Mass Effect Collection

Really interesting ideas, I'm excited to see what you do with all the races. Do you already have plans for what each race will be geared for? I'd love to hear about what you have in store for Quarians, Salarians and Hanar in particular.
 
Really interesting ideas, I'm excited to see what you do with all the races. Do you already have plans for what each race will be geared for? I'd love to hear about what you have in store for Quarians, Salarians and Hanar in particular.

Yeah we have all of our plans written down already, we've been planning this for a while now and have already got files and folders and even custom artwork made. All the races go through 2 stages of planning so when we actually do start coding them we're not going in "blind" in a sense.

Generally it wasn't too difficult, even though there's 13 races (16 planned, we're planning to include the Protheans, Cerberus and Collectors too) a lot of them came quite naturally, but there were some real headscratchers. The Salarians for example, we spent some time trying to figure out where we'd want them to fit with the rest of the races, and the Batarians too. The Krogan were also somewhat difficult to balance, given the fact they're the "broken" race of the ME universe, but when we were planning everything we didn't want them to lose what makes them unique. The Krogan are feared in the ME universe, and we wanted that to translate into Civ, but we didn't want them to be able to curbstomp all the other races.

Anyway we've now completed that stage and I'm actually quite pleased with what we have planned for all of them. I would love to tell you all about them and what we have in store, in fact I'm itching to, but I know I can't because things can change during development and I don't want to say anything that could be different by next week. Heck we're even reluctant to say which civ we're releasing next until we know for sure (it's the Geth). One thing we know is that I've been dying to make the Volus but we're holding them back for a while.
 
I don't know how viable this is, but the first thing I think of when I think Krogan is a penalty to Growth. Or at the very least a reason to keep small populations. I don't know if that would be enough to balance the combat bonus you have planned, but thought I'd throw it out there.

I'm excited to see you pull this all off. Makes me itch for a full ME strategy game!
 
I don't know how viable this is, but the first thing I think of when I think Krogan is a penalty to Growth. Or at the very least a reason to keep small populations. I don't know if that would be enough to balance the combat bonus you have planned, but thought I'd throw it out there.

I'm excited to see you pull this all off. Makes me itch for a full ME strategy game!

But the Krogan enjoy growth. A female can produce up to 1000 fertilized eggs in a year, and their extreme growth and population is what led to the Krogan Rebellions and ultimately the Genophage. Other races might want the Krogan to have small populations, but the Krogan don't.

We feel like we've got them cracked now though, we wanted them to be feared but not completely broken. But basically just hope you get the Elcor or something as your neighbours. You won't want the Krogan to be near you.
 
The Geth and Legion are completed. Updated the OP with them.

My god that took forever to make. Wont be releasing the next one as quickly as them, got to playtest and refine my current ones some more.
 
But the Krogan enjoy growth. A female can produce up to 1000 fertilized eggs in a year, and their extreme growth and population is what led to the Krogan Rebellions and ultimately the Genophage. Other races might want the Krogan to have small populations, but the Krogan don't.

We feel like we've got them cracked now though, we wanted them to be feared but not completely broken. But basically just hope you get the Elcor or something as your neighbours. You won't want the Krogan to be near you.

Oh woops, I wasn't aware you wanted to nix the genophage. That'll definitely make them a threat.
 
The 10% science on a temple is horrific. Just +2 science from pyramids for the Maya makes them one of THE best civs. 10% is absolutely game breaking. You really want to stick to adding little bits rather than a percentage, especially early on.

Actually, raw yield is much better than percentages early on. Also, everyone freaks out about modifiers but they're not as game breaking as everyone thinks. The University gives +33%, not counting all the raw yield from jungle tiles. It's basically just a building 1/3 the strength of the university about an era earlier... not that big of deal. Besides, if you build all the science modifier buildings in a city you get +133% science, just from those three normal buildings, and that's not counting the buildings that give extra raw yield or also building the National College (which would bring it to +183%), and not counting the +25%-+32% you can get from Social Policies (bringing it to +215%).

Really +10% is not that big of a deal.
 
Do you have a credit list somewhere? I'd like to use some stuff from your mods in my own, and would like to properly credit what I take. (You keep on using we so I assume it's a team working on this? I'd like to credit everyone).
 
Do you have a credit list somewhere? I'd like to use some stuff from your mods in my own, and would like to properly credit what I take. (You keep on using we so I assume it's a team working on this? I'd like to credit everyone).

Hopefully everyone should be credited in the files and special thanks, but I'll give you a list:

Me
Mr McColl - (My partner on this project)
Engorn - (For allowing us to use his artwork and creating new ones for the project)
Tomatekh - (Helping us make the traits work)
Uomo Universalis and Thalassicus - (For the dummy building files)
 
Looks like it's gonna be the Krogan or the Volus up next.

Both have entirely different balance involved. But the Asari and the Geth need something to keep them in check, and the Krogan should make their lives a misery.
 
Yeah the Geth don't need any buffs. Even a 1% increase would make a massive difference, but luckily their AI is somewhat counter-productive to their trait to stop them from curbstomping everyone and to give the other races a chance to stop them from going out of control.

Next up it's looking like the Krogan. Seeing as though the Krogan are the "broken" race of the ME universe we have a funny feeling there will be some complaints about the balance we have planned for them. We're just not sure what sort of complaints we'll get, it's looking like we'll get both underpowered and overpowered complaints. Regardless, they're probably going to be the race that will have the biggest influence on how the game turns out. We feel that we might have to release the Turians soon after though as they appear the race best equipped for keeping them at bay.
 
Really excited to see the rest of the races (Quarians in particular are my favorite) but I have a question for you. I have never actually done any work with custom factions or mods in Civ 5 so I have no clue how to install these and a google search didn't come up with any help. If you could either tell me what to do or give me a link that would explain it that would be awesome. I'd really love to try them out. :)
 
Really excited to see the rest of the races (Quarians in particular are my favorite) but I have a question for you. I have never actually done any work with custom factions or mods in Civ 5 so I have no clue how to install these and a google search didn't come up with any help. If you could either tell me what to do or give me a link that would explain it that would be awesome. I'd really love to try them out. :)

Sorry it took me so long to reply. I've just been really busy, don't get to check here often.

You can find these mods on Steam Workshop, which if you have a Windows PC don't download these files here, just go to the Workshop it'll be easy and quick to download there. If you have a mac you'll have to locate your Civ 5 folder directory (for example, the Windows directory is C:\Users\(USER)\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS) and unzip these .rar files to there. Unfortunately I don't know about mac file structure, so I can't help you on where to find it on a mac.
 
Also updated the OP with the Krogan, Hanar, and the updated versions of the previous mods.

Will add information and pics soon, just tired due to work atm so I've only uploaded the files.
 
OH great that makes things a lot easier thanks! And don't worry about the delay, I'm rather glad to hear that you guys are keeping busy on this. I'd hate to see it go unfinished :)
 
Oops, Nevermind.

On a different note the production of the Rachni and Collectors is coming along fine, which fantastic advice from Tomatekh when something seemingly random happens.
 
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