Hello everyone and welcome to the third Dev Diary for Mass Effect: A New Destiny! I realize it's long overdue, but a combination of real-life stuff and a pretty chunky game update caused the delay. However, as long as there isn't any dramatic unforeseen craziness, we should be on track for full event modding soon. Like always we're gonna start small with some minor updates before we get to the meat of the update. I hope it was worth the wait!
So, to start off I want to highlight the last two strategic resources in the mod! It's my belief that nailing the economy before every other system is key to really immerse players in an authentic Mass Effect experience so that's why the majority of development this past five months have honed in on that.
Red Sand:
The drug of choice for many in the Mass Effect universe, Red Sand is a drug connected to biotics use. In the mod, Red Sand can be produced through buildings as well as Element Zero and Light Metals. For example, here is the Red Sand Labs building which produces the drug with an unfortunate side effect of 15% extra crime.
Although at the moment Red Sand isn't really used for anything, it can be sold on the market for high prices. However, the plan is to have certain edicts and ground armies cost Red Sand, especially armies in the Terminus Systems. The goal for Red Sand is to tie the resource more to crime than similar drugs in other Total Conversions such as New Dawn.
Prothean Data Disk:
To be clear, Prothean Data Disks are replacing Minor Artifacts in vanilla Stellaris play. In the lore of Mass Effect, Data Disks hold ancient knowledge detailing the Prothean's desperate fight against the Reaper invasion. While I was originally planning to make Thorian Goo in a similar spot, the First Contact DLC made this decision for me. The frankly underwhelming vanilla ancient weapons will be tweaked to reflect truly powerful Prothean ship systems. They will be harder to find throughout the galaxy though certain planet deposits give a lot of Data Disks in prominent locations of the ancient Prothean Empire. There's one more major feature specific to Prothean Data Disks but, that's going to have to wait for its own Dev Diary.
To round out the last bit of the small update here is the final top bar in full.
I want to once again thank Harain from the LoToR mod team for allowing me to use his Full Top Bar mod that you can find here. Steamcommunity.com
Ok now that's out of the way we can talk about the update in full.
Corporations:
As a franchise Mass Effect is chalk full of Corporations throughout the galaxy that have an impact on the narrative of the game. Commander Shepard encounters several of these throughout their journey in the series. The sheer number of these businesses gave me a few options in how to approach their design. I'm going to go over the other options I thought about first in the hopes that you understand my final decision. Specifics are subject to change once playtesting begins but, the general approach is locked in.
#1 Fully Fledged Empires. In short, the mod would have too many empires on the board if we went this route. Plus, many of these Corporations aren't spacefaring military powerhouses so lore and gameplay go against this option. #2 Primitives. This is the route Crucible took in its early days and while it's absolutely valid, I don't love it. These businesses are galaxy spanning entities so, making them a bonus for whatever lucky empire finds them feels inappropriate. #3 Enclaves. This is a little better of an option seeing as most empires can interact with them but, we're back to a numbers problem. Where would we put them all? There will be a single Enclave in the mod but more on that in another Dev Diary. That leaves us with the option I went with.
Branch Offices:
Redesigning branch offices from the ground up in the form of Mass Effect businesses feels the most appropriate. To me, expanding this style of building immersion is the best way to achieve a couple goals at the same time. Make Megacorps more Mass Effecty, represent the vast number of businesses, keep lag as low as possible, and separate A New Destiny from Beyond the Relays' current build. A New Destiny was born as an alternative to BtR and this is probably the first major distinction between the two. Is it...a little boring? I admit that's a possibility yet, I hope once you look at the images below, you'll see these buildings are a little different than your average branch office.
Two things though before we get to the gallery. First, I am well aware that some of these businesses weren't founded lorewise until after the start date of 2150. Making them buildable from the start of the game is really just a Stellaris thing to make Megacorps fun to play from the very start of the game. In general, A New Destiny will strive to be lore accurate whenever possible but will not sacrifice gameplay to do so. That doesn't necessarily mean balance mind you, rest assured the Batarian run will usually be a lot harder than a run as the Citadel Council. Secondly, you'll probably notice a lot of these branch offices offer Credits more so than other resources. This is by design. These corporations offer items in exchange for Credits meaning a Megacorp player needs to rely on the galactic market. On the other hand, players receiving branch offices will gain more than vanilla in terms of resources. In a multiplayer setting this should hopefully boost cooperation. Numbers and art are not final and need playtesting. Enjoy the gallery!
Conclusion:
That's it for this update though I'd keep an eye out for another before July 4th hopefully. We are actually getting close to the mod being in a playable state for beta testing by the end of the summer. As always, I could use some development help to get the mod in your hands sooner rather than later. Specifically, coders that can help me kill bugs and 2D artists for city sets and event pictures. Reach out to me on Steam or Discord if you would like to help and we can work something out. Here's the discord link: Discord.gg
Next update will be all about Paragons and Renegades so... Stay tuned ;)
