Team Nessassity News - December Monthly Mod Report Episode 4 - Last-Minute Princessities

oghfsdjghvfcsdfsdfsdf Week 4 of the December Monthly Mod Report is already here! @.@ Although, unfortunately, I won't be able to muster a lot of energy for this one. I managed to catch my annual winter sickness right on the dot, and while it didn't affect my progress on the mod too much, I really want to go back to bed, burrito up and hibernate right now >.<

✧ Elves of Stellaris

But before I do that, let's go over said progress and the (small) change of plans I... just decided on today. As is tradition.

SO! While implementing the new leader-based Celestial Favor system, I realised that it wasn't as well designed as I had thought it was. It definitely looked a lot more appealing on paper, but when you are actually playing Stellaris (something I've been guilty of... not doing much of the past year), it becomes increasingly more annoying the longer the game goes on. By about 80 years in, I wouldn't fault anyone for no longer enjoying it and firing their entire council just to put a stop to their nonsense.

Admittedly, a big inspiration behind it was Total War Warhammer 3's loyalty mechanics (as present in Dark Elf and Vampire Coast factions), so I thought it could be seamlessly ported over and expanded a little bit (with ideas such as high CF leaders making demands that lower their CF if acquiesced, keeping things interesting by swinging the scales back and forth). However, what I quickly realised when trying implement it in a game with... a massively larger strategic scope and so many more menu tabs to sift through and things to interact with on a near-constant real-time basis, the player would end up getting bombarded with court politics events every couple of minutes - often several in quick succession. And given that the whole mechanic eventually boils down to "trade offer, you give me stuff, I give you not debuffing your empire... this time" , you can probably imagine that the novelty would wear off after a few poorly-timed instances...

Sooo... here's my flu-addled brain's idea on how to deal with that without delaying the intended release of the reworked Lhùren any longer:

• We won't be shipping the new CF system with the next patch.

• Instead, I will split the rework into two parts. The Origin and the Civic.

• In a few days, you will be getting an update containing the Origin part of the rework. It's largely finished already (barring some VFX and text/UI presentation), but I think it would benefit from a few extra days of polishing and testing. Giving it all my attention instead of splitting it two ways should result in a much better experience overall. If my fatigue allows, I might even come up with some additional mechanics beyond the original target.

• For the Civic part, I would like to spend a few more weeks on it. While I'm doing that, I will also be able to gather your feedback on the Origin and make adjustments as necessary, which should lead, again, to a more polished and user-friendly experience.

Now, as for how I should re-redo the CF rework.. Honestly, I cannot give you a confident proposal anymore.
That said, I do think that at least the Situation-based scorekeeping is worth... well... keeping. Not the least because I've already poured way too much work into it >.<

Although at the same time... I might actually discard the "score" part of that entirely, and just try to turn it into a less organic, but more streamlined, narrative-driven system instead. That is to say, instead of measuring your Favor with a number, I could have it so individual Situations arise periodically (as opposed to in response to score changes) and work as mini-crises that you can resolve in a variety of ways, with certain solutions becoming available if your Ruler/Heir/Council is competent enough. That way, I could still portray the vibe of powerful officials vying for and exploiting their favour with the Empress without actually having to simulate it via a bunch of arcane variables tracked behind the scenes.

Would something like that still be interesting? Please, let me know >.< I'm open to better suggestions too, if anyone has any, as long as it doesn't lead to the same level of player-facing complexity as the discarded implementation.