[MOD] Stellar Expansion

[King Lemming]

Hey everyone! If my name seems familiar and you've played modded Minecraft before, then yeah - you probably know me.

Anyways, I've recently decided to try my hand at Stellaris modding and I wanted to bring the same approach that I have with Minecraft modding - minimal raw invasiveness, but still adding to the depth of gameplay nonetheless.

1.3 upended a lot of features that I had added, which is good in a sense, so I've redone the main module as sort of a Core, which I'll only add things to sparingly. Most things which are thematically grouped (FTL Enhancements, Spaceships, Terraforming) will be in Addon modules.

This isn't to inundate people with a ton of different mods, but rather allow for modularity and flexibility in mod choice - I completely understand that not everyone is a fan of megamods, nor is a megamod necessarily the goal here.

Steam Links:
Stellar Expansion

Addons:
Stellar Expansion - FTL Enhanced
Stellar Expansion - Genetics
Stellar Expansion - Geoengineering
Stellar Expansion - Strategic Resources
Stellar Expansion - Terraforming
Stellar Expansion - Terraforming (Extreme)
Stellar Expansion - Voidcraft

Rather than constantly update this post with Feature Lists and Changelogs, I'll keep links here to the github versions of those files. Should help prevent this post from becoming too disorderly or intimidating.

Feature Lists:
Stellar Expansion - Feature List

Stellar Expansion - FTL Enhanced - Feature List
Stellar Expansion - Genetics - Feature List
Stellar Expansion - Geoengineering - Feature List
Stellar Expansion - Strategic Resources - Feature List
Stellar Expansion - Terraforming - Feature List
Stellar Expansion - Terraforming (Extreme) - Feature List
Stellar Expansion - Voidcraft - Feature List

Changelogs:
Stellar Expansion - Change Log

Stellar Expansion - FTL Enhanced - Change Log
Stellar Expansion - Genetics - Change Log
Stellar Expansion - Geoengineering - Change Log
Stellar Expansion - Strategic Resources - Change Log
Stellar Expansion - Terraforming - Change Log
Stellar Expansion - Terraforming (Extreme) - Change Log
Stellar Expansion - Voidcraft - Change Log

Please give me any feedback/requests that you have. I'm having fun with this right now, so I'm up for adding more.

 

[Foraven]

Nice mod you are making. I would advise against too many bonus build speed and reduction in maintenance; already plenty of ways to get them (like leaders, starport upgrades, events...).

 

[King Lemming]

I agree with you. I'm capping reductions at 25% and speed increases at 50%. That gives it parity with technologies that already exist for buildings. Barring other mods, there's no way to reach -100% cost. Speed increase is less of an issue, but keeping it sub 100% is still a goal. And unless I've missed something, I'm pretty confident the only way to go over it is another mod.

Oh, and it's out now.

 

[King Lemming]

Just wanted to revisit this real quick and point out that the mod is now on Steam, and has changed to Stellar Expansion.

I'll be keeping it as modular as possible, and I'm working pretty hard to maintain balance in terms of feature holes and feature power. But Stellaris is a huge game, so there's no way I'll playtest all possible scenarios.

That's hopefully what a bunch of you all will do. And then give me feedback and suggestions. Enjoy the mod!

 

[Arakhor]

This does look interesting.

 

[King Lemming]

Also, since I'm working on it right now, figured I'd drop this off:

https://imgur.com/a/Cmz17

Seems that embassy code is alive and well in 1.2, just have to know what to poke. It'll be going into a separate mod of course, but I feel like a lot of people have requested this.

 

[King Lemming]

Got this updated for 1.3, with new modules as well - FTL Enhanced and Voidcraft. Links are in the first post.

 

[King Lemming]

A couple of new updates - Anti-Crisis techs in Stellar Expansion, and new Battleship types in SE: Voidcraft.

 

[Arakhor]

Did you ever do a repeatable gene-modding tech? I always thought that was one of the tech tree's big holes.

 

[King Lemming]

I didn't for a couple of reasons:

-It's a major balance point, so I would likely put that into an addon module.
-Gene editing - last I checked - still requires a point available even if the desired change (climate) does not use one. It's just an annoyance I have that makes it feel like an incomplete system.

It's not hard to do, although I want to do a bit more than just "more points;" I would prefer if it felt like a more full featured system and would like to make it one. I'm just not sure the limits in place at the moment.

 

[Arakhor]

Fair enough. I'm not sure though that Gene Mod Tech V or X is particularly less balanced than Uber Weapon Tech X.

 

[King Lemming]

That's a fair point, although I'm not adding any Uber Weapon Techs either.

I'll go ahead and whip up the addon. Should be simple enough. I think 5 ranks should probably do it, on top of the existing 2, yes? 7 points is a lot.

 

[Arakhor]

Given that if you're researching repeatable techs beyond level 5, you've essentially already won the game (or close to it), so I doubt that usual methods for assessing balance really apply at that point. I'd take it up to level 10, so that I could go all Vorlon on my empire's species and remove all their penalties, make them compliant etc. It's more fun than mind control lasers and more satisfying than building yet another large fleet.

 

[King Lemming]

Arakhor - mod is up now; it's called "Genetics" and I'm going to also look at doing some cloning-type things with it. It's only 5 ranks at the moment, but they're actually kind of expensive ranks.

Standard repeatables are "tier 2" and have a 1500 / 480 cost. (Means 1980 base and +480 per level)

A trait point, however, is sort of a "tier 3" tech. So it's 4200 / 1200 cost. This is in line with what a base game "tier 3 repeatable" would cost, and it makes it reasonably more expensive than the non-repeatable that precedes it. So it seems right.

Also, in making this mod, I had to fix the species modding window (they forgot to change it for 1.3), so that's a separate mod as well:

Anyways, let me know what you think and if it doesn't feel quite right, we can tweak it.

 

[Arakhor]

Ooh!

I'm curious as to why you called the tech "Gene Drive Architecture". Wouldn't something like "Genetic Engineering" be less of a mouthful?

 

[King Lemming]

Ooh!

I'm curious as to why you called the tech "Gene Drive Architecture". Wouldn't something like "Genetic Engineering" be less of a mouthful?

So Gene Drive is a technique of propagating certain genes that we want throughout a population. It's a real thing.

The word "architecting" suggests that the technique has been refined to the point of software engineering, and that the species has mastery over it.

Recently (2013), a technique called CRISPR/Cas9 has been discovered, and the targeting potential means that in theory, we can do tremendous things. This is one of those technologies that people NEED to be talking about, because the social implications are huge.

I realize that the tech in this mod is supposed to be some tech far in the future (in Stellaris' timeline), but this is sort of one of those things where sci-fi is probably missing reality slightly, sort of like Star Trek and cell phones.

The two gene editing techniques portrayed by technologies in the game are things that we can actually do, and if anything the technological achievement is scaling them up to edit whole populations.

So with the "future tech," I've tried to channel a bit of the CRISPR/Cas9 revolution...it's going to be a big deal.

Here are a couple of videos from a channel called Kurzgesagt about it if you're curious:
CRISPR/Cas9
Gene Drive

 

[Arakhor]

Fair enough. I'll look forward to seeing them in game.

 

[King Lemming]

Updating this - new module!

Stellar Expansion - Geoengineering

Basically, it allows for terraforming of already inhabited worlds.

 

[Arakhor]

Wow, the modules just keep coming!

 

[King Lemming]

Updated for 1.4.