Team Nessassity Mods - End Of The Year! Let's Not Call It A Roadmap, I Have No Idea How To Read Those, I Get Lost In My Own WIP Folder

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

AAA- I'M GOING TO MAKE IT, THIS IS STILL GOING TO BE A NOVEMBER MMR-

Ah... poop.

Although... perhaps it makes little difference. The truth is, October and November were both incredibly busy for me and other team members, so unfortunately we didn't get much modding done.

That said, we did push updates for EoS and MEC earlier this week, finally releasing the Asari Orbital Ring with full module support, among other things! Which actually didn't take that much time to develop once we had a clear vision of what we wanted it to look like. It differs quite a bit from the previews in earlier MMRs and I hope you like the final results!

Anyways, I guess since it's so late, I might as well make it the End Of The Year MMR. Oh look! What a surprisingly early EOTY! I'm so organised and diligent!

Okay, jokes aside, normally, whenever we skip an MMR on any given month, the next one that releases is double or even triple-sized to make up for it, but given the dearth of activity throughout these past two months, I thought it might be better to re-evaluate how we communicate our plans and progress.

SO... let's dispense with the ado and get straight to it because it's probably going to be a novel!

Team Nessassity Starchart

Honestly, I'm amazed that there are still so many people who have the patience to put up with our chaotic lack of a set schedule and irregular bursts of productivity often followed by months of silence >.<

I have not been doing a good job of organising our workflow and disseminating information, and I constantly feel this anxiety gnawing at me, telling me that no matter how ambitious our plans are, nobody will be left to care by the time we actually implement them in reality.

Are we failing our users by constantly coming up with new projects that will take years to complete, when all they probably want from us is more frequent updates to the mods that are already out?
Have we driven our initial wave of popularity into the ground by not seizing the chance to cultivate our community earlier?
Can we really produce anything people want to play when we barely have time to play the games ourselves anymore? Are we out of touch?

Those depressing doubts are questions I ask myself daily. I have not found the answer yet. In a way, I've been afraid to look for one, but... the end of another year is putting me in a thinking mood, and thinking by myself just leads to running in circles, so I've decided to break the loop this time.

I'd like to think out loud, and you're my captive audience <3

And the form it should take... let's make it a "roadmap"... but not.

I... really don't like roadmaps. The only time you hear about them is when someone posts one and then completely fails to keep up with it.
But, I think there is one thing roadmaps are good for, and that's expressing where the developers want to see their projects go in an ideal world where everything goes right. It is inherently a motivational tool, for the devs as well as the users, but... as crude of a tool as it is, you may end up doing more harm than good trying to use it.

And another issue with roadmaps is their linearity. The problem with that is obvious - the domino effect. Once you fail to reach one milestone, every single milestone that follows becomes harder to achieve. Compound enough delays and direction adjustments and following the roadmap becomes not only impossible, but also potentially no longer a good idea.

So I'm in a pickle. I really, really want a map. It's the best way I can express the scope of Team Nessassity's ambition, but also something I need to personally reaffirm that we aren't lost - our journey simply leads us in multiple directions.

And that's exactly why a roadmap is insufficient for our needs. We would be better served by a Starchart!

Stars don't stay put; everything in the universe is always moving around, pulled in different directions by forces they have no control over. To reach your destination you need to think in four dimensions; it's not enough to know where you want to go, you also need to account for when your destination will be where you're going. And if you run across a herd of space amoeba along the way and need to divert, both the where and the when will change. But as long as you keep your eyes on the big picture - entire map of the galaxy - you won't lose the endpoint of your journey.

Doesn't this sound a lot closer to what mod development, or any other creative pursuit, is like?

Okay, okay, STOP! You're talking so much nonsense! Who cares what you call it, where's the stupid maaaaaaaaap?

Oh! Right, you're not here for an astronomy and/or philosophy blog (although thank you for trudging through it if you did <3)

The Team Nessassity Starchart that I want to present is a very high-level overview of everything we currently have in the works as well as the Wall of Crazy.
Yes, that includes projects hitherto unannounced and also potentially ones that will never be realised. So please, be mindful that just because something exists on our Starchart doesn't mean that it will happen, or that it will happen exactly as originally envisioned; the longer-term a plan is, the more likely it is to change.
After all... some stars may no longer be there by the time we reach their projected coordinates. The light they emitted billions of years ago is the only thing left to remember them by.

Anyways, here's how the Starchart works. Each of the items on it exists within a relative [where] and (when) of our current spacetime coordinates.

The [where] describes how various projects are related, meaning their codependencies and mutual bottlenecks.

[Systems], also known as Projects, are the individual mods that we work on and release. Each System is made up of multiple Planets.

• Planets, are the milestones that must be achieved before a System can be successfully colonised (or a mod released/updated, as the case may be). New colonisation prospects may emerge or be discarded as the System is being surveyed.

|Sectors| are named after their governors - the team members assigned to oversee given Systems. Due to the Empire's limited bureaucratic capacity, a single System may be under multiple Sectors. Governors have a limited workload capacity, so typically the more Systems fall under a single Sector, the slower they are to colonise.

Lastly, /Clusters/ are the themes that various projects have in common. That typically translates to shared resources and assets that allow them to be developed in tandem, but does also occasionally lead to bottlenecks where the development of one delays another. Clusters typically exist independent of Sectors but individual Systems sometimes fall into multiple Clusters as neighbouring stars exert gravitational pull.

The (when) projects how far away we are from completing System survey or Planet colonisation. Factors such as bureaucratic bandwidth, priorities, bottlenecks and the difficulties inherent in each colonisation project come together to determine this aspect. Due to all the moving parts, projections are constantly subject to change.

The Starchart as of November 2022

(2023) [PORTRAITS 2.0] |Princessity, Nessa, KuriGohan| /Portraits/

• (2022-2023) Develop mockup assets for testing
• (2022+) Determine bones and layers needed for body
• (2022+) Determine bones and layers needed for hair and headwear
• (2022+) Determine bones and layers needed for clothes
• (early 2023) Run a Community Initiative to gather ideas
• (2023) Concept sample clothes and hairstyles
• (2023) Convert Lhùren to PORTRAITS 2.0 and field-test
• (2023) Resolve issues (if any) identified by the field-test
• (2023+) Determine order and convert the rest of Elves and Asari to Portraits 2.0
• (TBD) More clothes, hairstyles and faces for everyone
• (TBD) Catgirls

(ongoing) [Elves of Stellaris] |Princessity, Nessa, Teneb, Kalyian| /EoS, Portraits, Ships, Writing/

• (2023) Lhúren expansion (overhaul Celestial Favor, implement Jiedushi mechanics)
• (2023) Ayleids expansion (bring up to par)
• (2023) Orbital Rings (elven, dark elven)
• (2023) Special shield-ring for the Lhùren homeworld
• (TBD) Complete the shipsets

(ongoing) [MEC: Asari] |Princessity, Nessa, LostInACave| /MEC, Portraits, Ships, Writing/

• (2023) Juggernaut
• (2023, after PORTRAITS 2.0) Complete portrait rework
• (early 2023) A set of asari-themed Traditions, with some minor variations based on ethics and authority
• (TBD) Ardat-Yakshi and Justiciars expansion, may or may not end up getting folded into traditions
• (TBD) An overhaul of Biotics. This may end up splitting into a standalone mod (maybe)
• (TBD) Rework the Habitat and Ringworld models in line with new standards

(late 2023) [MEC: Omega] |Princessity, Nessa, LostInACave, Vale, Alex| /MEC, Portraits, Ships, Writing/

• (mid 2023) Redefinition of the Origin; no longer about habitat living AKA worse voidborne
• (mid 2023) Aria's Couch Simulator (ACS) is now the main attraction instead
• (mid 2023) ACS simplified and integrated into the Situations system (ACS missions tend to revolve around acquisition of pops, leaders and resources)
• (mid-late 2023) Expanding the Omega station is still a feature, but no longer central to gameplay. Now simply supports ACS; upgrades enable special situations and increase rewards from situations of specific types.
• (late 2023+) Collectors: integrated into ACS. Will occasionally request pops or leaders with specific traits. Rare tech/resource rewards for cooperating, may get raided or raid someone else if denied too many requests.
• (TBD) The Omega civic (necessary? maybe Traditions would be better) now enhances raiding (if available) and mercenaries.
• (TBD; post-release) Omega shipset
• (TBD; post-release) Collector expansion + playable (maybe)

(ongoing) [MEC: Expanded Galaxy] |LostInACave, Nessa| /MEC, Writing/

• (ongoing) More of everything as inspiration becomes available

(ongoing) [MEC: Mass Relays] |Princessity, Nessa| /MEC/

• (2023) Add support for Hyper-Relays and L-Gates as separate modules

(TBD) [MEC: Citadel] |Princessity, Nessa| /MEC, Ships, Writing/

• (TBD) Citadel Model
• (TBD) Citadel: colonisable megastructure, each ward separate habitat if not too annoying to implement
• (TBD) Integration into Galactic Community mechanics
• (TBD) Citadel Resolutions (eg. what benefits it gives to GC, Council interactions, which GC species are allowed to migrate into it, etc.)
• (TBD) Ability to release as an AI empire (can we use caravaners as template?) or give to a member empire via Resolutions (must account for Galactic Empire, Custodian, etc.)

(TBD) [MEC: Turians] |Princessity, Nessa| /MEC, Portraits, Ships, Writing/

• (TBD) Portraits
• (TBD) Shipset
• (TBD) Origin incl. systems, events, mechanics
• (TBD) Volus vassals? (use Turian gfx culture)

(TBD) [MEC: Quarians] |Princessity, Nessa| /MEC, Portraits, Ships, Writing/

• (TBD) Portraits
• (TBD) Shipset
• (TBD) Origin incl. systems, events, mechanics
• (TBD) Geth stuff (use Quarian gfx culture, maybe new shipset post-release)

(TBD) [MEC: Hoomans] |Princessity, Nessa| /MEC, Portraits, Ships, Writing/

• (TBD) Portraits
• (TBD) Shipset (technically two but can be recolours)
• (TBD) Cerberus Origin incl. systems, events, mechanics
• (TBD) Alliance Origin incl. systems, events, mechanics

(2023) [Veiled Realms] |Princessity, Nessa, Vale, Alex| /VR, Writing/

• (early 2023) Feeding event structure is a mess. Stop procrastinating, face it and recode it, you shameless craven!
• (early 2023) Once the feeding system is reworked, implement Community Writing entries
• (early 2023) Fill in feeding event blanks with placeholders
• (early 2023) Integrate the remnants of the ill-fated Banes system into Lifestyle Perks, prune the boring perks
• (early-mid 2023) Sanitise the Menace events and setup placeholders
• (mid 2023) Launch the Beta
• (mid-late 2023) Replace event placeholders with actual events, add more events

Phew! That was a lot! Honestly, I did not even have half of these written down before I started this MMR, and it feels so good to finally commit it to writing!

But... I think everyone is tired by now of hearing about long-term plans, and I understand completely. Which is why... I have a certain new year resolution that I will be putting into action in January.
I don't want to spoil it just yet, but I will hint that it involves greatly accelerating Veiled Realms development and keeping myself a lot more accountable for keeping up with it. The results will either be tragic, entertaining, or possibly both, but in any case, it will bring some ongoing productivity to the project that arguably needs it most desperately >.<

So, I will see you again in January 2023! But until then, thank you SO MUCH for continuing to follow and support the development of our mods. You make every day of the year PADORU PADORU and I will never be able to thank you enough for it <3

So let's continue to have fun playing Paradox games into 2023 and beyoooooooond @o@

...

Oh! By the by, I um... may have accidentally self-destructed my Twitter account if anyone is wondering where it's gone >.>

I do have a new one, however, under @PrincessityPLS and I promise I'm not going to touch any account settings ever again, so hopefully this one won't implode! >.<

ALSO, as always, you can join us on Discord where we hang out and struggle with hostile social media technology every day!