RELEASED Elithian Races Mod - A Starbound Expansion 2.3.10

Ah, this is the context I was missing.
Did something relatively small with more of a civilian intent behind it;

I think I maybe went a little overboard with the cubes. Maybe. The possibility that there are too many cubes is not lost on me.
EDIT: Did another one!

I'm probably overdoing it, cubewise...
I may have gotten stuck on 'branching cubes as substitute organic matter' here, though I would bet "doing weird stuff with buildings because it sounded like a good idea at the time" is a well-respected centensian pastime.

 

Alright, explains a lot. Might actually go and do a build. If you'd like to add smooth centen stuff you might want to invest in making a centen style block of the same type as what is used in space stations and such.

 

Sure thing!

Like the Centens, the Avikan have a reasonably varied culture, and as such have various architectural styles. The most prominent of these are the styles you generally see in the mod: camps made up of various tents, and underground colonies making heavy use of Avikan metals.

The tent style isn't too hard to grasp, since almost anything goes here so long as the tent pieces connect properly. Most tent villages have a large central elder's tent, a Rhaiod tent made of purple leather, and plenty of civilian tents. There's often a market located in a shallow pit, and small farms to provide the camp with food in addition to what the hunters bring in. These camps are generally surrounded by a trench - sometimes filled with spikes or the like - with several bridges bridging the gap, and watchtowers erected near the bridges.

Underground colonies are mostly built because it's easier to protect them against Theleans: they are harder to detect, and easier to defend since they can't be bombed from above and have only a few choke points serving as entrances. Underground colonies generally have their entrances hidden inside caves - further protecting against detection by Theleans - with only hangar doors exposed on the surface. Oftentimes, these hangar doors will be covered by sand, and combined with the sand-coloured metal the doors are made of, even these exposed entrances would be difficult to spot from the air. The Avikan use a lot of hard angles in their architecture, with smooth curves being very uncommon. Entrances to Avikan structures are usually elevated to prevent too much sand from entering the structure, though the rooms themselves are usually placed a bit lower - this way, whatever sand does enter the structure will collect in the rooms instead of in the bulkheads separating the rooms. While other races may find this inconvenient, the Avikan actually enjoy having a small layer of sand collect on the floors of their rooms.

There's also a third common style, though it hasn't been featured much in the mod so far. Avikan Terves (cities) back on Kadavan were generally cities located inside and around low mountain ranges, but they were mostly built on the surface, not underground. These Terves are densely packed with buildings of various sizes, with narrow streets in between all the buildings. The buildings are generally multiple stories high, with loads of leather and fabric sheets hanging in between the buildings to provide more shade during the day. Multiple open plazas are used as marketplaces, filled with colourful market stands and crowding with people. These Terves were often circular in design, with a large Rhaiod temple at their centre, and a tall, ring-shaped wall surrounding the entire Terve. As Terves grow, new city sectors are constructed outside the walls, and new walls are erected around these new sectors. Old and large Terves therefore often have multiple rings of walls inside them.

I had some screenshots of a test build I did for the Terves on my old PC, but I don't have access to it at the moment.Instead, here's a small screenshot of an individual building found inside a Terve, plus some concept art I found which shows the use of colourful fabric sheets in between buildings:

That's definitely more cubes than I had in mind, but I actually like them quite a bit! Might use similar structures in future builds of mine! I also really like the implementation of the soil tiles and the trees in your build - that's exactly what I had in mind for the Centens!

I'm definitely going to add hull-type tiles for the Centens as well! They'll still mostly be used for angular designs - they aren't quite smooth enough to make curving designs, since the edges are at 45 degree angles - but they will open up a many more options for Centensian architecture!

 

I did basically-a-Terve!
I think the main weakness of this style of building is that it kind of really wants buildings in the background, and using background tiles to make background buildings just isn't something I can do.
One of the buildings in the second shot is a heavily modified version of your test build; I actually found it in the wild and decided to give it a face lift and build around it.

 

Looks awesome! I'm loving all of the little details you've put into this, like the drinks on the balconies and the spotlights pointed at the statue of Rhadeis! The use of the hull blocks combined with the background door is great too, never thought of using them in that way before!

And yeah, the style really does call for background buildings, which is one of the reasons I haven't implemented a full Terve myself yet. I'm going to experiment with existing tiles a bit, and possibly make a few new ones too, to see if I can realistically add them in at some point.

 

Reminds me of the Terve I was working on! Looks more intricate, though. I like how you've put several deeds in a room to generate extra NPCs in that building - I hadn't thought of that.

 

I know it is a long shot but do you mind telling us about the third and ninth race that are as silhouettes in the overview page?

 

Normally, multiple deeds don't work, but these are deeds from this mod, and thanks to a "bug", you can place multiple without issue. This is obviously beneficial.

 

Aegonian, can you make unique weapons upgradable?

 

I second the above request, there are some weapons that are just too cool to be forgotten in some chest somewhere when better damaging things come along.

 

I'd love to tell you about them!

The third race in the banner are the Hymid, a race of bipedal amphibians from the planet Hyzolia. They were uplifted into the modern era by the Aegi, who found the Hymid as a pre-spaceflight society when they built a colony on Hyzolia, and the Hymid have been allies of the Aegi ever since. It also means that a lot of their tech is similar to that of the Aegi, and their society has similarly followed Aeginian many examples. Even the Hymidian military is a joint force of both the Hymid and the Aegi, with no purely Hymidian military forces other than some specialist squadrons.

The ninth race are actually the Theleans, the ones who invaded Kadavan and drove the Avikan off their homeworld. The type of Thelean in the banner (and the one you'll get to play as, eventually) is a Vehnon, a young Thelean who is still growing around its mechanical endoskeleton. An all-natural Thelean looks a bit like a slug with dozens of tendrils all over their bodies, but most Theleans are given a mechanical skeleton which they will merge with over a few dozen years, usually giving them a more humanoid stance (though they can chose skeletons of different shapes too). A Vehnon is a Thelean who's still growing into this skeleton, whilst a Hyvon is a Thelean who has fully merged with their endoskeleton. I should also note that you'll play as a Narvakhan in the mod, which is a Thelean who was banished for treason, meaning you'll still be an enemy to Thelean NPCs despite your race.

If you'd like to know more, feel free to ask, and I can also recommend joining the Elithian Alliance Discord server: it has a dedicated channel for lore questions, and there's lots of information already to be found there.

Unique weapons are actually always level 6 weapons, which is the highest level available in the base game or at least, that's the intention - there's always the possibility of some bug affecting weapon levels). I'm assuming you're using a mod like Frackin' Universe to further extend the game's level progression (and this find even more powerful weapons)?

 

In my case at least, yes. FU introduces level 7 and even 8 planets that usually puts mod specific unique weapons to shame when it comes to their stats.

What I'd imagine would be the easiest way to resolve something like this is to put in a check that sees what the highest level planets that are possible to be found which then modifies the stats to fit with the most difficult planets, then again I don't know your setup and as such might as well be asking you to summon demons by sacrificing your first born.

Another method might be to have available crafting quests that use unique weapons in them and eventually replaces them with better versions, ones that may be a little overpowered for vanilla but would fit right in if the user has mods that make things more difficult or introduces higher levels.

 

There's no way to tell what the highest possible planet level is, unfortunately, but I think there's an easier solution: a type of infusion station, where you can 'infuse' any other weapon into your Unique weapon, consuming the other weapon and bringing the Unique weapon up to the level of the consumed weapon.

 

I tried using the weapon upgarde anivil with Upgraded Upgrades tier 10 patch and it didn't work.

 

Could work, but you'd still need stat modifiers or different versions of the same weapon with different stats for each level.

 

Excellent! I use that mod myself, but was unaware that it could do that. Does it apply to the Avikan deeds too, or only to specific ones?

 

This is by far the greatest Starbound mod out there and should be considered a must have for anyone who mods their game. I am in awe at how wonderful this mod is and cannot believe that it's something I can just get for free off of the workshop. I would pay money to buy this as a game expansion.

 

The Gha'dur mounts seem laggy when it comes to actually using them. Their issue is a noticeable pause in between the steps of the mount that make them slower than normal walking and kind of uncomfortable to use. I experience no lag when using the other vehicles, which leads me to think they aren't causing actual lag but rather their flow of movement is interrupted by their animation cycle or something. I love to ride them, mostly for immersion purposes, but this makes using them not that great. Is this a known problem or am I the only one with an issue?

 

Hmm, I'm actually not seeing any such lag in my own game, although the animation isn't the best around. It plays very smoothly on my end, but organic animations have never been my strong suit and so the legs deform a bit strangely at times. Their walk speed is indeed slightly slower than the regular run speed for player characters - their speed was higher at some point during development, but I turned it down because the animation felt out of sync with the movement speed. I'll see if I can add a running animation to the Gad'hur - it would be nice to give them some more utility, since they have very little practical value at the moment... Perhaps even allow them to knock enemies out of the way while running?

 

A couple of quick questions which is more fitting for the Avikan people; a large city full of sky scrapers or a colony in a space station?

And where can we find more about the races and their lore?