Hello and welcome to the second Dev Diary of Mass Effect: A New Destiny! Today as I hinted at in the end of the last diary we're going to be talking about a new planet class along with everything that surrounds it. If you missed out on the general economy dev diary you can find that here Mass Effect: A New Destiny Dev Diary #1: The Economy news - Mod DB . No new updates on the three remaining resources other than to say they're still in development. However, I want to thank Harain from the Renegade Modding Group for allowing me to use his Full Top Bar mod that you can find here Steamcommunity.com . And here
is A New Destiny's version of the topbar where you can keep track of all the new important resources for the mod.
With that out of the way let's get into what your all here for, a discussion of...
Operation Centers:
The Mass Effect saga and especially Mass Effect 1 are filled with planets lightly inhabited with mercenaries rather than urban centers. Although Operation Centers are always affiliated with your empire, their design hopefully will immerse players in a Mass Effect 1 feeling. On the surface these may appear similar to Beyond the Relays planetary stations, but the districts, buildings and events should hopefully highlight the broad differences. Each Operations Center will have a 50% habitability default for all empires with buildings boosting that number over time. You can see that default here.
The Operations Center will also stay within the 10 to 15 planet size to represent that these places were not bustling towns or huge economic centers. They are also not terraformable since these places are of significant interest to the military wing of any government. To adequately showcase everything about the Centers we're going to the place it all started, Menae.
Menae:
For those unaware, or those that just need a refresher, Menae is the Turian moon orbiting the Capital of Palaven. In Mass Effect 3 Shepard rescues General Adrien Victus from the moon. You can see in the habitability picture above that Menae is just waiting for a Turian player to colonize it at the beginning of a game (more on that in a bit.) Capturing the spirit of a military base takes a lot of moving pieces so let's get started at the beginning.
Life Support Systems:
When you first colonize a Operations Center, the Life Support Systems building will be the first thing you are greeted to as seen here.
It serves as the equivalent to the Colonial Capital buildings all empires have access to when first settling a new world. The building comes with three jobs that form the backbone of the Outposts: Recruitment Officers, Naval Instructors, and Bartenders. The building also provides a five percent habitability bonus to get you started on making a good base for your soldiers. However, no extra housing comes from Life Support Systems themselves or their upgrade detailed below. Operation Centers are all about balancing the needs of your empire's military with the needs of the people on the ground. So, let's talk about districts first before going back to buildings.
Training Grounds:
As detailed in the dev diary last month, Recruitable Population is a new resource used in everything from ship construction and space buildings to ground armies and certain military buildings. Training Ground districts grant more Recruitment Officer jobs than anything else in the mod meaning they are important for any military wishing for a wide build. Training Grounds also have one housing slot for any guard that secures the area. However, an empire will need a surplus of food and credits to make sure a Recruitment Officer can woo members of the public into the army.
Naval Exercise Facilities:
Mass Effect as a series has always been focused on the Space Navy, and A New Destiny is no different. Naval Instructors provide two country wide naval cap as well as two points into fleet command limit. Those of you who love to doomstack will absolutely love spamming these bases however you might not want to get your hopes up yet. While definitely not final, individual ships will cost more to the fleet limit and cap so these districts may just help you get to vanilla levels. These districts also cost credits and food while providing one housing.
Recreational Services:
Every soldier needs some good rest to blow off some steam. Bartenders in the Recreational Services district entertain soldiers on the base to make sure they don't want to leave too soon. While the five percent bonus to happiness may seem attractive, you may want to watch out for the one percent penalty to crime. You might not see Gang Wars due to a soldier having a night out on the town, yet petty crime can still have it's consequences. This district is more of a wild card potentially spawning positive and negative flavor events throughout the course of a game.
Administration Center:
This district is the most similar to vanilla city districts with a militaristic coat of paint. Unlocking 2 building slots, amenities, and 9 housing slots comes from this district. I know this one isn't going to break new ground in the modding scene but not everything can be huge game changers. Still this district is a good way to represent the pencil pushers of the Mass Effect galaxy like Captain Bailey.
And with that we've finished looking at districts of an Operations Center. Now it's time we look at the building set exclusive to this planet class.
Buildings:
When designing the buildings for the Operations Center, I was trying to think of what a military base needs to function as well as game requirements this type of planet class could perform. Instead of going into deep and detailed descriptions of every single building, I'm going to let the following pictures do the talking for me as they're all pretty self-explanatory as to what they do. At the end we're going to highlight a specific building for reasons that will become clear when we get there. Enjoy the gallery below...
The Planetary Coilgun Battery:
I want to thank Ambit for allowing me to use their mod At War: Planetary Cannons (3.6.*/3.7.*) that you can find here Steamcommunity.com . Developing this mechanic had to be a nightmare and I just don't have the experience to do it on my own. So, what is it exactly? For those unaware, the mod allows a planet to defend itself from orbital bombardment by firing back at the enemy from the planet's surface. The only tweak I made was making the upkeep Thermal Clips instead of motes as they have been removed from the mod entirely. Lore wise Mass Effect 3 has a side mission on Tuchanka where Shepard must reactivate a defensive cannon. I merely expanded their usage to all empires.
Missing Features:
Operation Centers are not out of development and you'll notice there are some pretty basic features missing. As of right now there aren't any planet modifiers, features, or blockers to make each base feel unique. This might be disappointing to some of you but, I'm being as transparent as possible with the development process as I can. Rest assured plenty of those will be implemented before release but we just aren't there yet. Just like I updated you all about the top bar I'll be showing off feature updates like this at the top of every upcoming dev diary as they happen.
Also, I'm not thrilled with Menae not being a starting world along with Palaven but I just can't seem to get it to work. Turians of Menae are spawning as an entirely separate country on day one. I have reached out to all sorts of modders throughout the Discord community and none of them can put their finger on what exactly I'm doing wrong. So for the time being Menae is only colonizable. If you are a coder and feel like giving it a look feel free to contact me to see what I've tried in the past.
Conclusion:
That's it for this month folks. I know it's a little shorter than last time, but a lot of this stuff doesn't need lengthy explanations. Next month we're going to be going into a deep dive into how the many corporations of the Mass Effect universe will be represented in A New Destiny. And no, the game is not going to have an empire for each one.
Krogan signing off...
