Team Nessassity Mods - The Stellaris Megareport @.@ and Some HINTS Of What's To Come

What do you mean it's already May? @.@

WHAT DO YOU MEAN????

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Okay... Okay, calm down. There has to be a rational explanation for this... months don't just disappear without trace... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Well... the good news is, I've certainly been having fun those past two months, which may perhaps explain what happened to April on my semi-existent calendar. Although it's not directly related to our Stellaris mods, I have been working on my drawing, coding and source control magic in preparation for... an unannounced project I'm still not ready to announce yet >.<

But...

OH! RIGHT! Let us first dispense with the ado! It's going to be a long post, so we better get done with the intro, fast!

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PORTRAITS 2.0

So where was I? Oh! The but! But... as we are getting closer and closer to PORTRAITS 2.0, I'm hoping to leverage those skills to take some of the art burden off of Nessa when it's time to repopulate our list of outfits.

And speaking of which, with the recent release of Stellaris: Synthetic D-

Huh? Wh-what do you mean that was years ago??? Oh...

Ahem... with the recent release of Stellaris: The Machine Age, I think it's a good time to outline our plans for all the little accessories and vestments adorning our upcoming portrait rework!

I may have mentioned it before, but step one will be... cutting back on the quantity in favour of quality. As impressive as it may be to claim that our portraits have 300+ outfits, that's... probably not something we should have ever focused on. Back in the day, our development was very spontaneous, with a pipeline that didn't actually comprise any pipes, as ideas would simply come out the idea dispenser and plop directly... into... the mod... Um... this visual is going places I don't want to follow, so let's reset!

Anyways, that kind of approach by Past Us has led to the mess that Present Us now have to untangle. If you've ever wondered why we have been so resolute in doing absolutely nothing with our portraits until PORTRAITS 2.0 was ready... to be perfectly honest, we just want to flush all the original assets down the... final... pipe and start over with a clean slate!

Which is why, as we roll out the PORTRAITS 2.0 rework to Elves, Asari and potential future projects, we intend to limit their wardrobe to a more manageable selection, with a greater focus on leaders (since they are more visible, and their classes are both highly thematically distinct and unlikely to change in the foreseeable future) and lesser on pops.

As of right now, here's the likely direction we'll take (subject to change and/or variation within specific species):

• Leader Outfits

  • Rulers: The category most likely to contain special cases based on either the government type, origin or civic. This is probably where you'll see the most unique designs.

  • Commanders: The category that once used to be split into Admirals and Generals can now be condensed into the concept of a "high military official", and our portraits will likely follow suit. Outfits within this class are likely to be uniform and shared species-wide, with a few exceptions.

  • Officials: This is what in old Stellaris used to encompass Governors and (partially) Envoys. We expect to have some variety here, but mostly formal and business attire that should work for most Authorities and cultural variations. These can probably even be shared with some Pops.

  • Scientists: Similar to Commanders, this is probably the easiest category to make work regardless of the cultural context. And now that there's only one Head of Research in the Empire, I imagine most of the average player's scientists serve as explorers, with maybe the occasional governor of a particularly research-rich sector. As such, not much variety is needed. A well enough designed lab coat can work species-wide, or even cross-species.

• Pop Outfits 

  • Economic Strata: Rather than trying to give each job a uniform (which was the original idea, but long been abandoned due to the sheer quantity and fluidity of pop jobs over the years), it may be more efficient to instead give each pop stratum a small pool of outfits they can draw from. For example, all Ruler pops would wear fancy outfits, and all workers, casual clothes. As for Specialists, they would mostly sport generic semi-formal designs, with a few specific exceptions (like Researchers) who might get specific uniforms.

  • Paid and Unpaid Interns: As fond as we are of our... really low resolution rags, we'll probably say goodbye to them in favour of just letting slaves use the outfits of the stratum they're working in, but... we may also find a way to incorporate the cute collars into the portrait. For now, it's just an untested theory, but... now that portraits support extra accessories (cybernetics, for example) we may be able to hook into that system and do something fun with it.

  • Maid Outfits: ...okay, so my art may not be on Nessa's level just yet, but I at least know how to draw frills, and by the Worm, I am going to give you frills!
    

• Cybernetics and Synthetics

  Right! So that's another thing we've been holding off on until PORTRAITS 2.0 were ready. We may have sorta-maybe ninja-announced it here and there a few times, but I don't remember if I ever made an official post about it. But yes, we do eventually want to do robo-elves at the very least, and there are definitely more than enough very pretty cybernetic designs we're excited to do. Especially now that they're supported by the base game and wouldn't require hacky workarounds from our end.
  Full robots have also been shedding more and more hardcoding over the years, and I believe they are finally in a place where giving Team Nessassity species some machines made in their own image will be a simple and painless matter.
  They should be able to share outfits with their organic counterparts, and we may end up giving them a few special ones too!

And on that note, let me give you a little sneak peek of our own internal variant system finally coming to fruition. The modular body part system has been implemented, and works beautifully! <3

Here, you can see the 3 elf ear designs we've settled on, switchable independently of the body texture, and letting you enjoy all kinds of elves without blowing up your storage and memory.

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Elves of Stellaris

Okay, I believe I've yapped on long enough about the upcoming portraits, so it's now time to... yap about the Lhùren Rework and Orbital Rings!

Let's start with the Rings!

Believe it or not, it took a long long time and many discarded ideas to get here. At one point we were contemplating squiggly vines, a circle of leaves, The One Ring, but in the end, as soon as we looked at this, it just clicked!

Naturally, it's going to look a lot more impressive once it's fully textured and you can see the glow and the shine and, of course, the modules!

The empty spaces is where they'll go, and you'll be able to admire the little details of each module, in much the same vein as with the asari orbital rings.

We don't have any examples just yet, but if you look at this space elevator, you can see what we're aiming for!

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And speaking of... tall things that... go up? Ugh... Okay, fine, I can't segway to it! >.<

Next up, let's wrap up the recent poll!

Thank you to everyone who's cast their vote <3
It seems that the overwhelming majority has decided to go with the Synergy option, although, early on, the outcome wasn't so decisive. In any case, the direction of the Lhùren rework has been decided.

The Origin and Civic will adopt the same model as we used in MEC: Asari, so the mechanics of Celestial Favor will largely be confined to the Celestial Throne Origin.

But don't worry, we know that mechanics in Stellaris thrive amidst emergent chaos, so I'll try to make the system robust enough not to hobble the gameplay.
We've learned a lot since the initial (poorly documented) implementation of Celestial Favor, so with the shift to the Situation-driven approach, we want to make it more responsive to the story that is unfolding within your own campaign, rather than forcing you to conform to arbitrary goals.

In fact, over the past month, I've thought about how to make it as dynamic as possible without having to write a trillion little events, and ... the inspiration actually came as I was drafting the Feeding and Lifestyle overhaul in Velum Noctis (which you can read more about here). It's not implemented yet, and the details may change along the way, but the gist of it is this:

• In normal, day-to-day circumstances where the Empire is at peace, nothing interesting is happening in the galaxy, and no one is sticking their noses into your business or vice versa, you will rarely have to deal with Celestial Favor. In other words, maintaining the status quo is enough for the Mandate to settle at a stable level.

• However, as you make contact with foreign powers, conduct espionage and diplomacy, expand, participate in wars or try to change the terms of your vassal agreements, Celestial Favor Situations will begin to pop up in response to your actions. And those Situations will offer rewarding objectives for you to pursue, spurring you onwards and encouraging breaking the status quo in the process.

• The more active you are, the more opportunities you will have to gain or lose Celestial Favor, but ultimately, you can always retreat back into peaceful stagnation if you desire to regain stability.

So, yes! Pretty much exactly the same dynamic as you may remember from the Velum Noctis overview. Sitting at home and doing nothing is a perfectly viable option, but great rewards are only obtainable by going out of your way to undertake great risks!

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Other Things

Heh... Speaking of that philosophy, there may be some great risks I am planning to take in the near future. In fact, the next Monthly Mod Report will probably be dedicated to that. It will be... less about mods, and more about the Discord, the Patreon, Monthly Mod Reports themselves and... where all of this is going.

A! But not to make it sound too ominous, I can promise, it's all good things! But also, far-reaching changes that, this time, I'm hoping to introduce slowly, gradually, and with your input!

In fact, now I can reveal that the Lhùren Rework poll served a dual purpose.

Aside from the stated goal, I also wanted to measure just how much participation and discussion it could generate, to see if it would be worthwhile to make polls a more regular thing, and perhaps even more frequent than the "Monthly" Mod Reports.

And my conclusions are... promising! And that means, you may be seeing a lot more of them in the future, not just here, but on our Discord as well.

BUT! It seems I have reached my yap quota for one MMR, so it's my favourite part - the one where I leave you hanging until next time! @o@

So until then, have fun playing Stellaris, but keep an eye out, because both big updates and big changes are on the horizon, and I'm hoping you'll be continue to give your feedback and help us steer the spaceship of... friendship? I don't know where I was going with this, but anyways! THANK YOU AND SEE YOU NEXT TIME <33 ,#< #<3<3