RELEASED Elithian Races Mod - A Starbound Expansion 2.3.10

Let's be sure not to go too off topic though . On this thread at least.

 

Ok thanks!

 

What about a quest to find his lost head/hat? Or finding the scraps of his jokes at a rubbish bin...

 

Guys we probably should leave @Dekadrachm questions on his profile now. We are going off-topic.

 

Hey i got another few questions if this is okay. Are we getting story missions for avikan as well in the Future?

Also the devs are introducing custom mechs in the next update. Will you also make avikan or trink mech parts?

Also a lore question! It is mentioned that the avikan got uplifted. Did other races in the Elithian alliance also got uplifted? And is there a specific purpose why they got uplifted?

Also in one of the Codex entries it is mentioned that the Thell always attack avikan when they try to settle down on a planet with their fleet. What is it then with the terves and the Camps left and right? O:

 

That looks great, actually! The only things I think you could still improve upon are the eyes, and perhaps a bit more shading on the hat and collar (one additional shade of grey on the left, to give it that little bit of additional depth). The smaller sprite, is really good, I doubt it can be improved much further. I do agree that we should probably keep this thread on topic, but I did want to leave you at least this bit of feedback

Yeah, I've got story missions planned for one of the next couple of updates! I am still uncertain of how exactly I'll be implementing them, and I have yet to decide if it'll be just one mission per race or multiple missions, but regardless of those details, there will be story missions in the future.

I'll have to see how the new mechs will work exactly, but I do think I'll be adding Avikan and Trinkian parts for it. I'm also planning on adding Avikan spacestations, and some other Elithian content for the space update as well, but I'll have to wait for more details from Chucklefish before I can really determine what I'll be working on.

There's actually a few races in the Elithian Alliance universe which got uplifted, although not always by the Centens, and not always in such a direct way as the Avikan were. The Theleans, for example, got uplifted by the Centens as well, and they have a deity much like Rhadeis: a single Centens who was responsible for setting the race on its current path. The Avikan were gifted a plethora of artefacts, and eventually gained access to an ancinet Centensian city (Vas Vha'leih), but with the Theleans, this wasn't the case. Instead, their leader, Creaton, was gifted with a few artefacts and the knowledge required to use and replicate them. After this, the Theleans had only few interactions with the Centens and their relics, but Creaton managed to do so much with what little he was given that he single-handedly elevated the Theleans into their space age, and beyond. The Hymid, one of the darkened races in the banner, found some Centensian artefacts early in their history too, but weren't able to do anything with them as they never had interactions with the Centens themselves. They came to worship the Centens either way, but were eventually uplifted by the Aegi, who are descendants of humans (who, by the way, are thought to be extinct in the Elithian Alliance universe). Similarly, the Aegi helped the Dremeton move from an early modern civilization into a spacefaring one.

As for your last question, the Theleans (usually) only attack the Avikan when they attempt to set up larger colonies: the Terves and camps are only small outposts, which aren't of much interest to the Theleans. The reason the Theleans attack is because they crave the Centensian artefacts held by the Avikan, and the Avikan don't store those in the small settlements you can find in the game. The small Centensian cubes and monoliths you can find in-game are excluded from this, because such artefacts are incredibly common and have very little value to the Theleans.

 

Whoa, thats a lot of lore! That's really interesting Thank you for answering all these questions!

 

Thanks for the tip

 

I do wonder. Did you took some inspirations for the Avikan from the Quarian race of Mass Effect? I see a lot of similarities, for example that they have to travel around in a massive fleet, their racism towards synthetic life and the fact that they originated from a desert world.

Also, another question!
You said other mods can conflict with the Elithian races if they are fiddeling with how codex entries are listed. We are working on a big race mod and we would like to add codex entries for the races just like you did with the Avikan and the Trink. This would indeed conflict with your race mod, wouldn't it?

 

The Quarians were one of the (many) sources of inspiration for the Avikan, yeah. Mass Effect features one of my favourite science fiction worlds, and some of it has certainly bled over into my works as a result. The Avikan being nomads was mostly inspired by my fascination with desert cultures, but the Quarians did give me a great example of how a space-bound civilization could exist.

Elithian Races makes changes to the structure of the Codex menu by adding multiple new tabs to that menu, so mods which make changes to the layout of the codex menu are likely to cause conflicts. However, there's room left for a few additional species in the modified codex menu, which your race might be able to fill. I could create a standalone mod which adds the extended codex menu, and make it a universal modding resource to which any modder can add their own race.

 

That would be great for anyone who seeks to add codex entries for his or her race! Its kinda tedious to scroll through all the "?" Codex entries to search for the codex entries of certain races.

Also i agree with you, the world of Mass effect is a fascinating one! I'm personally drawing a lot of inspirations for our mod from the halo universe and from mass effect. Both are really well made science fiction worlds.

 

That sounds like it'd be a good idea all-around, especially depending on how many codex tabs you can add.

 

I'll start working on this soon, then!

Currently, Elithian Races extends the codex menu from seven to seventeen tabs, with room for four more. I think I'll update it with another row of seven tabs, that way there will be eleven tabs available for other modders. I can always add additional rows if there's enough demand from other modders, but eleven should be plenty for the first version.

 

Wow, how many of those tabs are getting filled by Elithian races????

 

I'm having major issues finding a large settlement for the Avikan's to get to their outpost. I've tried planets galore and only found small camps. (and even then its rare) Any tips??

 

I've currently got ten tabs reserved for the Elithian races: one for each of the races in the banner.

Avikan settlements should actually be the most common type of settlements on desert and arid planets, although it is possible you've just had a streak of bad luck. If you really can't find any, there's two ways around this issue: you can warp directly to the Starfarer's Refuge, or you can force the game to generate a settlement for you (do note that this can cause some issues with invisible blocks appearing where there should be ground).

The command for warping to the Refuge is as follows: /warp instanceworld:avikanoutpost
The command for forcing an Avikan settlement to spawn is: /placedungeon avikancolony OR /placedungeon avikancamp

 

It's funny but literally the first world after I posted this I found a small camp with a teleporter Thank you though!

 

I find Avikan Terves everywhere and I'm running FU + Truespace, so the number of conveniently located desert planets is pretty low all around. The Terves are still incredibly common. Less so are the camps - I've only ever found one so far across several different versions of Elithian Races and a few dozen different desert planets.

 

Odd, I've ALWAYS found a camp with a teleporter on the multiple characters I've ran... all with FU mod too.

Perhaps the truespace is causing an issue?

 

Truespace's big thing is getting rid of the Gentle Star->Eccentric Star->Radioactive Star->Frozen Star->Fiery Star vanilla static progression in favor of mixing things up with more realistic planet type placements. The problem isn't so much that Truespace is making Elithian Races sites not spawn correctly as it is that desert planets aren't conveniently all grouped together next to easily-identifiable stars and it takes me time to actually find suitable planets to explore.