regional Folklore and spread to the rest of the county. From that point on, it will very slowly continue to spread to neighbouring counties, much like plagues do.

  • As far as regular gameplay goes, the Folklore modifiers don't do anything special. Depending on the type, they might offer minor benefits and tradeoffs, but they will generally fly under most characters' notice as just a bunch of poor peasant problems.

  • When a character (local or travelling through the area) encounters Regional Folklore, they will get the opportunity to investigate it via a Learning Scheme.

• Should the character be successful in their research, they will eventually come face to face with the all-too-real monster behind the myth. Whether the monster was there before the myth, or whether the myth spawned the monster would be a fascinating matter to explore, no doubt, but the character's main concern would at that point likely lean towards self-preservation. Depending on how the character decides to proceed, one of the outcomes may leave them Cursed. And that's where their Velum Noctis adventure starts off.

  • At the base level, a Cursed character bears many of the hallmarks now associated with vampires. Agelessness, a hunger for blood and a world of mental decline if they fail to satisfy it. However, that's all there is to it to start with. No preternatural strength or mind-warping powers. Not... yet, at any rate. At the beginning, the Cursed are little more than pathetic, albeit long-lived, parasites.

  • Some may have an easier time adjusting to such an existence than others, but those who are still left unsatisfied might find it worthwhile to revisit the superstitions that have left them in this predicament in the first place. That's where the repurposed Vampirism Lifestyle, now probably redubbed to Forbidden Lore (or something along those lines), will come in!

  • Similar to other Lifestyles, the Cursed character will be able to focus on it and gain veeeeeeeeery slow progress over time, but a much faster avenue of learning will be provided by various Regional Folklores around the world. Visiting those places and investigating the local lore, or inviting courtiers who hail therefrom will offer insights that eventually amount to enough experience to buy Lifestyle Perks from the three Lores - Death, Night and Fear - allowing the Cursed to realise the latent supernatural potential of their curse.

    • The Death perk tree will mostly revolve around feeding, passing on the Curse, and interacting with Plagues and battle casualties. This is where most of the physical aspects of vampirism are concentrated.

    • The Night perk tree is about blending in with mortals and manipulating them. This is where fun gaslighty stuff like erasing and implanting memories (in the form of secrets and hooks), messing with relationships between people, etc. is hiding.

    • And lastly, the Fear tree is about Folklore itself, offering ways to draw power from local legends, cause them to spawn/spread, and even create strong impacts on areas with Folklore.

  • All in all, the things you unlock via Forbidden Lore (name pending) should have a variety of fun things to do for both sedentary and landless characters, unlike the previous iterations of the mod that were predominantly based on the sedentary "Count Dracula" fantasy.

With all of this, the focus of Velum Noctis moves away from feeding on characters (although it's still present, and now has the purpose of managing the Stress that Cursed characters accumulate rapidly), so it no longer needs a trillion narrative scenarios to make the main gameplay loop less monotonous. Instead, the player's goals will be more about seeking information, travelling around the world, etc. in order to progress the Lifestyle trees. It will be a very slow process, but one that offers a lot of emergent goals along the way, and... well... the character will have all the time in the world to see it through.

Velum Noctis is going to be my main priority for the rest of the year, and while there is no ETA, I am HOPING DESPERATELY to be able to finish it around the time CK3's next huge expansion, All Under Heaven, comes out! The contents of AUH is everything I've wanted from CK3 since the day it released, so it's safe to say, I will be OBSESSED with it for a while. So if I manage to finish the mod by then, I'll be able to give it a lot of personal playtesting, which may lead to further refinements post-release >o<

✧ FUTURE: Team Nessassity & Princessity

AND SO! We have finally arrived at the final part of the final Monthly Mod Report's finale!

But... just because we're retiring the Monthly Mod Reports, and I'm personally shifting my focus away from modding does NOT mean that that there's nothing to look forward to!

I have been making mods for almost as long as I have been playing games, and even as I'm getting into independent game development, I have no intention of saying goodbye to a lifelong passion. That would be denying myself something that brings me joy, and for better or worse, I'm simply incapable of doing that.

But what I hopefully can do is learning to let go of the many strictures and expectations I have infused into my modding over the years. Many times, I struggled with burnout, self-esteem issues and anxiety over things that should never have mattered to a healthy hobby.

Which is why this is the final Monthly Mod Report. An implicit mission statement that took me far too long to realise I should never have set before myself. BUT! But but but... I sometimes really have fun writing mod reports! And whenever I make more mods in the future, I'd like to still communicate it somehow, so...

How about we do Moody Mod Reports instead from now on? No implicit schedule means I never feel like I missed a deadline, or eight, and given the way that my modding moods come and go, mod reports that randomly pop up sounds like the perfect way to enrich your lives with a bit more unpredictability! Which I'm totally sure is exactly what you want! Wow, I really can't believe how considerate I am sometimes~ ♡

Ahem! Anyways, as I have announced before, as I'm winding down my focus on big modding projects, I will be gradually ramping up work on my first game: Project Charon (name pending)!

✧ FUTURE: Project Charon

It will be a cute and wholesome Wonderland-esque adventure through a fragmented world governed by laws that can hardly be described as natural. The amnesiac protagonist identifying herself by the sound of the only name she remembers - Alice - and her trusty yet enigmatic silent companion - Lapina - shall brave the chaotic Wonderland, following a breadcrumb trail of memories Alice has spilled along the way in her desperate rush to... do what exactly?
As the two retrace her steps and collect scattered recollections, they will encounter other characters who have forgotten more than they know, and get entangled in the threads of a torn tapestry that no one alone can put together.

Genre-wise, Project Charon is going to be a dungeon-crawling card-battler with the slightest dash of rogue-lite (at least in the persistent progression, resource management and collect-a-thon aspects, not all the hallmarks of the genre). Over the course of the game, you will explore various "rabbit holes" (dungeons) and collect memories, in the form of cards, which you can then combine during combat to form more complex Answers that will help you overcome the many obstacles on your path to... where exactly?

Whether you're battling through the amorphous tides of Oblivion (the empty shells of denizens deprived of every last memory), or trying to answer incomplete riddles, or encountering puzzles with no apparent solutions, you may sometimes stumble, sometimes fail. But as long as Alice holds onto her memories, even the painful ones, she will eventually be able to find the right answers to all questions posed by her journey of self-rediscovery.

With the Monthly Mod Reports going into retirement, Dev Diaries will eventually take their place as the semi-regular feature of the Patreon! As of now, there's no ETA on when they'll start, but if you join, either here or our Discord community, I will be sure to let you know in advance!

What I can already say, tho, is that the inaugural Dev Diary will unveil the art style, main character designs and outline the visual language and vibes Project Charon will be going for! So if that interests you, I can't wait to show you what I've been slow-cooking in the art mines over this past year! ♡

✧

Until then... um... HAPPY NEW YEAR! Yup. And thank you again, a kghjillion times over, for your continued support and interest! It means everything to me, and I if anything we've made has brought you joy as well, I hope our future projects will only do more of that! >o<