Some origins tells the story about what is your species, some - about your homeworld, about your home system, about your society, about your first contact, about your relations with aliens and so on.
And it leads to one simple idea: If some origins have no logical conflict with other origins - why we can't combine them? And how the game would like if there will be an option to pick multiple origins?
Also I always wanted something like EU state customization or CK character redactor - you have one global pool of points, which can be spent on everything. Stellaris redactor is not so versatile: you must pick one origin, 3 ethics, 2 civics and a limited amount of traits. You can't, for example, exceed species trait limit and compensate it with weak government or by reducing the starting economy.
This two ideas inspired me to make a mod, which allows combining origins.
If we want to change civic/ethic/trait limit - it is easily doable by editing the defines file.
But the base game have no "origin cap" mechanic. Adding a custom variable to empire redactor also is not allowed, as I know.
How to implement a limit for origins? The obvious idea is to move origins back to civics, like it was before origins was introduced into the game. But it has some disadvantages:
Ethics. That is our choice. Ethics have different cost. Ethics have minimum limit (this is important) and maximum limit.
Ethics also have categories, which is also very useful. Why? You can, for example, group the origins about your starting planet (Life-Seeded, Post-Apocalyptic, Remnants, etc.) in one category to limit you from changing the homeworld twice.
By setting the minimum ethic points cap to, for example, 300, changing all ethic costs from 1/2/3 to 100/200/300 and setting the ethic points cap to 310, we will get next:
You have 310 points to spent and you MUST spend 300 points on ethics (otherwise the game would not allow you to finish the empire customization), but you can't spend all of points to ethics. In any way you will have 10 spare points which can be used as variable for new mechanic. The numbers are not exact, there is only some rules (if we have no intention to change ethics system and stick to vanilla 3 ethic points limit):
All default origins are hidden, except only one, because playing without any origin crashes the game.
Early UI of the mod, all buttons on bottom are origin-equivalent ethics
Empire Selection menu. The UI was re-sized to keep all things visible.After the game start "origin" ethics are converted into modifiers to separate origins from ethics.
No mess, origins are separated from ethics
Using ethics as origins have a major downside: you can't bind species traits, sycretic species, solar system initializers and homeworld class to ethics.
But we have default origin system, which is used to display your wonderful Gaia homeworld or allows you to add secondary species in Empire customization menu. The combination of your "origin" ethics determs which origin will be visible.
Screenshot without localisation file. "Originso_ringworld" means Syncretic-Overtuned-Shattered Ring. In non-dev version it's displayed as "Custom Origin"
Another major downside is that shift_ethic function goes really crazy if ethic maximum cap can't be divided to ethic cost without remainder, sometimes it even breaks the game, causing insufferable lags.
So I was forced to replace shift_ethic references in the game files with my own shifting ethics function.
And that is all. If you are interested - here is the mod link.
And it leads to one simple idea: If some origins have no logical conflict with other origins - why we can't combine them? And how the game would like if there will be an option to pick multiple origins?
Also I always wanted something like EU state customization or CK character redactor - you have one global pool of points, which can be spent on everything. Stellaris redactor is not so versatile: you must pick one origin, 3 ethics, 2 civics and a limited amount of traits. You can't, for example, exceed species trait limit and compensate it with weak government or by reducing the starting economy.
This two ideas inspired me to make a mod, which allows combining origins.
If we want to change civic/ethic/trait limit - it is easily doable by editing the defines file.
But the base game have no "origin cap" mechanic. Adding a custom variable to empire redactor also is not allowed, as I know.
How to implement a limit for origins? The obvious idea is to move origins back to civics, like it was before origins was introduced into the game. But it has some disadvantages:
- Origins will compete with civics. And at least for me it is not so good. I see civics is something that represent your society in the current moment of time. You can change it during the game and you will do it at least once when you'll get a tech for +1 civic slot. But origins is something that represent not the current state of your society, but it's history. And the history can't be changed.
- Civics have fixed cost of 1 civic point, but I want to represent that origins have different value. And the cost difference is a powerful balance instrument, allowing you adjust the cost of too weak (or too powerful) origins without adjusting the mechanics
- Mods, that duplicate origins into civics, already exist
Ethics. That is our choice. Ethics have different cost. Ethics have minimum limit (this is important) and maximum limit.
Ethics also have categories, which is also very useful. Why? You can, for example, group the origins about your starting planet (Life-Seeded, Post-Apocalyptic, Remnants, etc.) in one category to limit you from changing the homeworld twice.
By setting the minimum ethic points cap to, for example, 300, changing all ethic costs from 1/2/3 to 100/200/300 and setting the ethic points cap to 310, we will get next:
You have 310 points to spent and you MUST spend 300 points on ethics (otherwise the game would not allow you to finish the empire customization), but you can't spend all of points to ethics. In any way you will have 10 spare points which can be used as variable for new mechanic. The numbers are not exact, there is only some rules (if we have no intention to change ethics system and stick to vanilla 3 ethic points limit):
- Ethic minimum cap is must be 3 * X
- Ethic maximum cap is must be > 3 * X (obviously) and < 4 * X
- Ethic cost must be X/2X/3X for ethic/fan.ethic/gestalt
- The amount of points spent on non-ethic stuff (in this case it is origins) can't be >= X
All default origins are hidden, except only one, because playing without any origin crashes the game.
Early UI of the mod, all buttons on bottom are origin-equivalent ethics
Empire Selection menu. The UI was re-sized to keep all things visible.
No mess, origins are separated from ethics
But we have default origin system, which is used to display your wonderful Gaia homeworld or allows you to add secondary species in Empire customization menu. The combination of your "origin" ethics determs which origin will be visible.
Screenshot without localisation file. "Originso_ringworld" means Syncretic-Overtuned-Shattered Ring. In non-dev version it's displayed as "Custom Origin"
Another major downside is that shift_ethic function goes really crazy if ethic maximum cap can't be divided to ethic cost without remainder, sometimes it even breaks the game, causing insufferable lags.
So I was forced to replace shift_ethic references in the game files with my own shifting ethics function.
And that is all. If you are interested - here is the mod link.
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