I want to note something. Special status of rank 1 Valk is probably relic of the days when miss Air Marshal wasn't in fact Air Marshal. And that she needed ability to order things by the power of "I'm fucking know what I'm doing and fuck off". *looks on Anna* And Sen very likely remembers it quite well.
How that battle would play out now is an interesting question. Anna's peak output is lower due to battle damage but more sustainable due to access to UN technology (most notably her fusion reactor):
Not having to vaporize her arm from fingertip to elbow, while close enough to slap a Type-0 and bereft of Impeller, is generally a pretty tremendous upgrade, yes.
Sorry, I'm having trouble trawling this and just wanted to make sure, but the activity in the thread is about the mod and not activity from Avalanche yes?
Not complaining, just wanted to check which one to get hype for
Sorry, I'm having trouble trawling this and just wanted to make sure, but the activity in the thread is about the mod and not activity from Avalanche yes?
Not complaining, just wanted to check which one to get hype for
April Fools! Oh wow, an actual post? Who would've expected that?
Three months have already passed since the last progress update: how time flies! They were a decently productive three months, seeing a whole bunch of new features being implemented - including important ones.
Current Progress
Migration to MonoMod
The biggest development that occurred since the last update, a mere week after the New Year passed, was the switch from using Harmony to using MonoMod as the foundation for the mod. I was very reluctant to do this at first - I've heard of enough horror stories about fledgling game projects switching engines and promptly fizzling out, and I wasn't keen to have to rewrite all that code again. But in the end, the promised benefits were just too good to pass up; and while it set the project a week or two, said benefits proved to be more than worth it, as I'll demonstrate in a moment.
The downside is that MonoMod has basically no documentation whatsoever, and all knowledge of how to use it comes from asking questions of shady characters in a dark channel on Discord at night (I jest, he's been very helpful). I did eventually compile a handy guide of the most common operations in MonoMod, which you can read here.
Regional Infrastructure
The first exciting new feature made possible by MonoMod was adding new types of facilities you can build in regions, like the vanilla Boost and Mission Control facilities. This would've been very challenging to do in Harmony, and was only moderately tricky with MonoMod.
External Power is a form of geoscape marker which provides additional power to the Arcology in that region. This is very handy because power and building slots are at a premium in Arcologies, especially earlier ones, so having an external power source lets you save space and resources for something more useful. The tradeoff is that, being outside of the Arcology's Impeller field, it's a lot easier for your enemies to bomb them.
Apart from the sites which exist at scenario start, there will be a few ways to build more of these. Nations can spend their precious IPs to subsidize Arcologies' existence with these (they do get some economic benefits from them, so it's not all bad), and Valkyries with nothing better to do can spend a leisurely afternoon building a new power plant or two somewhere in the world. You could also spend some of your Research income on repeatable projects to build these and other things on the geoscape, but why would you ever do that when there's bigger and better lasers to research?
Primitive Arcologies represent the earliest form of Arcology to be built in BAHHSCQ's backstory, consisting mostly of electrical and transportation networks wrapped in Impeller, before the mass production of food led Arcologies to centralize into the singular structures we recognize today. As such, they mostly exist as a stepping stone to proper Arcologies, and will initially be required to be present before you can start building those. More advanced construction methods will, of course, enable you to skip this stage in the future.
Finally, Fortifications are not so much a new form of regional facility as they are an extension of an existing one, namely the vanilla Space Defense facilities. As their rename implies, they now have a broader military role, improving the effectiveness of your armies and militias* defending your territory. They can now be built up multiple levels with increasing effectiveness per level.
*"Militia" is the term TI-PVC uses to refer to the invisible, abstracted military forces which fight to defend regions on the geoscape. I use this term because it's clearly distinct from "army", which specifically refers to the visible tokens on the geoscape, and "local defense forces" was a bit of a mouthful.
Arcologies
The primary purpose of your early Arcologies is to put your citizens inside them so that they will contribute more to things such as GDP, Money, and Research. Oh, and also so that they don't starve or die to wars or natural disasters. The earliest T1 Arcologies will likely not have enough power or module slots to do everything: the choice between mining precious materials from the surrounding region, and providing life support for your existing population, should be an obvious one for seasoned strategic geniuses like ourselves.
At the start of the game, there are two types of power modules available for Arcologies: nuclear fission, and renewables. Fission reactors give a nice flat amount of power, but are kinda pricey, drain your Fissiles, and take a while to build. Renewables are further split into four types - solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal - with varying yields in each region. They are cheaper and faster to build, and in a good location can even outstrip fission; however, thanks to Terra Invicta's feature of research projects not being guaranteed to unlock during campaigns (a feature I know many players love), you won't necessarily have the type you like, which should provide some nice variety and strategizing when it comes to deciding which regions you want to snatch up for your first Arcologies.
Apart from that, some progress has been made on mechanics for Arcology populations. When a faction constructs residential modules in their Arcology, citizens will be gradually drawn from the host region until they are filled. Arcology dwellers will work to make your numbers go up, but in return they demand that their numbers go up too, which at the moment is vaguely abstracted as various nation stats, and is separate from the host nation's demands that its numbers go up too (more on that in a bit). If the numbers don't go up fast enough, and the dwellers think you're not trying hard enough to make them go up (skill issue tbh), they will likely riot and stop contributing to your numbers going up, which will definitely help to improve things.
If this happens, there are a few things you can do to address it, like bribing them with your faction's hard earned money or putting them down with force. Otherwise, you can just wait it out and eventually they'll get bored. After all, what are they going to do, kick out the immortal and mostly invincible Arcology Valkyrie by force?
Domestic Affairs
Work continues on Mandates and the Mandate Renewal process, with nearly all nations having fixed periods before another Renewal must be called, although they can occur earlier or later in some circumstances. While these are mostly internal processes conducted by nations, factions can work to sway the process through their missions, depending on the type of Renewal taking place, and the executive faction will have a few options available once the time comes.
The possible types of Mandate Renewal, which occur based on the nation's Government Type and Agenda, are: General Election, Staged Election, Council Election, Party Congress, Interim Government, and Lifetime Dictatorship.
Once the incoming government has been seated, it can then turn its attention towards fulfilling its National Objective for that term. As alluded to before, this involves the nation improving one of its stats or carrying out certain actions before the term ends. Success will further legitimize the ruling Agenda and provide the nation with a nice permanent bonus for the rest of the game. Failure will discredit said Agenda and generally make the nation's populace a lot less happy and productive.
Finally, the ability to add localized and temporary modifiers to nations has been added, working in much the same way as it does for factions. This allows events and technologies to have much longer lasting effects on particular nations while being easy to expand upon.
International Diplomacy
Not only will affairs be more involved domestically, the international scene is getting a makeover as well.
Federations have been reconceptualized to be more than just a stepping stone to map painting: as entirely voluntary associations of nominally equal nations, they now facilitate the exchange of resources and knowledge so that less developed members can more easily catch up. Members of federations will generate extra GDP-to-IPs and commerce, benefit from Advise missions in other members, and share the proceeds of coreEco and resource regions, while Education and Miltech develop faster to reach the standards of more accomplished members. Membership is easier to gain, too: while a claim still guarantees entry, geographic and ideological proximity play a part in federation candidacy as well.
On the flip side, Client States represent an unequal relationship between nations that (allegedly) mutually benefits both. They are so mutually beneficial that they are most commonly created as the result of one nation invading and regime changing another. As part of this relationship, the client must provide a portion of its IPs to the patron and align with its foreign policy; in return, the patron will generously allow the client to benefit from its own priority investments. After a year of this, the client can apply to join an equal federation with its patron, or a patron with a claim can simply choose to devour its client whole. Best deal, apply now!
Oh yes, and client states also cost less CP capacity to control, just in case that affects anyone's decision making.
Rebellions
Rebellions are a new feature designed to spice up the geoscape and better represent the chaos of the post-Impact world by de-abstracting some of the internal strife faced by nations. They act as a supplement and partial replacement to vanilla revolutions and secessions.
There are currently two types of possible rebellion: popular rebellions seek to take the capital and overthrow the current government, while separatist rebellions have more limited ambitions of merely breaking away their target regions from the parent nation. Both types have the chance to occur once a certain level of Unrest is reached in a nation.
If and when that happens, the rebels will battle the local militia for control of the region, creating a sort of pseudo-occupation on the geoscape. The math is similar to that of regular warfare, with the outcome being affected by the nation's stability and the relative popularity of both sides, and the five factions can also somewhat influence the outcome with their missions. Once the rebels achieve 100% control of a region, they will be much harder to dislodge, and can then turn their attention to spreading the rebellion to new regions and supporting their comrades already there. The rebellion will thus continue until one side or the other prevails; but even that may not be the end, as the former government stubbornly clings to power and in turn becomes a rebellion to be suppressed.
Any Conventional Armies homed in rebelling regions can decide whether to stay loyal, declare neutrality, or aid the rebels. This does not apply to armies headquartered in other regions. Any Valkyrie Groups hosted by the nation, being under direct faction control, may freely decide their stance; while their restriction from occupying regions also extends to rebel combat, they can still assist conventional forces in battle and intimidate others into following their lead.
While a nation can be host to multiple rebellions, a given region has only one rebellion at a time, mostly out of concern for my sanity and actually getting this mod done sometime soon .
At the moment, there are no direct interactions between regional rebellions and Arcology riots, but there probably should be!
Rebellions are considered discrete entities on the geoscape, and are tracked globally in the Intel Screen. This opens the way for future possibilities such as nations arming rebels (or intervening against them) or negotiating peace with specific movements.
Other Major Features
Finally, some preliminary progress has been made on implementing the twin backbones of the scenario: the new tech tree and the five factions. These involve quite extensive replacement of fundamental aspects of the game, so we didn't start to tackle them until very recently. Right now, we have a skeletal tech tree that needs to be filled out with projects, and skeletal factions which need to have their storylines plotted out and implemented. Good progress to be sure, but there's a lot that still needs to be done to have something playable.
One major stride that's been made in this area is that the aliens are now completely disabled in the scenario. No longer will we have to deal with unrealistic, outside-context, suspension of disbelief-breaking aliens in our totally grounded geopolitics simulator!
Present Scope
As said above, the current priorities for the mod are continuing to implement and finalize the in-progress features described in this post, so as to round out all the needed features to make the pre-Antagonist era of the scenario interesting and playable.
Solid progress is being made on all fronts, but if you want the mod to come out faster, more hands on deck are always appreciated! In the meantime, enjoy your trip to the bone zone, and look forward to more updates in the near future.
This is making me want to once again play TI in preparation to playing this mod (and maybe even try out the current features), I am really looking forward to how the Antagonist are implemented!
April Fools! Oh wow, an actual post? Who would've expected that?
Three months have already passed since the last progress update: how time flies! They were a decently productive three months, seeing a whole bunch of new features being implemented - including important ones.
Well, since the thread is alive for the moment, I figure I'll ask a question I've had for a while, but never really been driven enough to dig through the whole thread for when I couldn't find it in-story.
Why, exactly, is Koujirou coke-zero? I've had the thought that it's because he's a harem-protag the 'sweetness' is fake. Or because he gives some people head aches. But neither really fit, and I swear I've never found where it came from after five re-reads.
Edit: Please don't let it be because everyone is 'thirsty' for him? The puns terrible, the drinks, well, not quite terrible but not great, and the corporate monster should finally have been killed between NA getting nuked and everyone else either having a fabber to print whatever (non-military) goods like hot cakes, or their in a desperate situation and have no time or energy for acidic sugar water that doesn't even have sugar.
Well, since the thread is alive for the moment, I figure I'll ask a question I've had for a while, but never really been driven enough to dig through the whole thread for when I couldn't find it in-story.
Why, exactly, is Koujirou coke-zero? I've had the thought that it's because he's a harem-protag the 'sweetness' is fake. Or because he gives some people head aches. But neither really fit, and I swear I've never found where it came from after five re-reads.
It was used in a story segment where they looked at the local internet or something and got picked up by the thread.
I wouldn't trust that random student who has no idea who Kojirou is to pronounce that more than I would you.
>>Cadet Leah Muller: (2970)
The hell is with Y1S4F1 anyway? They get two Ace fliers and that guy (Coke-Zero or something?). Aces are like one in a hundred and guys are like one in two hundred, how is it that they are all on the same flight?
It was used in a story segment where they looked at the local internet or something and got picked up by the thread.
I wouldn't trust that random student who has no idea who Kojirou is to pronounce that more than I would you.
I did that search and found it too...I just didn't connect 'coke-zero' with mangling Koujirou. It just seemed like an obvious nick-name, and then I couldn't find the origin of the nick-name.
Did you think there'd be only 1 dev diary today? Well surprise! The near future is later today!
Hello everyone, I'm Mathematicae, one of mod team members, and I'm here to talk about the most important part of the mod: the waifuscouncilors. In vanilla councilors are the primary way for your shadowy council to act on earth and in the mod they're even more important since space exploration is much more limited, thanks Abraxas. And ok yes, it's an anime mod so the councilors are the main source of waifus (and husbandos I suppose).
First of all, Tayta's anime portrait mod has been ported over so all the councilors look like proper anime characters. Second, we tweaked the gender ratio to result in mostly female councilors (80-20 on average). It's not quite as severe as the gender ratio for Valks in canon, but we didn't want to make it nearly impossible to get a male councilor and at game start Valks don't exist yet.
New Classes
The next big change we made was to completely overhaul the classes from vanilla. Each councilor is assigned a class that determines the starting stats, missions, and influences the character's traits. Vanilla has over 20 possible classes and many of them have a lot of overlap. For example, there are subtle differences between the Tech Mogul, Tycoon, and Executive class, but they generally function pretty similarly with a focus on the administration stat, missions associated with using administration, and traits like billionaire.
We tossed out all those redundant classes and created a shorter list of 12 anime inspired classes. There's also a 13th class called Professional Valkyrie. They only start showing up after the Antagonists start attacking, Valkyries become integral to the war effort, and they start exhibiting Combat Induced Empathy Loss-Detachment Syndrome.
The 12 new classes are the following:
Ojou-sama: The same archetype of Sandra. Ojous have a stat focus on Persuasion and Administration as well as money and influence.
Eccentric Genius: A Science focused class. It also provides various bonuses to research.
Social Outcast: Has similar social skills to Anna. The Social Outcast has a stat focus on Investigation and Espionage and penalties to Persuasion. Although there is a way to help her break out of her shell and become good at persuasion, more on that in a minute.
Chessmaster: The Chessmaster is the smart gal with plans within plans. Is usually shown with glasses and playing chess as a visual cue. The Chessmaster has a focus on Command and Administration, although there are better classes to send to the front lines. A Command Chessmaster is more the person running the strategy and logistics.
Tsundere: If you don't know what this archetype is, why are you even here? Ok, ok, it's Setsuna. Tsunderes are more of an all rounder than most classes, but Command or Persuasion is a likely specialty. A 'neat' feature we added is that Tsundere's loyalty to her love interestthe council will change each mission cycle. You can't max out her loyalty and ignore her like the other councilors.
Yandere: Yandere's are another classic who will murderize anyone standing between her and her love interest. Sometimes that includes the love interest so best be careful. Yandere's have a focus on Investigation and Espionage. We also added a special feature involving loyalty. For each councilor on your team that isn't her, the maximum loyalty of the Yandere decreases. Even if the other councilors don't realize that they're competition, the Yandere knows better.
Main Character: The Main Character is a Koujirou. They're good at most things, but if you need to send someone to solo a type 0 (Command) or make an inspiring speech (Persuasion), a Main Character might be your best option. We've added a special feature that prohibits all councils from having more than 1 Main Character at a time.
Shounen Rival: The rival to the main character is also good at Command. Rivals automatically get an exp discount to level up, simulating how they always seem to keep up with the main character. Because there's usually only one rival and because the exp discount is an op trait in vanilla, all councils are limited to only having 1 Shounen Rival at a time.
Knight for Justice: Probably Shuri if she weren't a broken ace. Knights excel at Command, particularly personal combat, and Persuasion.
Technopath: Technopaths are computer experts with social skills comparable to the Social Outcast. This class is the other pure Science class. Although there are some options to expand into Investigation and/or Espionage.
Delinquent: Delinquent's have a focus on Administration (if they're running their own gang) and Espionage. They'll also always have the Criminal trait which affects which orgs they can control.
Star Idol: Star Idol is a mostly Persuasion and Administration focused class. After the Shounen Rival, she's my other candidate for an op class. You'll see why next section.
Class Specialization
Even though we've reduced the number of total classes from vanilla, we've added a new feature to help better customize your councilors and expand the possible options for your team of waifusagents. Each class automatically gets a base trait colored gold like shown below. The 0 indicates that it's a base trait.
Elena here is a base level Star Idol.
Each class has 2 upgrade paths that improve the base trait with upgraded stats and a snazzy new anime inspired name. The third and final upgrade also gives a capstone bonus. For example, the Star Idol has two upgrade paths that either give a free inspire or stabilize unrest every mission phase to a random country you control. Free actions! Hard to get more op than that, right?
A common, and probably less op, capstone is a bonus to specific missions. A Yandere with the Assassinate capstone will always outperform another councilor with the equivalent Espionage stat. There's also more exotic ones like the Technophage using the higher of Science and Investigation stats for certain missions.
Elena's received a windfall of xp and has upgraded to a max level Star Idol. She'll run a free inspire mission every turn.
New Traits
We're also working on throwing out the old vanilla traits for councilors and adding new superior anime traits like Bread-Chan, Dense, and lots of other traits I shamelessly stole from the quest.
One major stride that's been made in this area is that the aliens are now completely disabled in the scenario. No longer will we have to deal with unrealistic, outside-context, suspension of disbelief-breaking aliens in our totally grounded geopolitics simulator!
But I wanted to go to Mars to make friends with the Biker Mice that live there before the Plutarkians arrive and try to exploit us and the Antagonists.
With all the anime and quest related changes this mod would bring to TI, I wonder if the difficulty setting could be changed too, mayhaps to something similar to what this quest offered at the beginning (a scale that went from -5 to +5) that helped inform the tone of the quest and that would affect the likelihood of certain things, for example, which classes are more often available, if Star Idol is indeed so powerful then the difficulty setting could decrease or increase the chances to get one.
This is making me want to once again play TI in preparation to playing this mod (and maybe even try out the current features), I am really looking forward to how the Antagonist are implemented!
Thank you for saying so! It would be nice to see - I'm always down for the Earth layer to become more engaging, and in fact, I have never actually fought a space battle in TI - but it is worth keeping in mind that the base game and this mod have different design philosophies, and that mods can get away with janky things that a polished game can't. I wouldn't expect to see habs on Earth anytime soon, for instance.
That said, who knows, if this mod gets popular enough, it'd certainly be a strong endorsement for such features!
With all the anime and quest related changes this mod would bring to TI, I wonder if the difficulty setting could be changed too, mayhaps to something similar to what this quest offered at the beginning (a scale that went from -5 to +5) that helped inform the tone of the quest and that would affect the likelihood of certain things, for example, which classes are more often available, if Star Idol is indeed so powerful then the difficulty setting could decrease or increase the chances to get one.
That actually is a planned feature for the mod, where at the start of the scenario you'll have the opportunity to select the world tone you want to play with (down to picking the individual archetypes as we did in the quest). This would be separate from the game's general difficulty setting, and would have effects would be similar to those that Avalanche has mentioned in the past. In general, lighter settings make individuals more valuable and make Valkyries more powerful relative to baseline humanity; darker settings make people meaner, less cooperative, and more likely to die, as impersonal systems take primacy over other forms of organization. Antagonists specifically would be more powerful at lower levels, but in return, the supply of Higgs would be higher.
I even rigged up an interface to select the scenario's world tone a little while ago, but it's currently disabled since most of the things it's supposed to affect aren't implemented yet (no point in adding modifiers vs Antagonists when there are currently no Antagonists, for instance).
I mean, it could be something like how you can build factories & forts in Hoi4. Earth habs could essentially be the underground bases from the XCOM games. I'm imagining they'd primarily exist for the actual invasion phase of the game, by protecting regions you build them in.
I mean, it could be something like how you can build factories & forts in Hoi4. Earth habs could essentially be the underground bases from the XCOM games. I'm imagining they'd primarily exist for the actual invasion phase of the game, by protecting regions you build them in.
Can confirm, Aliens landed early on earth cause Humanity First couldn't keep it in their pants and they have just started steam rolling so i'm just... not playing terra invicta anymore? Is the strategy i decided upon.
Now, hang on a sec. Does that mean that there's a 20% chance that a councilor with the Young Lady class (AFAIK that's what Ojou-sama translates as) will be male? Or does "on average" mean that the ratios are different for some classes?
