Every time I try to setup a game with the Asari factions included I get this error: Your current design contains errors or dlc that's been disabled. I was able to use this mod a few months ago. Do we need the newer dlc to use it due to an update?

This is something new "mec_asari_justicar_counter" it's not in the language files.

Thats okay thanks a lot for taking the time to reply to me! I understand spaghetti code. Will play as the Republics and pretend its a post-Reaper War re-delving into the Temple of Athame then haha

@Garant26 : Ah... I'm afraid the two are nearly inseparable. The way we designed a lot of the backend stuff, the Origins, Civics and Traditions are all interlocked.

Tbh, the Civics can be considered glorified tooltip containers and status indicators, yet are referenced by scripts far more than they should be. Most of the infrastructure is simply scripted with the assumption that Civics always go with their parent Origins.

The embarrassing truth is, I don't even remember how it's set up anymore. I just know that the time and effort that would be required to separate all the stuff would be... a lot >.<

Hello! Been a fan of this mod for years.
I have a small suggestion, woulfd it be possible to have the Thessian Statecraft civic somehow accessible for Asari custom empires that are not the Asari Republics (which are great, but RP-wise I love creating my own offshoots)? It could be a civic that is tied to the Asari apearence and can't be removed after game start or something like that to prevent weirdness. The Ecclesia Trends and such are very fun, I feel like missing out on a part of the content.
Thank you for your hard work & perhaps consideration!

Stabbity, there were never hundreds of outfits for your pops in pre 4.0*.
There was never a pre 4.0*
These are vile blasphemous rumours spread by the unclean.

Update!
Lots of general polish and some balance/feelslance adjustments, BUT also some good news!

Turns out, while Pops indeed can no longer support our old Outfit Selector setup, with some adjustments, we were able to reintroduce some fashion sense to Pop Groups.
(Big thanks to the SE Restyled team for figuring it out <3)

They can't wear job-specific clothes like they used to, and due to how strata are set up, slave clothes also don't work with Indentured Assets (RIP Illium maids), but Civic and Authority-based variants can serve as a decent substitute.

That said, we're still going to prune the pop wardrobe big time come Portraits 2.0, so please enjoy while it lasts n_n

Hmm... it was originally designed to be a surprise reward for taking an unconventional path, but I suppose you're right. At this point, it's probably okay to let the tooltips be more informative. I'll try to figure something out.

@ Stabbity Oh, well you might want to include that little detail in the civics description!! spent way too long trying to figure out what the hell i was doing wrong.

@victoriousdread07 (private): No, you aren't supposed to. It can be unlocked via one of the Thessia origin's routes.

Possible Bug: Is there a reason i cant seem to pick the ascendant destiny civic?

That said, the changes actually line up nicely with our future plans.

In the future, we plan to rework the portraits as part of our PORTRAITS 2.0 project. The plan was always to trim the fat off pops and focus 90% of our energy on leader portraits, but post 4.0, we might as well make it 100%

And from a more pragmatic standpoint, the depiction of pop_groups in the planet UI is practically microscopic, so even if they could still have conditional clothing, we likely would have ended up giving them a single generic outfit anyway. Because there's no reason for such tiny icons to load and keep multiple full-sized clothing textures in your working memory. I imagine Stellaris devs had similar concerns when they were trying to make pops less performance-hostile.

"Hundreds of outfits for your pops" sounded like a great selling point years ago, but it probably was never worth the cost.

Yes, to elaborate, the game no longer uses the "pop" asset_selectors. Those selectors still exist in code, but as far as we can tell, they've been deprecated and likely will be deleted for good one day.

While the role of pop_groups may be similar as far as they are presented to players, on the portrait backend, they do NOT depict pops with jobs, strata, modifiers, planetary conditions, etc. Instead, a pop_group depicts the species that forms it. So, it draws portraits from the default species scope. It has no bespoke portrait definition of its own.

@Van
Yeah, something changed with clothing selectors in the new pop setup. It seems pops all get the same outfit now. Leaders work as expected still though.

Asari pops on planets are only wearing the same default outfit, i assume the pops clothing should change according to job it has, ruler, scientists, soldier, etc. With leaders there is no issue.

@vorphal: O...kay... found the culprit. the issue was on EoS's end, actually but it's because I derped and forgot to verify the trait ID after copy-pasting it >.<

An EoS update fixing all the mess should be going up right now! SORRYFREFSDFAFAA x_x

@vorphal: Ooops... you're right. There are a lot more errors that we thought @.@ Investigating now...

Not sure whether to put this on the Elves page or here, since I use both... But most(not all) of my Elf leaders are getting Cycle of Eternity traits( though it isn't picking Maiden or Matron, just the base trait.) Could totally be my setup, but I figured I'd mention it in case it is another issue with the trait from the last patch.

HOTFIX!
The Cycle of Eternity leader traits that got borked by patch 4.0.15 should be unborked now! Sorry, the patch completely snuck up on me >.<

New game not required, but any leaders generated earlier today, while the script was borked, will be still missing the trait. However, they should get it back the next time any genetic modification takes place in your empire.

@Dat Fishe: I've been wondering about that myself, but tbh, I have no idea how the new migration mechanics work. With the old Push and Pull modifiers gone, and no information in the UI, right now, no one knows how pops migrate, why or where, and what effect migration buffs have, numerically.

I did want to fine-tune migration for Thessia as part of the update (or at least give them something similar to Illium's favours-bring-pops perk), but currently that mechanic is so obtuse that... I'm choosing to err on the side of caution until either the devs make it more clear how migration works or I get enough playtime to get the feel for it.
I love the new pop and growth system, but the lack of documentation on it annoys me to no end >.<

@Princess Stabbity That makes sense. My only real concern is that - if I'm not mistaken at least, I'm less familiar with this aspect of the code, but it fits my personal observations - not having Full Citizenship severely limits the willingness of Xeno pops to migrate to Asari planets, which would nerf their population growth, since it heavily relies on the presence of Xenos pops. If this still isn't the kind of thing you want to write a script for, it might at least be a good idea to try to offset this with an AI modifier to add migration attraction or something, if you haven't already.

@lemurs2: *sta-* oh- well, since you asked nicely... *throws stabby thing away*

And I'm happy to hear that, actually n_n

Sophisticated Needs is a 3-cost trait for a reason. We balanced it with the intent of being very noticeable and impactful, especially early game and on developing colonies. There is a similar vanilla Lithoid trait (Brittle?) which has +0.5 amenities upkeep and also gives 3 trait points, so that was our measuring stick.
The two Origins should have enough amenities at the start (if they don't, that may be a mod conflict?) but if you are not using them, I imagine the upkeep would hit you a little sooner than intended, but with the counterplay of luxury residences being available right from the start, the level of pain per trait value should be acceptable.

Okay, not telling you how to make your mod, just giving feedback. Please don't stab me this time.
Started as Asari. The needs for amenities is a bit high. With every race I have played since 4.0 came out I can live with 1 luxury house.
I started Asari and immediately needed two luxury houses and one holo entertainer building.

@Dat Fishe: Oh, we used to do that years ago, when there were no systemic provisions for all the things we wanted to do with leaders. But I don't know if I want to go back to that, especially considering how minor this is...

Please, don't take it the wrong way. I appreciate that you're not just requesting things, but actually trying to find ways to facilitate your requests. I love that! <3

But here's where my thought process is in regards to this matter:

Implementing a bunch of monitoring and maintenance scripts would be massively overkill just to reinvent the wheel in regards to the player-facing flavour of a single AI empire. Since it's not something that has tangible bearing on player experience (who can set species rights to whatever they like), we don't see a compelling reason to exchange an implementation that currently works for one that comes with caveats and requires extra work to get working.

@Princess Stabbity That's fair tbh, they can really pile up lol. Have you tried a script which changes leaders after they've already been spawned? It seems like it might work, the Gendered Leaders Paragon Edition mod (linked below) does something similar. If not, thanks for hearing me out anyway lol.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973736404

@Dat Fishe:
Oh, I see...
Sadly, there's no way for us to use it without overriding the vanilla trigger. And we do not override vanilla scripts. It would be a compatibility nightmare that I don't have the energy to deal with. Anything that increases the mod's maintenance cost is categorically off the table, sorry >.<

Preventing full citizenship rights is the only feasible way of triggering that trigger that's available to us.

@Princess Stabbity It's in the 00_scripted_triggers file of vanilla, the Necrophage trait effect is managed under the can_be_leader script, but you might also be able to do something similar with the allows_alien_leaders script (in the same file)

@Dat Fishe: We'd love that, but I don't see anything in the Necrophage scripting that could we could use to replicate that behaviour on the mod's end. What specific trigger are you referring toy?

@Princess Stabbity The Necrophage origin uses a scripted trigger to prevent non-Necrophage pops from becoming leaders/rulers, have you considered doing something similar, potentially using the Amaranthine trait? Given the unique mechanics for Asari leaders, I also think it would be nice as the player to be able to have all-Asari leaders without the negative penalties that come from denying a species full citizenship - particularly in regards to immigration.

Small Update!
Nothing too noteworthy except there's now a generic version of the biotic trait that can be added via gene-modding.
If it seems like a random addition, that's because it was originally supposed to be part of a standalone MEC: Biotics mod, but I couldn't find the energy to finish it and most of its intended content had already been merged into Asari with the 4.0 update, so I decided to just incorporate the rest of it.

@Dat Fishe: It's intentional. Because the prescripted empires have elective governments, we wanted to prevent non-asari leaders from becoming rulers. While a player can do whatever they want with their policies, AI-played xenophile empires tend to do weird things when full citizenship is enabled.

Thanks for the test Stabbity seems i have a mod conlficting. i dont even see the eternity tradition.

Not sure if this is intended or not, but the AI personality for the Asari Republics seems to default to giving Xenos Residency status instead of Full Citizenship, which doesn't seem to fit with what I know of Asari lore or their intended playstyle

@Vetorian: They should be able to pick them. I ran a test just now and the entire process went as expected ( screenshots [imgur.com])

If it's not working for you, please make sure you aren't using any outdated/conflicting mods, and your empire fulfils all the tech and building requirements you need to adopt and progress the ascension.

Hey is it wanted that Asari can't pick up biological ascension perks ?

@Teutonic_Thrash: Ooops! I knew I forgot to finish something >.< Will fix in a minute!

The Nos Parnalo Black Site (on Illium) gives Researchers jobs, but on 4.0 Researchers jobs no longer exist I think, so there's now an empty and unusable job slot in the Economy section of the planet view.

What's up with the star system connected to the capital system for Athena Nebula? Looks weird.

Actually... yes, the note is a bit vague. I adjusted it to be more explicit.

@victoriousdread07 (private): Yes. In case the note isn't clear, they don't just benefit from the humanoid species class, they are in the humanoid species class.

notes say that the asari benefit from the humanoid species class, does that mean they benefit from the selective kinship civic with other humanoids?

Thank you so much for the update! I absolutely love your mod!

Thanks so much for the update - this one of my favorite Stellaris mods

Thank you for all the hard work!

YEEEEEEEEE

RELEASE!
IT'S OUUUUUUUUT! @o@

Please check out the Change Notes for details. There's too much to summarise.
Also! PLEASE be mindful of mod conflicts . Before reporting any issues, make sure to disable any and all mods that haven't been updated yet; especially ones that might conflict with, or are related to MEC: Asari

Thank you so much for the mod

yasssss, lets gooo

TOMORROW! >o<

Please Note! If anyone wants to keep playing on the 3.x version, this is the last warning to make a local backup of the mod. We only support the newest version of the mod and do not provide legacy backups. Tomorrow's update will not be backwards-compatible with anything prior to Stellaris 4.0!

For more details and the preliminary changelog, please visit our Discord #announcements channel.

Please inform us when it's out!