Hello Stellaris Community!

#MODJAM2024 is well under way. This year we had over 100 modders sign up, and over 60 design documents submitted. While we aren’t expecting to have 60 Legendary Leaders submitted at the end of the competition (wouldn’t that be awesome though?). Today, we’re going to give you the first sneak peek at the Legendary Leaders our modders are currently working on, as well as give you a peek at how the final mod package will work.

The #MODJAM2024 is still currently on-pace for a January 11th, 2024 release. You can subscribe to the Mod Jam mod and get this content as soon as it releases!

Last year, we tried something a little different, in which the mid-game crises were posted by the modders themselves. For something like a mid-game crisis, this approach makes sense. Mid game crises can be iterated on for a long time, and (hopefully) these mods will continue to be supported into the distant future. However, for this year, we have decided to go for an all-in-one package, to make it easier for players to install and run the Mod Jam mod — since last year’s approach with a workshop playlist and wrapper mod was a little convoluted.

The Mod Jam Package

When starting a game with the Mod Jam mod enabled, when the game starts you will get a popup to choose which Legendary Leaders will be allowed to spawn.

We’ve also hooked up the vanilla Legendary Leaders to this system for the Mod Jam mod.

Clicking each leader will allow you to turn them off — if its a leader you didn’t like, or you want to guarantee which leader you play with, so you get to experience all the content. Each leader will also have a tooltip that describes in a loose sense what the leader does, so you will not be going into this completely blind.

Leaders are currently spawned one of three ways:

Random Spawns – this behavior is the most like the vanilla spawning of Legendary Leaders. The game will choose 3 to 6 Legendary Leaders to spawn randomly throughout the galaxy, from the list of Legendary Leaders that are allowed

Random Leader for Players – This option will spawn a random Legendary Leader from the list of allowed leaders within four jumps of each Player’s homeworld. We could’ve allowed leaders to spawn for AIs as well, but that opens the opportunity to break things in interesting ways, and with the time constraints put on our modders, I didn’t think it was a good idea to add an additional requirement.

Players Choose – This will spawn a choice for each player in the game of what Legendary Leader they want to spawn within four jumps of their home system. This is the option you should probably use if you want to play each and every one before you vote.

Azaryn is not in the list of choices, since Azaryn was disabled in the startup menu.

And that’s the limit of the modding that I’ve done for this event. But you’re not really here to see the stuff I made, you’re here to see what the Modders have made. Like last year, we have prepared some (and are still working on) promotional assets for each one of the submissions. I know I’ve said this about a dozen times already, but thanks again to the Gigastructural Engineering team for letting us use their Stellar Systemcraft for the Mod Jam promotional art.

I’ve also invited the modders to each write about the inspiration for their mod (if they like). This explains why there are some that contain inspirations, and some that do not.

The Chronomancer by Rodahtnov

Inspiration:

The leader idea is based around the fantasy of “genies”, fantastical creatures that provide wishes to the person they are bound to, but with some limitations, drawbacks and potential twisted results; In this case we are tied that concept to a specific sci-fi trope, which is the “manipulation of time” and, in some degrees, “reality”; the Chronolord is bound to a specific place and a specific relic, which resembles the “genie lamp” and as such becomes a desirable target for other empires, whether it is for envy, fighting its positive economic effects or just gaining another relic for their use.

Mircorv Core by Metallichydra

Access to some Legendary Leaders will be restricted to owners of other DLCs, such as the Mircorv Core, which will require Astral Planes in order to explore the Rift.

The Fragment by Ezraneilson.micahn

Inspiration: The Two largest Inspirations were the AEON 14 universe (Multinodal AI) and Mass Effect: Andromeda (Extragalactic Origin).

The Celestial Wayfarer by madeincanada

Perplexing Shadow by shadow_101084

Aevum T. Dohrnii by tr33

Inspiration: I spent too much time on stellaris. With this leader, you also can spend your time. Literally. Jokes aside if I had to name an inspiration it would probably be all the Dagoth Ur Memes. Aevum’s way of talking is heavily influenced by Dagoth’s cryptic speeches. The Chronomancer idea came along somewhere in the process.

The Timeless Warrior by MadamLava

Inspiration:

I’ve always been a sucker for a good time loop story, and finished a game (In Stars and Time) containing the best I’d ever seen by a wide margin the day before the modjam theme was announced and work began. While I’m drawing more broadly from time loop tropes in general, the concept was very much on my mind.

Some commonalities from some of these stories/media I enjoyed and seek to implement for my Leader were the concepts of an impossibly large goal at the end of the loop as its breaking condition, the looping character being affected by the dissociation that repeating time enough would cause, gradually becoming more and more powerful each loop, and how they might keep certain bits of knowledge about the future concealed until the right times.

Ultimately, I picked the idea for the fundamental reason that I am presently enthusiastic about the particular flavor of time shenanigans involved as a story device, making it much easier to come up with and work on my ideas. This perfectly falls in line with my own personal axiom that I’ve been using to stay focused, that being that modding should be fun.

Contingency Processing Core 1A6F by Draconas

Inspiration:

I wanted the concept of a leader that had their own agenda, and was going to try and achieve that, with or without you. The contingency gave me a great template to work off, since we all know what its goal is, and as a bonus it lets me explore taking synthetic evolution to its ultimate conclusion with machine intelligence.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back same time next week with more Mod Jam Legendary Leaders to show off!