Mass Effect: A New Destiny mod for Stellaris

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest diary for Mass Effect: A New Destiny! First of all I want to thank everyone who has subbed to the mod on Steam and placed confidence in me to make this amazing mod a reality. The first few releases had a nasty save bug that a very kind Steam user helped me fix. Please keep the feedback coming, I only have so much time in a day to playtest everything so any critique is hugely valuable in making the mod fun for everyone! I also want to thank the teams at binaryhelixmods, Stellaris Modding Den, and Renegades Modding Group for answering my coding questions. This mod wouldn't be here at all without them helping out. Alright, enough with the Oscars sappy speech, it's time for the dev diary that touches a lot of changes coming with v0.1!

Ship Sets:

I'm happy to announce hyperion9710 has graciously allowed me to use their mod Mass Effect Shipsets NSChttps://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2838228491 as a required dependency for A New Destiny. When loading up A New Destiny you need to place Mass Effect Shipsets NSC below the main mod. Although I'm still looking for appropriate station models, this ship set mod should help make everything look more like the Mass Effect universe. Here's an image of the Turians and Alliance forces battling near Shanxi.

At this point the Rachni are the only empire to have a vanilla ship set. If anyone has any ideas as to what I could use for them please let me know. But that's not all I've done in the cosmetic department, let's talk about the map.

Galactic Map:

In the current public build on Steam you can find here, Steamcommunity.com a map filter highlights significant galactic sectors to know at a glance where things might be. However, the filter is a dark gray color that tends to blend in with the map and makes things hard to see. In v0.1, the color has been changed to an orange color similar to Mass Effect 2's color scheme, you can see it below.

Now long time Mass Effect nerds might be wondering why the Attican Traverse is so large, the answer is I have erased the Systems Alliance quadrant. Given the fact that A New Destiny begins in 2150, the majority of the galaxy have no idea Humans exist and wouldn't mark down their territory on maps. If you don't like the filter at all or think the Systems Alliance segment should be named something else let me know in the comments. That's not all about the map changing in v0.1, let's look at empire layouts in greater detail now that most empires have starting systems established.

The first thing to note is that A New Destiny is not focused on balanced starts like a vanilla game of Stellaris. As you can see below, the Systems Alliance has more territory than the Migrant Fleet for instance.

Meanwhile the Geth Consensus starts with two megastructures from the Dark Horse Mass Effect comics as well as systems in the Armstrong Cluster.

The intent is to create a middle ground between vanilla Stellaris and something like Star Wars New Dawn which has a vast majority of settled systems. Generally, the aim is to have three to four planets with settlements established leaving many more systems to explore. I have accounted for the change in lore with a starting event that discusses the state of the galaxy, but I'll let you see that in game. Below are the layouts for the rest of the majors starting positions currently.

You may have noticed Earth was disconnected from the hyperlane network, that is by design to incorporate a new feature...

Primary Relays:

In the world of Mass Effect Mass Relays are divided into two categories, Primary and Secondary Relays. In A New Destiny, Secondary Relays are common and all connected to a single network while Primary Relays are more akin to wormholes with one entry and one exit. Unlocking travel between these locations will require anything from raw research to archaeological projects depending on the Relay in question. Earth's Charon Relay requires an archaeological project involving delving into the Mars Archive. You can see a sneak peek of the project below.

While Charon is the only Primary Relay in the mod so far, I plan on adding the Mu and Omega Relays in future versions of the mod. They will each have a story function in the mod and specialized for the needs of converting Mass Effect into a 4X setting. While not totally lore accurate to Mass Effect, I hope the spirit of what I'm going for is felt. With that out of the way it's time to talk about what's next.

v0.1:

Mass Effect: A New Destiny is moving out of the economic beta and into v0.1 FCW but what does that mean exactly? For the next few updates, I'll be focusing on implementing the first major story arc planned, the First Contact War. In Mass Effect lore the FCW pitted the Systems Alliance and Turian Hierarchy in a battle for survival. The mod stays true to that premise while adapting some details to be consistent with the mod's internal lore. Coming off the heels of the Krogan Rebellions, the Turians will stop at nothing to secure a peaceful galaxy. At the same time Human's drive to explore the stars can lead to a fatal misunderstanding.

While not fully implemented, the choices both players make can lead to war or an alternative path where cooler heads prevail and the war is avoided all together. Here's an example of a choice the Alliance player will have to make below.

Although the map and starting events are the bulk of the work done for v0.1, I do have one more thing to talk about.

Shipyards:

I want to stress the below system is experimental, subject to change or down right scrapped based on A, your feedback and B, how the AI handles it. It's not a super hard change code wise but will affect gameplay significantly from vanilla. Once I get enough feedback, I'll be able to change it back fast if it doesn't go well. The goal of the overhaul is to add a new strategic layer for those engaged in war while also standing apart from other mods. So, what exactly is changing?

In vanilla Stellaris regular ship classes ie, corvette, frigate, destroyer, cruiser, and battleships are all built from a central Shipyard and does not depend on station level. A New Destiny changes things to make the last three types require a special starbase building as well as increasing starbase level requirements for those buildings. If you've ever played Star Wars: Empire at War, you'll recognize the inspiration for this system. Again, I want to stress this system is experimental and may be scrapped so please comment on your experience.

That's all for now folks! If you want to keep up with mod development, feel free to join this Discord Discord.gg and scroll down to the A New Destiny section. If you would like to join me in making the mod the help would be greatly appreciated. Please fill out this short survey so I know how to get in touch with you! Forms.gle

Krogan out.