This mod needs to be resurrected by someone else.

That's sad to hear, CV. Game won't be the same without my dark red avian ships menacing the galaxy. Good luck with your personal life and here's to a speedy return (if possible).

missed, but never forgotten. I hope things go well for you! :D

@Anthoux - No. My PC has crashed and I will need time to purchase replacement parts, and even then, my personal life is now at a critical crossroads, so my attention is on reality. Patch 2.0 is as good a place to stop anyway, as the patch basically rewrites the game.

I will be putting a "disclaimer" in the description, giving permission for anyeone to use my work as long as due credit is given, so hopefully someone else can carry on the work in my absense, but I'm afraid my Stellaris modding days may have come to a crashing hault.

are you planing on updating when 2.0 comes out?

@Anthoux - I’m afraid so. They create new species and graphical cultures in the game so they are all different and don’t override the vanilla ship set. That means the checksum changes and no achievements.

Do these ship mods disable achievements?

@Crusader Vanguard,
Of course. I understand how taxing and time consuming such a large project can be more so for a game you no longer play. Regardless I am greatful for your work and hope all is well for you development wise and personally.

@Lord Sarran - Thank you. I try my best.

As for your "obnoxious" request, "not right now" is probably the best responce. Right now I'm working on the overhaul of these mods so they are down to just one culture instead of 12, and I've only done Mammalian and 90% of Avian. After that, I'll probably be taking a break between now and Patch 1.9. It's been a very long time since I've actually played Stellaris.

@Crusader Vanguard,
Also I am sure you get countless obnoxious request but if it would not be too much work to create could you make a Purple Avian Shipset themed after Covenant Ships from Halo? I know the Covanent Ship Set is available even with NSC but it would just give me that personal kick to immerse myself with Covenant diversity.

Just another obnoxious request: ignore to your hearts desire lol.

@Crusader Vanguard,
I wanted to leave a comment but didn't know where it would be best to compliment you so I figured I'd do it on my favorite shipset mod.

I have wandered much of the workshop in search of mods that would be perfect and I have seen you across countless mods. As many of your mods have become my personal favorites I would like to thank you for all you have made for us. Your work and determination has allowed players like myself to enjoy Stellaris to our hearts content and I am truly greatful for it.

thank you.

@EVERYONE - I'm overhauling and revamping my Dark Species Collection. There are currently 84 different cultures in my Collection (12 colors * 7 cultures) and that's unsustainable, especially with Patch 1.9 being basically a complete overhaul of the time. I've got to cut the fat off these mods before that patch comes out.

Therefore, I've found a way (finally) to adapt my Dark Species Collection to Paradox's crappy-but-all-I-got recolor system, which means each of these mods will be cut down from 12 cultures to one, which will change colors with the Flag. The one remaining Cityset will be dark and white, the survey beam will be white, and the engine exhaust/blinky lights will be vanilla values.

While this will mean less coloring, it will also give a good opportunity to really update the coding and make sure everything functions properly, and this will be MUCH easier for me to maintain. I'm going to do the update on all 7 mods then release them all at once. Thanks for your patience.

@EVERYONE - Mod has been updated to Patch 1.8. Please let me know if you find anything off.

@EVERYONE - Mod updated to support the habitat diffuse introduced with Utopia. I apologize for the delay in it's support. I have also updated the mod to support CITYSETS for all cultures, so you can have a shipset and cityset to use for your cultures. Furthermore I updated the mod to support "Useful Stations 2.0 - Citadel Included" to further the Dark Species Collection's built-in support. Finally, I fixed numerous errors so hopefully my mod will cause you less trouble.

@EVERYONE - Mod updated to support Ship Classes Extended (SCX) by Princess Stabbity & TheGrandN (Nessa).

@Veiden - No, my Dark Species collection doesn't touch Extra Playable Races or Playable Guardians. And I don't have enough time with Reality to make new colors. I'm hoping just to have the time to update the Habitats to have appropriate colors.

Will new colors be added in the future? For example white? In the NSC added the same white ether drake.

I hope it means something, but you guys are really awesome.

@Nekomata - Yes, all cultures will have "habitats"... which just means they get oversized spaceport copies LOL. But all habitats will be functional in NSC 5.0.

As for other megastructures, we are looking into adding one for NSC 5.0.

Megastructure Compatibility? Such as habitats for the shipsets like the fallen empire shipsets?

A lot more than I could list here, but basic highlights are:

1. Fixes for coding errors and removes on Paradox's part (readding defines for fleet formation spacing and fixing Flagship, HQ Station, Mining/Power Station bonuses that were lost).
2. Added new major feature: Playable Guardians - beginning of the game you can choose if you want Playable Guardians AND choose the spawn chances of each major Guardian type (except Enclaves). You basically defeat a Guardian and have the oppertunity to "build/grow" one for your empire. Rather basic, but it works.
3. Added in Synthic portraits, but for now they have to be "organic" not "robotic" due to limitations of coding/compatibility, and cannot be part of the Synthetic Ascension path thanks to Paradox.
4. Added 2 new FE shipsets (Militarist/Pacfists) & 3 new Unbidden colors (blue, yellow, magenta).
5. And more that I don't have room to type. LOL

I don't even use downscaled ships, so I say go for it, ..Whats available in 5.0?

@Not yet, I was about to work on some now since I have some free time, I can do Mammalian first.

And yeah, most of my free time is used up helping finish off NSC 5.0 for this weekend, lots of changes and additions, still trying to work out a few kinks.

But even then, between lack of time and now lack of willingness, I'm considering cutting out my downscaled ships patches. They are a pain to keep maintained.

I apologize if I sounded demanding there, I know you don't have much time, its simple curiosity is all, then again, You are working on 5.0 for NMC. I can't wait to see what you guys have in store for 5.0

Did you ever manage to fix the mammalian habitat issue?

@Hades Izanami - I got that, and I appriciate it. I'll get it fixed over the next few days, but my time for modding has been reduced a lot, so it will just take some time. I'll make sure everyone at least uses the appropriate vanilla Habitat model, and eventually work out the diffuse to color them correctly.

Thats understandable. I can be patient.
I just wished to say that Dark avian Red for example used mamallian habitants, with no colour. I only wish to help, Crusader, i love your mods.

@Hades Izanami - Right now it will have to be standard vanilla colored Habitats for the time being. My time for modding has been severly reduced, and I will have to make new diffuses for all 84 of my cultures for the Dark Species Collection, which takes some time.

However, I am aware some Habitats are not quite working as they should, so in the meantime I'll at least make sure all Habitats are the vanilla colored variants. I ask for your patients with new diffuses.

Question. Will you end up creating megastructures for these? Right now they give standard mamallian habitats, for example.

alright. Wished the dev's would've made the launcher like EU4. Where it says achivements will be disabled in ironman mode.

@FadingCosmos - I think it does make it impossible, mainly because all those shipsets are new graphical cultures. If this was a "plug in and replace" of the vanilla Avian, probably not.

Just wanted to know if your mod affects the game, making it unable to earn achivements?

@mzilli - Then I would suggest you crack open the mod zip, look around, and make a personal version for yourself and just see what you can do. Can you update it? Can you improve some things? If you can make the personal version how you want (which is okay to do), that will help you determine if you want to spend the effort updating the mod.

Space is an Ocean. It's a pretty big one so I dunno if I'll actually do it. I'm kinda new to modding in general too, so I want to make sure I can do it justice.

@mzilli - What mod are you trying to resurrect?

Thank you. I'll probably wait a while longer but I'll definitely follow your advice if I do it. I appreciate the insight.

@mzilli - There really is no "process". You need to understand that I walked a very fine line between legal and illegal.

First and foremost, you *always* attempt to contact the author you're talking about. Thing is, there is no set time table for waiting for replies either. If you think that the mod author will not return (like waiting a month like you and I have), then you *can* do it, but it's still a gamble, and you MUST do the following:

Always, always, always do a disclaimer giving credit to the original author and explain in clear, easy to understand way why you have taken this persons mod. I always told everyone if Alastor returned and asked me to take it down, I would, because it's his mod. You should do the same, as you will never know if the author will return or how he will feel. However, like me, you could get lucky and have said author give you his blessing.

So, my suggestion is that if you think you've waited long enough, reupload the mod under a different name, make sure you have a disclaimer giving the original author full credit and explain very clearly why you reuploaded the guy's mod, and volunteer to take it down if the original author requests it. You should also leave a comment in the original author's mod explaining this. If you never hear from him again, you're good, and if you do, point him to that if he didn't find it, and you two work out what to do next.

Glad to see this mod is still going strong. A question: when you took over from Alastor, what was the process? There's a mod I'm interested in resurrecting but the author hasn't been here in a full month and I'm not sure how to get his permission. Should I just do it and give him full credit, or leave it for the time being?

@Leon - Your welcome.

@Crusader Vanguard Just wanted to say thank you for the downscaled ships patch, its appreciated :)

@EVERYONE - Mod still works with new 1.4 Patch. I will have an update out later today with an update so it will no longer be "outdated".

@Ƭн0яƵєя0 - I'm currently doing a "special surprise" shipset that isn't part of my Dark Species shipsets, but I think it will be well received. Once I have finished that, I will do either Arthropoids or Mammalian, depending on which one I can do more easily.

However, I will only be making a Dark shipset. I have an agreement with Guilliman to split the workload on these shipsets. He does light, I do dark. If you would like a white Arthropoid shipset, I would suggest you ask him as he has that catagory, however, he did give me the go-ahead for my "special suprise" one even it breaks this agreement, so that one may have what you see.

Hope you will do Arthropoid ships next. And when and if you do it, hope you will add a Dark+White shipset

@mzilli - A new one. I've finished off the coding for all 12 colors, I'm adding mod support in now, and I'll have it out sometime this week.

Are the dark plantoid ships going to be part of this mod or a new one?

Alright..will get back to you on it.

@synnercy - I honestly have no idea. Just activate this mod and try Ironman mode.

I would really love for this to be achievement compatible...so ugh is it?

@Everyone - I've been a bit slow on the progress of the Dark Plantoid Shipsets. This is because between Reality and the overhaul work I'm doing for New Ship Classes 3.0.0, I've been too busy to continue to work on the Dark Plantoids. Hopefully by the start of this coming week, I will have some more time to work on the coding/diffuses there. I will continue and get it done as soon as I can. Thank you all for your patience.