Hello! I've been having a blast trying out this mod as some of my friends made me aware of it very recently and I've been having a blast. I've decided to post my overall thoughts on the mod here in case it would at all help with development.
First, what I love about the mod:The art is absolutely wonderful - Vulpoids are as adorable to look at as they should be, and even if the event art doesn't match the game's artstyle, I can easily look past it because it's just so incredibly charming. The bar image is adorable, with all the Vulpoids blushing and serving drinks - and it's great that it also changes depending on their population on the given world.
The work on the icons, industries and portraits is fantastic - they are all absolutely stunningly beautiful and fit perfectly within the game, and the dynamic Profecto portraits are just such a nice addition as well. I noticed that assigning a Profecto to administrate a Military world changed their admin portrait to a military uniform. That's just awesome.
Minor Spoilers
The ships visually fit in very well into the game and are greater to look at up close. Seeing the Citadel's biodome in combat wowed me.
I can also see all the improvements in the artist's style compared to their older works - it's hard to put into words exactly, but I just wanted to say it's really cool to see how much they've improved after their Stellaris and Rimworld mods.
The writing surrounding the Vulpoids and your own interactions with them is quite good - I found it quite entertaining, fun, and cute. Pulling out random Vulpoids out of your cargo storage or dialing up your Profectos and having a talk about the environment is quite nice (and really funny - like when you ask them about a neutron beam you're currently in). Their cuddliness, especially when given a mangonut, is also just heartwarming. Vulpoids are as adorable and precious as they should be.
I also like the flavor of the various Vulpoid workforces - I haven't seen all of them yet though (some of the later ones are really difficult to set up - it's a huge investment)... My only nitpick comes in the form of Vulpoid Farmers lacking unique flavor text for working on a Water world. They're not farming, they're fishing! Right???
Even putting aside the fact they're adorable fluffy foxes, the whole idea of introducing an entirely new commodity into the Sector and watching it's demand grow as all the factions rely more and more on it is insanely interesting and something I have not seen any other mod do. It's unique and exactly what I wanted out of a modded commodity - dynamic interactions with the wider economy! I would love to see all the factions make use of them beyond just the ones already featured in the mod's events.
The organ farm industry and it's content is pretty good. I find this mod's implementation of it much more balanced than other alternatives that I've seen.
And now, my criticisms:Sidequest Spoilers
The story encounters are fine - they are challenging enough but fair. However, the sidequest where you have to fight a pristine XIV fleet with 3 s-mods per ship and officers with 10 elite skills each who are able to deploy an illegal DP amount of ships is just plain not fun. And of course the S-mods vanish when you win. That's just awful. It's like the Scythe of Orion encounter, if it was exceptionally unfair to the player in every conceivable fashion, and nowhere near as intriguing. The rewards are really interesting but don't really feel at all worth it for the difficulty - it would really just be easier to roll up to Chicomoztoc and steal their Pristine Nanoforge instead.
The terraforming core thing is really interesting but kind of not very useful when you already have terraforming mods - but thats not this mod's fault anyway.
Admittedly I have not played around with the two unique ships. My fleet was already basically complete by then and I felt no need to put in the effort of integrating them into it.
Vulpoid Acceptance
Vulpoid Acceptance is conceptually interesting but quickly devolves into a boring waiting game. The events that drive up acceptance are really cool, but there's not enough of them. But the mod's in developemnt so I suppose I'll just wait.
I was going to suggest dynamically generated Vulpoid import deals but scrolling through the guide I found out there's already an event for that... after Vulpoid Acceptance is complete? It's kind of worthless at that point, the entire reason I take up these deals is to drive up Vulpoid Acceptance - and with how long it takes to complete it, by that point money just isn't going to be an issue anyway. The math tells me this is about ~13 cycles of waiting just to complete this stuff (counting the two events, vulpoid production of 6, and not counting most other factors).
That said, I haven't been making use of the option to donate Profectos to other factions - but with how rare and valuable they are to me it's hard to feel inclined to do so, doubly so given the sheer amount of investment you need to put into training them to get the most value out of the deal (6 elite and 4 non-elite skills, which is about 100 acceptance or so, if we're assuming that Laisa is an example of what a peak Profecto looks like). If this is intentional, I have to commend the effort - it's a difficult choice to make.
Vulpoid Data is more or less completely undocumented within both the game and the Guide. What does it do? Why do I need to spend 1-5 cycles on this stuff? If it's a way to increase Acceptance, by how much??? Can I get a progress bar?
The late progression in general just feels kind of slow. Granted, I started this mod's content already very late into my current playthrough and took way too much time setting everything up. This mod's storyline seems like it's best started either way before the colony phase, or very early into it - which is a bit difficult when going through it already requires you to have a pretty powerful fleet.
As of now, I have not yet finished the full Vulpod Acceptance event, but I have read through most of the guide.
I noticed a small bug with Industrial Evolution: After I installed this mod on an existing save, my colony's Rural Polity graphics started going blank each time I loaded a save. The mod lets you change it's visuals through a context option which fixes it but this is still weird.
Apologies if some of my criticisms may seem harsh at points - I absolutely adore this mod and this feel the need to speak very strongly about it. I eagerly await future updates, and in the mean time, I will spend more time figuring out the mod and pointing out any issues. If I am doing something wrong, please tell me!
Also, this is my first forum post; wanting to express my thoughts on this underrated mod has finally got me to actually register here. Hello!
