Hello Stellaris Community!

We’re back with another update on our annual Modder event: #MODJAM2024! Today is feature freeze for the Mod Jam. Essentially, Modders will have until 5 PM CET today to submit a feature-complete version of their submission.

It’s important to note at this stage, that not everything will work correctly. Modders still have another week to bugfix and polish their submissions. Would you like to help our modders test their submissions? Join us on Discord! Join the Discord, get the PC role, and then look for the #help-test-the-mod-jam channel.

Later today or early tomorrow, we will be posting a link in that section of our Discord so the Community can play this content early, and each leader has a forum channel where you can report bugs directly to the modders.

Today, we have another eight Legendary Leaders to highlight! These leaders range from a damaged and dormant AI Weapons Platform, to an Interdimensional Phantasm that transcends space and time.

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Inspiration: The main idea of this mod is to enhance the Player Crisis gameplay, and encourage players to select the Become the Crisis ascension perk (or at least make them consider the option). To implement that idea I set two goals:

• The first goal is to make the game more dynamic (like, what if you try to play defensively and speedrun the Aetherophasic Engine?) but also with some extra additions to make it more interactive and not forcing the player to get crisis stage 5, for unlocking full mod potential, just get new tech and components and keep playing the “standard” game any way they want.
• The second goal was to give the player more means to really oppose the whole galaxy, all those mighty alliances and vassalages, As A True Crisis Should.

From that idea and modjam theme emerged the common idea of someone who had “crisis” experience, but obviously failed (because if they succeeded, none of this would have happened). The rest (dialogues, terminology, descriptions) are based on Crisis Event Chain and the information the game is giving to me, along with some cool scientific definitions from physics .

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Inspiration: I’ve always found the concept of time dilation incredibly interesting. After bouncing around a few ideas for the modjam, this concept stuck out to me. How could it be used by an empire for their benefit? If it affects a whole planet, what would benefit? Stuff like production and growth speed? but also what downsides would it have? Increased upkeep for jobs and buildings? Would people be happy ageing at a faster speed than everywhere else? I kept asking myself these questions until eventually, I had a word document full of answers ready to be used.

I also tied the story into a rare bit of lore from Stellaris that I adore which is partially related to the concept, I’m sure most will understand the link if they have seen it before. Being interested in the science behind these things made it really easy to keep my motivation and interest in the mod high which certainly helped create this mod.

Inspiration: The main bit of inspiration for The Professor was the Stellaris tutorial AI, VIR. A few days into programming, I thought, “What if VIR was an awful college professor?” The idea of turning the Stellaris tutorial into an overly strict college professor, who viewed themselves as the arbiter of all knowledge was something I adored too much.

As for the portrait, I chose Necroids 9 simply because it’s one of my favorite portraits. My friends and I have an inside joke where we obsess about the amount of eyes the portrait has. We came to a consensus that 4 eyes is not enough, so this time the portrait has 6.

Inspiration: The idea that resonated most with me was the concept behind the champion Ryze from League of Legends, a lonely but powerful mage who has lived for millennia and charges himself with keeping ancient and powerful magical runes from falling into the wrong hands.

I thought it would be cool to make a similarly enigmatic, but grounded, leader that also charges himself with withholding some incredibly dangerous object/entity from the galaxy. I iterated on many ideas and landed on The Jailer. This concept inspired me.

Firstly, he is a character whose fundamental theme, seeking redemption, is relatable, grounded, and has a major opportunity for character growth. Secondly, there is instantly a major story hook worth exploring, what does he imprison, and why is it so dangerous? Finally, it allowed me to explore game mechanics and narratives that are IMO overlooked in Stellaris; crime, corruption and penal colonies.

Inspiration: My thought process when creating the features of the mod was primarily practical. With the requirement to make something balanced and a lack of knowledge about the legendary leaders, I decided to view the Stellaris Wiki and create features similar to the existing leaders. As for the story that I created to accompany my leader, it was more a spur of the moment thing than a planned chain of events, each project and event being written based on the one before.

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Inspiration: Despite having been a big fan of Star Trek in the past, it happened more by coincidence/subconsciously that my leader’s personality and background have big similarities with Q, and I wasn’t even aware of it until someone pointed it out to me. It is never a bad thing, though, to have someone around, who can fill the entire room with his ego alone. It just gives so many more options for crazy stories you could never have with a normal character.

Inspiration: Inspired by the Illithids in DnD, Convergence is a psionic mastermind driven mad by the multiverse. He will sacrifice anything to complete his master plan, foiled millennia ago by the entities in the Shroud.

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Inspiration: While the idea of trying to steal from under the very noses (if they have one) of a Fallen Empire was the core idea from the beginning. I originally wasn’t sure of the leader’s origin. Was he a god-king with the power of foresight trapped on a pre-ftl world, looking to recover that which was stolen from him? Or was he a charismatic criminal, looking to launch a heist that would make him the greatest thief the galaxy has ever known?

After some early discussion and feedback, I ended up merging the two ideas a bit and focused a bit more on the idea of a Leader who has their own agenda which is at odds with your own, as that felt like a much more interesting take on a Legendary Leader.

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That’s it for this week folks! Next week we’ll be back with the release version of #MODJAM2024! And if you’re interested in helping test the Modder’s submissions, join us on Discord!