[Mod] Impera Et Astra: Stellaris Overhaul Mod

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Scorpii

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Feb 28, 2015
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CURRENT VERSION INFO:
Impera Et Astra Version 1 (Stellaris Version 1.4.* Post-Kennedy)

Greetings!

Welcome to the thread for Impera Et Astra!
What exactly is Impera Et Astra about?
Well I'm glad you asked!

What Is Impera Et Asta?
Impera Et Astra is a total overhaul mod for Stellaris with the aim of overhauling the existing government, economic, colonization, and more mechanics of vanilla Stellaris.

First starting out as a government overhaul mod for Stellaris, the mod grew into a multi-phased project with the goal of overhauling Stellaris to be more varied, micro-intensive and just to have more variation in it's gameplay and aesthetics.

NOTE: Impera Et Astra is early in development. Bugs, imbalance or weird oddities will be inevitable. Please let these problems known so the developer can tackle them.

What Changes Does IEA Make?

  • (In Current Version) 32 New Governments Overriding Vanilla Based Upon Individualist Or Collectivist Ethos Choice.
  • (In Current Version) 19 New Personalities Overriding Vanilla, but kept Hive Mind and Federation Builders from vanilla and modified them for use in IEA
  • (WIP) Colonization Overhaul where colonization will be overhauled to be like pre-Heinlein where colonization will be gated by technology to colonize planets
  • (WIP) Economic Overhaul that focuses on a more realistic and micro-intensive process of taking a raw resource that is a local resource that is useless at first (a raw resource) and using buildings to refine them into a usable reource (a metal ore refined into a pure metal)
  • (WIP) Addition of New Resources (Details Coming Soon)
  • And More Coming Soon!
DOWNLOAD LINK(S):
Steam (coming soon)
Google Drive


Manual Installation Instructions:

1. Extract contents of the .zip file
2. Move all extracted contents to C:\Users\<Enter Username Here>\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\mod
3. Launch Stellaris. Impera Et Astra should be in the mod list

Follow The Development Of Impera Et Astra On GitHub!
GitHub

Interesting In Assisting In Development?
Current Positions Wanted:

- 2D Building Artists
- Programmers
- Playtesters
- Additional Designer
  • Send A PM To Scorpii here on the forums if interested in helping!
 
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Changelog:
-Added 32 New Governments (Completely Overriding Vanilla) (Spreadsheet of these governments: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14kY4wgIFc7VktAcSjvO6qxUjM9aG0n6IbGn1sfmCF9g/edit#gid=0)
*These governments are based on a combination of a choice between Collectivist or Individualist Ethos and choices of other Ethos
-Added 21 New Personalities (Some Vanilla Ones Kept)
*All personalities also have customized greetings and opinon modifiers
-Implemented Additional Traits mod by Kaochi And Company For Increased Variety Of Personality Logic
-All New Government Icons Created By Linds95
-Decreased The Base Maximum Systems Amount For Sectors From 5 To 3
-Decreased The Maximum Choosable Traits From 5 To 3 (One Trait Is Reserved For Habitability Trait, So Technically From 4 to 2)
-Increased Maximum Ethics Points From 3 To 5 To Make Up For The Fact A Minimum Of 1 Point Must Be Put Into Collectivist Or Individualist
-Increased Base Sector Cap From 3 To 5
-Implemented new galaxy sizes: Huge (5000), Large(2500), Medium(1000), Small(500), Tiny(250)
*With these changes, also modified empire spawns so they are much more distant from one another, even on clustered starts
*Also each map size has considerable amount of possible AI to have
-Customized the government and ethics UI so the new government system is clear to players
-Because of the lack of a "Xenophobic/Xenophile" government, these ethos are worth 0 points for the "normal" version and 1 for the "fanatic"
-Integrated various namelist mods for stars, nebulas, and so on because of the larger galaxy sizes
-Maximum amount of traits to pick is now 4
-Trait points have been decreased to 3
-All leaders now have 2 traits to them
-The core system cap is now 3
-Empires without modifiers have a maximum of 5 sectors
-A maximum of 3 anamolies can happen at the same time
-Increased the maximum amount of leaders from 10 to 20
-Leaders now are generated with an age range of 18 to 40
-Heirs now are generated with an age range of between 16 and 30
-Changed the chance of a leader dying from 1% every year to 0.05% every year
-The base age of when leaders have a chance to die has been changed to 65
-Changed the size of nebula dust effects to be 90% as big as their coded range from 80%
-Advanced Empire base max minerals have been decreased to 1000
-Advanced Empire base max energy has been reduced to 500
-Advanced Empire base influence bonus generation is now between 25 and 75
-Advanced Empires have a maximum chance of generating 2 extra colonies plus their homeworld
-Advanced Empire extra colonies now have only 3 pops generated on them
-Advanced Empire extra colonies now only have 1 power plant generated on them
-35% of hyperlanes are removed upon map creation to create more interesting hyperlane routes on the larger maps
-Hyperlanes can now only have a maximum of 3 connections, making maps more interesting



Design Concepts

Government


Before Reading, Access This Spreadsheet of the IEA Governments:

Spreadsheet

The governments in vanilla Stellaris were very generic and weak in terms of role-playing. There wasn't enough government diversity for players and there was always the option of picking a "neutral" government type which didn't make any sense. So governments in Impera Et Astra will be decided by various factors:
  • Collectivist OR Individualist?
  • Chosen Other Ethic
  • If Chosen "Normal" Ethic, Cannot Be Fanatic Anything Else
  • If Chosen "Fanatic" Ethic, Can Be "Normal" Others
What does this mean? Well, a government MUST be either Collectivist or Individualist! Furthermore, you must pick one other ethic in order to pick a government and there is only ONE GOVERNMENT FOR EACH COMBINATION. The idea behind this system is that players will be much more encouraged to role-play since they are railroaded along a certain path. This means there is no longer any sitting on the sidelines, you must pick a position of ethics and you are defined by this position.

An example is that if a player wanted to be a "Collectivist-Fanatic Spiritualist-Militarist" they would be a "Holy Republic." The "Holy Republic" has modifiers that are unique to the specific government that give a unique strategy and playstyle that are not like others but may be similar but unique enough that they are different. This, in theory, will prevent the variety from begin watered down through sheer numbers.

Screenshots:
Current Version Government and Ethics
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IEA 5000 Stars Galaxy On Mass Empire Setting
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Economy:
The fact that in vanilla that an empire can obtain a metal through collecting an ore assumes that a civilization can magically refine a resource without a dedicated building chain. Furthermore, Stellaris lacks a micro-intensive gameplay feature or mechanic but the economic model of many mods such as AlphaMod and SEGO have the right thing going. Taking a "raw" resource, such as an Ore, and then through a building, a "refinery", that takes that ore as a maintenance cost then refines it into the actual metal or resource. This encourages actual economic development and through proper use of adjacency bonuses encourages some planets based on the random generation of resource deposits.

The specific rules of the resource chain is this:
  • Raw Materials Are Local To The Planet ONLY
  • Once The Resource Is Refined, It Is Empire Wide
  • The Refined Resource Is Then Used For Buildings Unique To That Resource

This process can be broken down into a simple diagram:

Raw ---> Refine ---> Resource

Once the resource is refined, you can use that resource as a maintenance cost to build special buildings or other things. This core, new economic model makes certain planets to be used for certain industries and will make the game much more fun.

Colonization:
Colonization should be a careful choice during the Early Game of Stellaris. A species in reality would be very limited to the climate that their world is. Therefore, colonization of planets outside of their original climate preference should be impossible.

However, while they are limited to hospitable planets, empires in the Early Game would be able to colonize Barren planets from the get go. These Barrens would have low habitability but it does offer a good starting point for mining of specific Ores or other Raw Resources(see Economy Design above). Asteroids would have even lower habitability than Barrens which is why the only things that would be able to live on Asteroids would be Robots, Droids and Synthetics!

Robots will be allowed to be a colonization pop choice at the start of the game so that the empire can colonize these hostile places. Over time, research will unlock allowing the specie's habitability of the climate types to increase as well as the Barrens and Asteroids. Depending on the path a player takes, they can choose to focus on Robot-led mining or choose to hunt down habitable planets for the main species. Or they can genetically engineer their species to adapt to the Asteroids and Barrens.

H2O and Power:
H2O (or water is most people know it) is a fairly important resource for organic species to survive in the universe. Water is the chemical of life. While I can't make it so POPs need water to survive like Food, I can make it so that water is needed to maintain farms, like what AlphaMod has done. Water would be harvested from game start and building can be built to increase water production BUT water would be local to the planet only!
Energy as a form of currency makes sense. However I feel as if tying a currency to the maintenance of buildings and so on makes little sense. I can understand fleet maintenance and so on but I feel as if Energy credits need a building chain of their own.

Power would be a resource used in the maintenance of ALL buildings. Power would be generated by Power Plants and other buildings. Players would then be able to choose to convert the power using another building to generate Energy credits. This creates a more in depth and careful balance of the economy through the balancing of building maintenance and Energy generation. Power would obviously by local to the planet only.
 
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The government thing seems great, but all the materialist ones are all corperate, will there be a way to be a scientific one (like the scientific directorate in vanilla)?
 
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The government thing seems great, but all the materialist ones are all corperate, will there be a way to be a scientific one (like the scientific directorate in vanilla)?
That's the main issue that I'm dealing with right now. I don't know whether to make Xenophobe/Xenophile the Science dichotomy or to create an entirely new ethic that deals with that relationship.

Materialism in IEA is related to economy, not specifically the acquisition of things. I thought "materialism is science" in vanilla game was pushing the concept of materialism a bit too far so that's the justification for the change
 
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That's the main issue that I'm dealing with right now. I don't know whether to make Xenophobe/Xenophile the Science dichotomy or to create an entirely new ethic that deals with that relationship.

Materialism in IEA is related to economy, not specifically the acquisition of things. I thought "materialism is science" in vanilla game was pushing the concept of materialism a bit too far so that's the justification for the change

I think adding a new ethic is a good way to go, but spirtualism is not inheritently opposed to the aquisition of goods (indulgances among other things), so it might be good to rename that one to something (egalitarian? something about giving to others?) and put spirtaulism against some new ethic, something about what the vanilla pushes materialism to be, a focus on the real and the tangible over the metaphysical.
 
Maybe something like this:
Materialism vs Egaliterianism

Materialism being the corparate, with egalitarian being about sharing everything (like idealistic socialism), with the indivualist version of the government as a pusedo-anarchy or a bigger welfare state and the collectivist one being a state that makes you share.

While Materialism is more like capatialism, you get what you earn, giving bonuses to minerals and energy. the governments you already have laid out.

Spirtualsim vs ?

Spirtualism as is said in vanilla, traditional religions or a new world spirtualism type deal, with there being a higher being (God or simmilar), lowers ethic divergence (a low amount to not make it mandatory as is in vanilla, as there are few ways to counteract it) The governments you have laid out

The latter i do not know what to call, but it would be the materialism given to us in vanilla ('no divine spark' and all that), the bonuses would be science (as in vanilla), the governments being a indivualist meritocracy of the smartist citizens (or with help of AI later?) with the autocracy being simmilar to the vinilla one, (cogs in the science machine).

Also, in stellaris, AI seem inefectual, other than the crises (which seems a bit random sometimes when your robots rebel even though they are being treated equal), they are just diffrent looking, more habitable pops with bonuses to minerals at the end, with few downsides, any chance of more indepth stuff there? a transhumanist movement that makes it more pops robots (through events), spreading acroos the non-spirtualist empires? maybe a peacful crisis where a error has happened and they start to shut down or worse (which could be horrible due to the above idea).
 
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Maybe something like this:
Materialism vs Egaliterianism

Materialism being the corparate, with egalitarian being about sharing everything (like idealistic socialism), with the indivualist version of the government as a pusedo-anarchy or a bigger welfare state and the collectivist one being a state that makes you share.

While Materialism is more like capatialism, you get what you earn, giving bonuses to minerals and energy. the governments you already have laid out.

Spirtualsim vs ?

Spirtualism as is said in vanilla, traditional religions or a new world spirtualism type deal, with there being a higher being (God or simmilar), lowers ethic divergence (a low amount to not make it mandatory as is in vanilla, as there are few ways to counteract it) The governments you have laid out

The latter i do not know what to call, but it would be the materialism given to us in vanilla ('no divine spark' and all that), the bonuses would be science (as in vanilla), the governments being a indivualist meritocracy of the smartist citizens (or with help of AI later?) with the autocracy being simmilar to the vinilla one, (cogs in the science machine).

Also, in stellaris, AI seem inefectual, other than the crises (which seems a bit random sometimes when your robots rebel even though they are being treated equal), they are just diffrent looking, more habitable pops with bonuses to minerals at the end, with few downsides, any chance of more indepth stuff there? a transhumanist movement that makes it more pops robots (through events), spreading acroos the non-spirtualist empires? maybe a peacful crisis where a error has happened and they start to shut down or worse (which could be horrible due to the above idea).

Well according to a thesaurus, the synonym for "scientific" would be "artistic" so I could do a dichotomy like "Scientific" vs "Expressive" or something along those lines. It wouldn't interfere with the current naming scheme and it sounds nice.

I'm against changing materialist because materialist is a pretty good word for a people who crave indulgences, whether it be money or any other good. I'm really, really hesitant on calling the thirst for knowledge and exploration a "indulgence" because its more intellectual rather than "material." I don't know, the name is just off and I want to keep the vanilla stuff as close as possible in terms of ethos. I'll probably add another ethos relationship and go from there
 
Power, Water and Colonization Progress Update

Evening!

It has been a while since any activity has been posted on the thread so here's an update of what's been going on!

Power and Water Economics

So far, the implementation of the Power and Water resources and economy has been going full steam ahead! Water is extracted using buildings called Water Extraction Plants with 3 levels of buildings, each level unlocked through Mining Network Research Projects. The 1st level, of course, is unlocked at the start of the game. Water Extractors can only be built on actual water deposits. Some planets, of course, do not come with water on them so eventually there will be some way to "transport" water to other worlds.

As stated in the game concepts section, Water is used for the maintenance of farms and maybe other buildings in the future.

B2DUdv1.png

Power is going to be something that will shake up the economy of Stellaris. Because Power Plants no longer produce Energy Credits, buildings had to be designed that are used to convert Power to Energy Credits called Energy Conversion Plants that also have 3 levels of construction. Each level unlocked through Power Hub Research Projects.

Power is used for the maintenance of ALL buildings in the game (planetside at least). Power is a local resource only and non-tradable and not empire-wide. Due to hardcoding, it is not possible to have space stations, fleets, etc. use power so Energy Credits while serving as the "money" of Stellaris also represent a transportable energy.

Ety8JRz.png

Colonization

Colonization has been reworked to a sort-of pre-Heinlein state. Colonization has, once again, been locked behind research. Furthermore, ALL PLANETS (excluding gas giants) are now colonizable with certain research. Barren planets, however, are colonizable at game start and will make for some enticing expansion opportunities but are extremely hard for organics to live on unless they have a Barren Preference. Habitability preferences for all preference traits have been rebalanced and the specific stats can be viewed here at this SPREADSHEET.

The other important feature of this new system is that if a species, for example, starts on an Ocean world (climate = "Wet") then an event will fire at the start of the game that automatically gives that planet the colonization research to colonize Continental and Tropical worlds. The same can be said for every preference in the game.

Deposits and Planet Modifiers have been modified to start spawning on these newly colonizable planets and eventually new events, modifiers, resources, etc. will be added to the mod to take advantage of these opportunities.
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The AI

So far, the AI has taken these changes quite well. They seem to notice these new changes and they do adapt to them but, of course, there is general silliness as with all Paradox AI. But it's not bad. It will be interesting to see how the AI will progress as a more complex economic model is created. Sector AI has been untested so far so I don't know how they'll take the changes.


That's it for the progress update ladies and gentlemen. Any questions and comments are always welcome!
 
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Good luck, it seems like you are going to do solid overhaul like PDM for Victoria II ;)
(Fancy latin names always predict something good :D )

PDM definitely came to my mind while making IEA but I hope to also bring more meaning to ethics through the new government types.



UPDATE:

There will be 8 new government types and 2 new ethics coming to the next update. More news to come as I work on the concepts.


Also a question to all of you. I realize Banks is going to change up ALOT in terms of gameplay and code. Would you guys rather wait for after 1.5 for more content or release early. I can get the work done either way.
 
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PDM definitely came to my mind while making IEA but I hope to also bring more meaning to ethics through the new government types.



UPDATE:

There will be 8 new government types and 2 new ethics coming to the next update. More news to come as I work on the concepts.


Also a question to all of you. I realize Banks is going to change up ALOT in terms of gameplay and code. Would you guys rather wait for after 1.5 for more content or release early. I can get the work done either way.
I would choose to wait.
 
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PDM definitely came to my mind while making IEA but I hope to also bring more meaning to ethics through the new government types.



UPDATE:

There will be 8 new government types and 2 new ethics coming to the next update. More news to come as I work on the concepts.


Also a question to all of you. I realize Banks is going to change up ALOT in terms of gameplay and code. Would you guys rather wait for after 1.5 for more content or release early. I can get the work done either way.

I would rather wait, also any clue on what the new ethics are
 
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That's a good idea. It always annoyed me how materialistic = science, while I would consider materialistic to include any kind of economy or industry as well as science.
 
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Well unfortunately my artist is busy with real-life things for a while so the governments and new ethics will have to be postponed. Sorry guys, no new ethics next update
 
If you just need help with some Icons, i could assist you ;-)
 
UPDATE IN RESPONSE TO DEV DIARY #62

So interesting developments are coming in the Utopia expansion that are making me completely rethink the government design of IEA. For reference, I'm taking about this dev diary

With the removal of the grid-based government selection screen in favor of a more streamlines decision process, this makes things more... complicated. Especially in regards to how Civics and Authority relate to one another.

In my opinion, I love this new system. This makes it so much more simpler to add modifiers and effects (if possible) to the Authorities as well as adding a variety of Civics in relation to that. This makes the possible government possibilities extremely numerous. I also enjoy how government names are generated through different combinations AND the government require no government icons (for the laziness in finding an artist in me).

So for now, while I figure out new Civics and government combinations, I'll be focusing most of my time to economic systems.


To those who have ANY artistic experience in making icons or anything of that sort, I'm looking for one of you since I am not the most artistic person out there. Specifically resource icons as well as, when it comes to it, eventually doing Civics icons. DM me here and we can talk.