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[kazi]

The Mayorate

Widely condemned in most political circles, the Mayorate is a small, isolationist star nation bordering the core worlds. Baseline humans play little to no role in government and economic activities - state affairs have been dictated by the Mayor, an AI of unknown capabilities, since the Collapse.

Features:

• A full faction's worth of content including: new ships, new weapons, new fighters, new shipsystems, new hullmods, new star system, etc. (if it's a possible mod feature, it's probably included)
• ~20 minutes worth of original music - most composed specifically for this mod by yours truly (don't worry, it doesn't suck)
• High-quality and kitbash-free art, including portraits, planet textures, illustrations, and all of the GraphicsLib bells and whistles like weapons lighting and normal/materials maps
• High-quality and vanilla-friendly writing
• Unique weapons like nukes, mines, and Mechwarrior 4-style PPCs (check out the disruptors )
• Balanced against vanilla weapons and ships. If you suck at the game, you will continue to suck after installing this mod.

Some ship art I like:

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Screenshot (I'll let you discover the other ships and weapons)

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How they play:

• The Mayorate has few allies, a relatively large military, and usually find themselves in a state of limited war with their local neighbors. Talk with one of the higher-ranking officials at a Mayorate installation for more information on the faction, recruitment, or diplomatic and military assistance. They may help you if they like you enough.
• Mayorate craft thrive off of high flux - many weapons deal bonus damage at high flux levels (including point defense), and armor is above-average for tanking extra hits with the shields down. Lots of pressure weapons, fighters, and deep missile magazines will ensure you quickly grind down opponents as long as you keep the initiative and don't allow enemies to disengage.
• Mayorate ships are usually quite ponderous, and pack a lot of frontal firepower and armor at the cost of speed, maneuverability, and shield efficiency. Lighter ship classes require close support from cruisers and capitals to remain effective. Fast, maneuverable opponents will quickly tear apart Mayorate forces that get separated from the herd. Don't get flanked.

Download - v1.1.0 (2021-11-25)
The Mayorate also requires LazyLib and GraphicsLib as runtime dependencies. Nexerelin is recommended if you enjoy 4x features. Blothorn and Dark.Revenant get an extra shoutout for contributing large amounts of code and/or maintaining things for the 0.10.x and 0.7.1 releases respectively. This mod is updated on an "as I feel like it" basis.

Source code - Changelog - Contributors

[kazi]

Oh and here's an early render of the cruiser:

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[haloguy1]

Oh and here's an early render of the cruiser:

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sam that looks sexy!

[HELMUT]

I really like the lore of that faction. Also it looks pretty fun to play. Downloading it, i'll try to get you some feedback as soon as i played with them in the campaign.

[xenoargh]

I like the lore; when Tech Mining is a thing, it'll fit right in with the official game

The ships could use a little more work. 

When constructing / rendering the models, I think you need to use more curvature; most of these ships look very flat and lack depth in the overhead POV.  Also bear in mind that the light source should be slightly in front of the ships, not directly overhead

Secondly, don't use the Vanilla gun attachment sprites.  They totally don't fit the style and they're rendered in a completely different perspective and lighting and they make everything look even more flat.

[Trylobot]

These are some very clean sprites you've made here, kazi. Well done.

EDIT: I love your youtube video as well. The music adds a great deal of personality to this faction as well, good job with that. And it seems like you are well on your way to being vanilla balanced as well. I think Cycerin also would approve of your custom weapon sound effect that I heard, I think it was your large beam weapon? Really neat stuff here man.

[Cycerin]

Really cool. The AOE missiles seem a tad powerful, but *really* satisfying to use. The ships also look nice and feel pretty good. Excited to see where this is going.

Like the others have pointed out, the vanilla gun mounts stand out a bit, and the ships could possibly do with a more frontal light source and some raster graphics editing to make them pop more.

I also liked the lore a lot, props for integrating with vanilla lore.

Did you make the music? E: nevermind, didn't read that part of the OP

[Sproiet]

Are you hoping that this becomes Exerelin compatible? Because the music and different sound effects would be a nice boost to Exerelin in general, that and....I would SOOO play this mod as my faction 
Looks awesome and sounds equally so.

[kazi]

@ xenoargh - This is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for. I agree with you completely here. I am planning on completely redoing/improving all of the sprites except for maybe the frigate. Believe it or not, this is actually my first time ever using either Blender or GIMP (I have absolutely zero art experience), so I've been sorta learning how to do this by trial and error as I go haha... Didn't pay enough attention to the top POV on the cruiser (first sprite ever!), and then I didn't make the other ships have enough vertical depth to really take advantage of the rendering in Blender. My other big issue right now is I think I need to break up the hull outline a bit so that the edges look more 3D.

@ Trylobot - Glad you like it! I have a few more weapon fx sounds sitting around at the moment, waiting for the right ships to put them on. You might like the other beam I bundled into the campaign (not on any of the ships, appears after the supply fleet docks): a little bit smaller, but every bit as awesome sounding.

@ Cycerin - Yeah, the AOE missiles are a bit OP still- considering dropping the damage a little bit. The main issue is that the AI can't comprehend AOE damage and has a tendency to not raise its shield in time (or have it pointing in the wrong direction, etc.). Going to move the light source when I re-do things. Although I didn't write the music for this mod, I actually do write music from time to time (although I haven't really done it much recently - lent my studio monitors to a friend)... was considering adding this, but it took too long to build for combat music, and had too much of a beat for ambient. Sorta of a WIP, hasn't been mixed to commercial volume levels yet and there's a few parts I absolutely hate (the guitars, for instance). http://www.mediafire.com/listen/s49umt78yw8w7tk/seventh_symphony_11.mp3

@ Sproiet - I'll look into making it Exerelin compatible for you!

Next on the to-do list is add a capital ship... going to flex my creative muscles a bit and see if I can make something like this (except with some sweet looking fins!).

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[HELMUT]

Played with them, very cool stuffs. Unlike Cycerin, i found the Nukes not that incredible. Sure you can take down multiple frigates with one missile but that's the only advantage of it. It has kinda low range, very few ammo (1 missile for a medium mount!) and while they are pretty punchy, if you need raw power to pierce trough armor, reapers are better. They are just very good frigate killer, and only when said frigates have low shield efficiency or no shields at all.

So they are only good against pirates and Hegemony (their natural enemies). But even then, Ilkhannae weapons are very armor bursting centered (fusion lance, the destroyer's Hephaestus and the phoenix rockets...) they don't really need the nukes on top of that. So while they are very good against heavily armored opponents, they kinda suck against shielded ones. That's one of the reason i switched the Hephaestus on the carrier with a Gauss cannon, it open the path for the Gunships to wreck the target.

Other than the nukes which i'm not a great fan, the faction seems well balanced to me. Though the lack of ships make the experience with the faction a bit short. But hey, better fewer good ships than a lot of scrap no?

[kazi]

I think you would've liked the old build of this mod Helmut- the nukes did 5k damage (in addition to the already huge EMP payload) and were pretty much an "I WIN" button  . Their damage and ammo got nerfed because they detonate on the very edges of a ship's PD envelope (making them near impossible shoot down- it's almost a guaranteed hit). As it stands right now, the AOE blast pretty much destroys all enemy missiles and fighters inside the huge detonation radius. They're also extremely useful in chase scenarios, and can take out a ship's engines from a distance of 2k. The nukes aren't meant to replace the reaper torpedoes, and instead get used in a totally different role.

Right now I'm only adding weapons that have unique roles that aren't covered by the vanilla weapons (like the nukes and thermal lance), going to add more traditional stuff in once I get the ships all done. Speaking of which, here's a preview of the new battlecruiser (WIP):

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[kazi]

Oh and if any of you guys have cool ideas for new weapons/ships, post them or PM me and I'll see if I can add them in.

[Thule]

I love the lore, exited to see what you will come up with in the future

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

The thermal lance should have a bit more range IMHO

[HELMUT]

The Thermal lance is already very powerful in my opinion. It may be very difficult to get a good shot due the short range and all, but if you manage to stay on the enemy hull, it's game over for him. Also you can still use advanced optic and targeting unit to expand the range a bit.