The modded universe is mature: there's a reasonable concept of balance, and enough mechanical interaction to create Dwarf Fortress tier emergent story telling.
For example, early in a new playthrough I ran into a nice system to colonize. However the 75% hazard planet had a weird modded modifier - some kind of local fauna drugging up inhabitants, making them happy but unproductive. It also limited stability to a minimum of 5. Guess everyone's too high to worry about the pirate raid... Maybe the pirates chilled out once they landed.
A different mod added a few industries that produced straight cash without touching the market. This cost stability, but the fauna prevented it from going *too* low.
The end result is I have a colony that's less profitable than my typical freeport industrial hellforge, but has been left alone by the big powers of the sector. Pirates and Pathers raid it a bit, but I'm not panic-retreating to it to fend off Hegemony murderfleets. It's reasonably balanced, slightly silly, and completely emergent from modded content!
Same for ship loadouts - my colony is near Modded Faction A, and I'm collecting cool ships from Modded Faction B. The results look and feel mostly visually consistent, are effective in some niches but not broken in all of them, and are all modded content. I'm currently specialized in mobile hit-and-run engagements with 3-4 ships, and can easily engage outnumbered but run out of CR if I try to grind through large numbers of ships. It's weird and wonky, but fun and effective at some bounties. (And FPS-friendly!)
I don't think I've ever played a game that felt this complete, while sticking entirely to modded content, in a niche emergent playstyle that feels natural but I don't think was planned out by anyone involved.
Author
Topic: With mods, this is a AAA game worth of content (Read 1056 times)