Greetings mod players!
I hope everyone is enjoying the season of Life Day, and of course, Mod of the Year. This year was a big one for Star Wars: Interregnum, with the release of Beta 2 bringing the Campaign feature, the special Dark Empire subfaction, and the much requested Eclipse Star Dreadnaught to the mod. This is a fulfillment of a promise from long ago, where we committed to adding the Eclipse for getting 2nd place in 2015’s Mod of the Year. It took longer than I thought, but six and a half years later, we finally delivered, and in a more in depth way than I thought possible back then.
The world and the mod have changed a lot since then. As we announced earlier, the next major version of Star Wars: Interregnum will be the full, 1.0 release in 2023. As a result, this is the last year we can attempt to get 1st place in the upcoming Mod of the Year category. Having already gotten 2nd place once in the 2015 contest, that is the only award Interregnum can win beyond the Top 100. We would love to finally take home this honor, so if you haven’t already, we would appreciate your vote this year. In exchange, read on for some of the highlights of upcoming features that will appear in the Interregnum 1.0 release.
Yuuzhan Vong Invasion Event
The biggest addition in Interregnum 1.0 will be the introduction of a Yuuzhan Vong invasion random event for players that have the Stellar Phenomena DLC. The Yuuzhan Vong will not be a playable faction - instead they will be an antagonistic force that will replace the Mad Vasari titan event (which doesn’t fit too well in the Interregnum universe). I realize the Yuuzhan Vong are a polarizing topic in the Star Wars universe, but they are perfect for a “crisis” type event like this and their very unique units can provide a new type of challenge to the mod.
This optional feature is still very much in the work in progress stage and lots of experimenting will need to be done before we can give concrete details. However, our primary goals for the Vong is to have them be a late game challenge that will show up every few games that will be far more difficult than the Mad Vasari invaders. Expect some very unique abilities based on their organic technology, and the ability to conquer worlds to further increase their strength if you let them get a foothold!
Pact Overhaul
We’ve deliberately avoided touching one of the major diplomatic features in Sins of a Solar Empire, pacts, until the last major update of the mod. This is because it seemed silly to worry about them too much until all the playable factions were complete, and because pacts are unfortunately limited in important ways in how they can be modded. However, with the New Republic being released in Beta 1, we’re now ready to finally address pacts for the Star Wars factions, instead of reusing TEC/Advent ones for the Empire/Alliance.
We’re still doing some experiments on what we can do with the pact system as well, but one thing that is clear is that shared pacts for main factions will be a thing of the past. Instead, each subfaction will have pacts that best reflect its playstyle, so if say an Empire and Warlord player become allies, each will be able to provide at least some different pacts that the other does not have access to. This will apply to Vanilla Sins factions as well.
Planet Economy Rebalance
Balance changes have become a bigger part of Interregnum updates lately thanks to the exhaustive efforts of our testing group and the success of our multiplayer community on discord. One area that will see significant changes is to the economics of planets. Recently the meta of the mod and Sins in general has been rather focused on high population planets and social specialization. We’re currently testing a number of changes, like increasing the amount of resource asteroids available on lower population worlds and recalibrating planet specialization bonuses. Our hope is that each planet and economic mechanic will be more equally viable, with each faction having different preferences for how to build their economy.
These are just some quick highlights of the many changes coming in 1.0. We’re look forward to sharing more details with you throughout the coming new year!
-Happy Holidays from the Interregnum Team
I havent played Sins in years but this will always get my vote :p