(Originally posted in the main forums here.)
Inspired by Stellaris' Dev Diary #31, I had the idea that a curated Anomaly Pack mod sourced from the community would be a great addition to the Stellaris experience. Contributions from many modders, whether they contribute a single Anomaly or a hundred of them, simple results or complex chains of events, all assembled and normalized into a single consistent package for users.
To be clear: This is intended to be a community mod, not something I'm asking for Paradox to do.
Since Exploration is intended to be a large part of Stellaris gameplay, a larger pool of Anomalies to draw from will stave off the "seen these anomalies all before" moment where exploration becomes dull. Ideally such an Anomaly Pack can keep the game's exploration fresh even hundreds or thousands of hours down the road.
Packaging Anomalies from multiple contributors helps spread out the effort of writing new content while minimizing the overhead (publishing the mod, dealing with conflicts, etc) for anyone who just wants to write a handful of anomalies.
Restricting the mod to just Anomalies allows for a wider audience, being attractive to players who may not normally play mods (like me), and also makes it easier to incorporate wholesale into other mods. The only non-Anomaly change I am considering would be, if it's possible, to add a note or tooltip in the Anomaly popup to mention the Anomaly's author.
Curating it is important for maintaining a "standard of experience" and not jarring the player out of their immersion in the core game experience. Such a mod would aim to incorporate Anomalies from many contributors while ensuring a consistent level of quality, balance, and tone in line with the base game itself (i.e. not seeking to alter the "Stellaris flavour").
Editing is also important, which would be making sure that the package of anomalies as a whole is not too slanted in favour of specific kinds of results (e.g. too many "extra minerals" and not enough "extra energy"), specific traits/governments (as I imagine some anomaly options, like any events, may be restricted by those things), too many Anomalies re-using the same picture, reviewing/reworking anomalies when patches come out with balance changes, correct language/spelling/grammar, and other such details.
I plan to initially take on the Curating & Editing roles.
Once I get my hands on the game I will look into creating this mod, as there's not a whole lot of "prep work" or research that can be done before then (not least because of the need to study the set of anomalies that ship with the game to get a feel for their "macro balance"), but hopefully within a week or two of launch I'll have enough of a handle on things to start writing some anomalies and, if there's any community interest in contributing to such a thing, to accept submissions.
======
My main goal is to create a mod that players can feel confident about adding to their game to simply get "moar anomalies" without significantly changing the feel of Stellaris or diluting the quality.
Along the way, hopefully I can:
* Make it easy for people who are feeling creative to just write a few anomalies and not worry about much else
* Provide a useful source of "standardized" anomalies for other modders
* Provide more exposure to experienced modders writing their own anomalies for other mods
From a practical standpoint, here's how I (perhaps naively) expect things to work:
0. Everyone spends some time playing Stellaris & learning how it works
1a. Willing authors contribute their anomalies (super bonus awesomeness if it comes with artwork) to me via the forums/email/carrier pigeon*/link to a website or published mod.
1b. I browse the Steam Workshop/mod forum actively looking for "good" anomalies
2. I do the curating/editing thing: Fix any errors, tweak the language, tidy stuff up, juggle the art, etc. ALL CHANGES DONE ONLY WITH AGREEMENT BY THE AUTHOR(s) (although I expect I may adopt a "if you voluntarily contribute material you agree to allow me to modify it without having to constantly pester you" policy to cover previously-contributed work that needs to be updated). If the changes look to be significant I may ask the author to rework with suggestions. If the work is deemed simply unsuitable, it will be politely rejected (possibly with suggestions to make it more suitable). I will also ensure that authorship is attributed somehow, as a first/last resort I'll add a line to the anomaly text but hopefully it can be a little more elegant than that. I claim no rights to your work other than "you let me publish it in a mod".
3. Add the new content to the mod to be published in the next update. Too early (for me) to judge what will be a good update schedule, but "not too quick and not too slow". Possibly coinciding with major Stellaris patches.
4. The world explodes in Stellaris ecstasy forever**.
*Don't do this, you will never get your pigeon back.
**This may or may not happen - projections are fuzzy.
Inspired by Stellaris' Dev Diary #31, I had the idea that a curated Anomaly Pack mod sourced from the community would be a great addition to the Stellaris experience. Contributions from many modders, whether they contribute a single Anomaly or a hundred of them, simple results or complex chains of events, all assembled and normalized into a single consistent package for users.
To be clear: This is intended to be a community mod, not something I'm asking for Paradox to do.
Since Exploration is intended to be a large part of Stellaris gameplay, a larger pool of Anomalies to draw from will stave off the "seen these anomalies all before" moment where exploration becomes dull. Ideally such an Anomaly Pack can keep the game's exploration fresh even hundreds or thousands of hours down the road.
Packaging Anomalies from multiple contributors helps spread out the effort of writing new content while minimizing the overhead (publishing the mod, dealing with conflicts, etc) for anyone who just wants to write a handful of anomalies.
Restricting the mod to just Anomalies allows for a wider audience, being attractive to players who may not normally play mods (like me), and also makes it easier to incorporate wholesale into other mods. The only non-Anomaly change I am considering would be, if it's possible, to add a note or tooltip in the Anomaly popup to mention the Anomaly's author.
Curating it is important for maintaining a "standard of experience" and not jarring the player out of their immersion in the core game experience. Such a mod would aim to incorporate Anomalies from many contributors while ensuring a consistent level of quality, balance, and tone in line with the base game itself (i.e. not seeking to alter the "Stellaris flavour").
Editing is also important, which would be making sure that the package of anomalies as a whole is not too slanted in favour of specific kinds of results (e.g. too many "extra minerals" and not enough "extra energy"), specific traits/governments (as I imagine some anomaly options, like any events, may be restricted by those things), too many Anomalies re-using the same picture, reviewing/reworking anomalies when patches come out with balance changes, correct language/spelling/grammar, and other such details.
I plan to initially take on the Curating & Editing roles.
Once I get my hands on the game I will look into creating this mod, as there's not a whole lot of "prep work" or research that can be done before then (not least because of the need to study the set of anomalies that ship with the game to get a feel for their "macro balance"), but hopefully within a week or two of launch I'll have enough of a handle on things to start writing some anomalies and, if there's any community interest in contributing to such a thing, to accept submissions.
======
My main goal is to create a mod that players can feel confident about adding to their game to simply get "moar anomalies" without significantly changing the feel of Stellaris or diluting the quality.
Along the way, hopefully I can:
* Make it easy for people who are feeling creative to just write a few anomalies and not worry about much else
* Provide a useful source of "standardized" anomalies for other modders
* Provide more exposure to experienced modders writing their own anomalies for other mods
From a practical standpoint, here's how I (perhaps naively) expect things to work:
0. Everyone spends some time playing Stellaris & learning how it works
1a. Willing authors contribute their anomalies (super bonus awesomeness if it comes with artwork) to me via the forums/email/carrier pigeon*/link to a website or published mod.
1b. I browse the Steam Workshop/mod forum actively looking for "good" anomalies
2. I do the curating/editing thing: Fix any errors, tweak the language, tidy stuff up, juggle the art, etc. ALL CHANGES DONE ONLY WITH AGREEMENT BY THE AUTHOR(s) (although I expect I may adopt a "if you voluntarily contribute material you agree to allow me to modify it without having to constantly pester you" policy to cover previously-contributed work that needs to be updated). If the changes look to be significant I may ask the author to rework with suggestions. If the work is deemed simply unsuitable, it will be politely rejected (possibly with suggestions to make it more suitable). I will also ensure that authorship is attributed somehow, as a first/last resort I'll add a line to the anomaly text but hopefully it can be a little more elegant than that. I claim no rights to your work other than "you let me publish it in a mod".
3. Add the new content to the mod to be published in the next update. Too early (for me) to judge what will be a good update schedule, but "not too quick and not too slow". Possibly coinciding with major Stellaris patches.
4. The world explodes in Stellaris ecstasy forever**.
*Don't do this, you will never get your pigeon back.
**This may or may not happen - projections are fuzzy.
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