Hi everyone,
I've been working away at this mod for a while now, I put out a simple faction mod as my first attempt a few months back but decided that I really wanted to change direction and focus on adding more long-term gameplay goals, there's already so many amazingly well created faction mods that I'll never match so I wouldn't be playing to my strengths. I've been playing SS for years and years and have really appreciated all the work that people have put into the mods I love playing with, this is basically my hope of giving something back and my first attempt at SS modding as well as using Java so I'm sure I have a long way to go.
The Asimov Institute is designed to run alongside Nexerelin in either Corvus or Procedural sectors.
I still have a long way to go before I hit all my goals with this mod, but it's reached a point now where some feedback and people playing with it would really help me out moving forward. Here's a brief overview of what to expect:
When starting a new game your fleet is given the wonderful ability of establishing the Asimov Institute on a planet or station of your choosing. (Provided that planet is owned by your faction of course)
The planet you pick can be important since the Institute will boost that planet's stability as well as provide patrol fleets on top of your usual fleets.
The institute begins as a [massively impressive but] lowly tech level 1 research base. In order to help the institute gain power you will need to provide it with research materials, there are several ways to obtain them so you'll doubtless be finding a bunch in your play through.
- After every battle you will be able to scrounge up research materials based on the factions involved. High tech factions provide better materials than low tech, but all destruction is good destruction.
- High value planets with interesting features also tend to come with relics and artefacts that you can find by performing a Science Scan after a survey.
- Debris fields and floating wrecks often contain a little bit of usable junk, though low value, they're easy to find.
- Every now and then one of the factions will decide it's time to build their own research institute, the capture and destruction of this will result in a big cache of research data.
- AI Cores provide a good source of research.
In exchange for your services in assisting the Institute they offer a wide range of advantages ranging from prototype weapons and ships, hull modifications and even genetic enhancement.
Prototype ships and weapons are very powerful but will take commitment to obtain. Hull Modifications begin rather weak but they're all tied into the Institute's tech level so putting the work in to raising the tech level will turn them into very powerful alternatives.
I don't want to list everything available since the discovery is a lot of the fun.
In total there are 14 new Hull Modifications, 16 prototype weapons and 15 prototype ships.
Currently the prototypes are 95% based on Vanilla ships and weapons, later I would like to see more based on other mods also, it's not my intent to add many NEW ships/weapons, although the Institute fleets use their own that you might be able to get your hands on.
I'm cautious about the fact that the mod could be seen to offer overly powerful advantages so I'd really appreciate feedback. My intention is to add fun, highly desirable things, not ruin people's sense of challenge, in fact a future planned addition is intended to make things a LOT harder on the player!
Obtaining the best items takes a lot of time and is intended to last your entire playthrough while feeling appropriately rewarding, I imagine most people to not even reach the highest tech level before calling the playthrough done and moving on to another.
All feedback is infinitely valuable as well as any bugs you encounter, I've endeavoured to track them down and run through several games but I'm only one person with limited spare time and there's a whole bunch added already.
Apologies in advance if the game crashes because I missed a comma in an obscure def file or caused a null pointer error somewhere that I haven't come across yet.
To give you an idea of planned features, the next part I want to push forward on is the "Rival Institute" functionality, at the minute it's basic and simply serves as a goodie hut for the player as well as encouragement to go war another faction, I plan to expand this to make more dynamic non-player Institutes, Corporations and Organisations that offer tangible benefits to the faction that builds them along with their levelling up and destruction ramifications. After that portion I want to integrate a new starting option that offers a much more difficult way of playing the game.
