It's not impossible this mod will get reactivated at some point, but that will only happen if I end up actually playing Stellaris again, which as it stands I can't really promise I'll do in any foreseeable future.

Sorry to anyone hoping to use this in the current version. Thanks a ton for caring about and playing this little mod. It was my pleasure to write and share it with you all, it's just not feasible to keep updating a mod for a game I haven't seriously played in over two years. <3 <3 <3

@AncientYears No, it's not. I'm afraid that as it stands this mod should be considered 'inactive'.

I haven't touched a paradox game in over a year, and as it stands I don't really intend to go back to them. I still think they're great games (bugs and flaws aside), but I just don't have the kind of time they require anymore, and the time I do have I've been spending on other hobbies. And it's just not really practical to keep updating a mod to a game I'm not actually playing or understanding anymore. E.g., I know from dev diaries they changed the vanilla first contact system, but I have no clue how it works in-game or how to update ACEP to work with it in-code.

If any modders are interested in 'adopting' this mod and releasing their own updated versions, let me know and I'll give permission and put a link to it here. (Or if I don't respond, just do it and make a comment here and in popular discussions.)

is this 3.0 compatible?

Is there a way that I can edit the mod files to allow Vanilla empires to spawn as well as ACEP?

I like not knowing what to expect. :)

As I thought. I like that way, it's much better, because I hate the "random" empires option anyways, I like the fluff.

@Pury They are set to always spawn. It's a thing not everyone likes, but since there's no way to change in-game settings of this I have to make a choice. And for me the 'intended use' of this mod is to have the ACEP empires fully replace the standard custom empires. Though, fallen empires, primitives, etc. will still be randomly generated as vanilla empires are.

Yes, figured it out.

Anyways, are all the species of this mod triggered to always spawn? Or it's like a custom empire with "random" chances?

@Pury it would probably create some odd combo's since I design the empires keeping vanilla AI personalities in mind, but in principle that's not gamebreaking. If that mod changes the first contact events, though, then ACEP is incompatible with it.

Thank you! Sorry for other dumb question but, how would ACEP interact with "More AI Personalities"?

@Pury Yeah. This mod is really very simple, it just adds two things:

1) A bunch of empires with unique localization that all use vanilla ethics and personalities and portraits etc.

2) A tiny edit to the vanilla first contact events to extend the first contact event chain into the extended first contact events.

In principle, it leaves the original game untouched. But, annoyingly, in order to have my first contact events properly follow the vanilla first contact events I do need to edit that specific vanilla file (on_actions_events.txt) to make the link.

Otherwise as you note, this mod won't make use of anything else changed but also shouldn't break if anything else is changed.

Probally answering my own question but, better to ask nonthless: If I change the number of civics (for example, from 2 to 3) in the game files, this empires will only have the "vanilla-default" 2, right? As the empires are pre-made.

@Beans Thanks for the comment, it's updated now so it should be fully compatible with 2.8.1!

Should this mod work on 2.8.1 without issue?

One of my fav mods for this game, I love the extended interaction, and the 30 empire limit for 1000 star galaxies means I'll always get one of them, ty!

Do you have this mod as user_empire_designs.txt ?

@sjgold This mod does not alter vanilla game balance in any way, it does not give the custom species any bonuses or maluses outside of what is available in the unmodded game via custom empires.

Because they are all custom designed, some empires will have a more synergistic set of traits than you are likely to find in random generated empires. But the difference is minor, and many empires have sub-optimal design for flavor purposes.

I do not know if this is fully compatible with Glavius or other AI mods. It depends on what those mods change and where. In general, ACEP is unlikely to cause serious issues in combination with other mods, however the empires and/or their extended first contact events may end up disabled if there was a competability issue after all.

Is this mod fair? Can the AI use the species and not give the player a bigger advantage than they already have. Can I use Glavius or and AI mod?

@Butterlord @zoston you can try Irony or Kilroy

It's alright then, thx for your answer :)

@Butterlord I'm afraid I don't know if there's an up-to-date tool like that. There's not much that I can do since I can't control what other modders do.

The only thing I can say is that the "greetings" messages not showing up doesn't break this mod except for just those messages not showing up. So you don't need to worry about your game breaking on this mod's account. But you will miss out on those messages, which obviously sucks. Sorry, I wish I could get around this, but I haven't found a way to have this mod's event show up properly without the direct modification of the vanilla first contact events :/

:/ kind of have a tons of mods, idk if i can check manually for each the problem. Is there a tool to quickly check that? Emurian mod manager didn't get updates for ages so i don't use it anymore

Hi Butterlord, thanks for using the mod! The greeting messages were not dropped, it must be another mod causing conflict with this one. Specifically, a mod that changes on_action_events.txt in the events folder.

I added instructions for how to make other mods that are not so naturally become compatible with this one in my mod description. I'm afraid that's all I can do.

If I could, I would not be changing on_action_events.txt at all on my end, however it is required in order to have my "greetings" messages follow after the vanilla ones.

Hi, i remember the mod having "greeting" messages from the empires, did that feature got dropped? Might be because i'm using the UI mod ui overhaul dynamic, maybe?

Updated to 2.6.2

I made a small start at updating some of the lore to reflect the new origins, this should have gone up along with this update, and hopefully nothing was broken as a result. Let me know if it's otherwise! XD

Awesome news! Thanks!

Hey, good news everyone, the Paradox Devs did empire modders like me a solid and made it so the Federations expansion did NOT break all previous custom empire coding.

I have now updated ACEP to 2.6.1, so it's compatible with Federations and the latest patch as of this writing.

I have handed out appropriate origins to various of the pre-existing ACEP empires whose lore as written fit those origins. I'm afraid I do not have time right now to re-write their bio's and contact events, so there will be some minor discrepancies (the Free Tribes not referencing they are void dwellers, the Raxmoot not realizing their planet is about to blow). Nevertheless, I hope this is enough for now to keep ACEP worthwile to keep on as you dive into federations!

Thanks again to anyone who has and still is playing this mod. I haven't had any time to play Paradox games, including Stellaris, in almost a year, but all your supportive comments in the past motivated me to keep this mod up to date regardless.

@Gopher Yeah, I'll try and see if I can do it quickly, but if the Federations update for ACEP takes ages, you can bet it's because the new Origins broke the current custom empires format and I could not find the time to fix that.

Most of the origins announced so far don't really fit any of the current ACEP empires, though, so if the code-side doesn't break as badly, just picking an appropriate origin for all current empires wouldn't be the worst!

Oh man, that means it's gonna take forever when Federations comes out with all those Origins! lol

@Sentinelus Thanks! Your comment also reminded me to check if I needed to update, and did. So the mod is now up-to-date with 2.5.1.

I'm still really busy,and I've started some other projects that compete with ACEP for time, so there might not be any content updates for a while. But I'll try to keep this mod up-to-date with the main game patches, and if I forget, always feel free to poke me for an update by commenting here!

Finally found this mod again.
Only took me a month.

Mod should be up-to-date with 2.5.0. Please let me know if there are any issues! ♥

Hey any and all present. Just a brief where-you-at update:

Things are really busy for me IRL at the moment. But when Lithoids hits I'll try and get a compatibility update out asap.

The Federations expansion is looking good. Hopefully it will synergize well with ACEP, but obviously it's still many months away from release. I'll be keeping tracks on it though and making plans appropriately!

Oh, and of course, eventually I'll want to expand the roster with Lithoids and Empires using the new Origins to be added. It's looking to be a really busy year for me irl though, so I definitely can't promise to have anything before Federations hits. Still, thanks to anyone playing and enjoying this mod! ♥

Thanks to io, this mod now has Spanish localization! I hope Spanish-speakers out there enjoy it!

Some work was also done to make parts of the mod that weren't originally designed with localization in mind become able to be localized. It shouldn't have messed up anything for those using the mod in English localization, but if it did please report any bugs so I can fix them!

Hi @zoston, please check your private messages

love this mod, but as with all prescripted empire mods, i feel very strongly about setting spawn_enabled to yes instead of "always" because i want to *add* content to the game rather than replace it.

(For anyone wondering, Io managed to get a hold of me through chat, and the issue was resolved.)

Updated to 2.3.3 (9b71). As per before, please report any bugs, I'm still too busy to play much Stellaris myself, so I can't test like I otherwise would!

Hi @zoston I was trying to work on spanish localisation, but I'm unable to build properly a file that works.
I never find a .yml file that can be used to translate properly the prescripted_countries files.

Can you help me or guide me to do that?

I was trying (without success):

prescripted_l_spanish.yml

acep_l_spanish.yml

and test this lines but no one reflected translation in game:

EMPIRE_DESIGN_gokiburi_unity:0 "Unidad Gokiburi"
EMPIRE_DESIGN_gokiburi_unity_DESC:0 "TEST."
acep_gokiburi_system_initializer_NAME:0 "Dios Abrasador"
acep_gokiburi_system_initializer_DESC:0 "nnn.\n\n$system_initializer_DESC$"
acep_gokiburi_planet_NAME:0 "Bajo las Arenas"
gokiburi_unity_system_initializer_NAME:0 "Dios Abrasador"
gokiburi_unity_system_initializer_DESC:0 "test.\n\n$system_initializer_DESC$"
gokiburi_unity_planet_NAME:0 "Bajo las Arenas"

EMPIRE_DESIGN_acep_gokiburi:0 "Unidad Gokiburi"
EMPIRE_DESIGN_acep_gokiburi_NAME:0 "Unidad Gokiburi"
EMPIRE_DESIGN_acep_gokiburi_DESC:0 "TEST."

Updated to 2.3.2 (00a6). At the moment I'm too busy with IRL to test like I usually do, so please let me know asap if there's any issues with this mod! I don't believe Relics should've broken anything, but I haven't had time to check extensively.

:)

@Zee Thanks, great to hear new people are still finding their way here!

I'll keep your perspective in mind, thanks!

I know it's been awhile but I just found your mod a week ago and have been restarting and running into new empires just for fun.
I wouldn't mind a couple different human empires. I actually run another mod that has other humans in it. They worked it out so that only one sol and one other human group can ever be in the game though. Including if you pick one of them. As long as that check is still in there I think it's cool.

@LeonTheProfessional I'll remember that book recommendation!

And yeah, that's my thinking too, probably. Just a human focused mod might be good, or alternatively I could create a few related alien races empires one being the original home and the others being various colony ships. Right now I'd lean towards the latter so it can just be part of ACEP. I'm not too keen on dividing my time between multiple mods if not necessary.

I did join the Modding Discord the other day! But I'm not sure thee's many people who'll want to team-up as opposed to do their own thing. But maybe I just need to not be shy and try...

Have you ever read The Hainish cycle by Ursula LeGuin? Not a series so much as a collection of novels based in the same universe. Lots of different "human" cultures / species, that all originated on the planet Hain and developed in very different ways. Not directly relevant to your question, but another source of inspiration :)

I like the idea of "lost human" colonies, but, depending on how many you think you'd have, it might be better in a separate mod. If it's just a few it could definitely work as part of ACEP.

Regarding events / story pack, you should team up with someone who is good at the technical side of modding. You can find other modders in the Stellaris Modding Den on Discord. There is no reason for you to spend heaps of time trying to code when you can spend it writing wonderful stories and dialogues! :)

Btw, @everyone, I also have a question for anyone:

I've played a few games of seedship in the past months. If you don't know, google it, it's a simple browser game about piloting a colony ship from Earth to find a new home for humanity. One of the really fun things is all the alternate endings you get based upon the damage you sustained along the way, and how suitable the planet you choose to colonise is, as well as some other random factors.

A few of my results felt like they would make the basis for some really interesting Stellaris empires. So I've been mulling around in my head creating ACEP-style empires, but based on “lost human” colony concepts like the Commonwealth.

Now, this is all just an idea, but I am interested in what people here think? Right now, ACEP is intentionally all alien empires. Do you like the idea of adding human-based empires? Or would you rather something like that was added as a sub- or separate mod?

@LeonTheProfessional Thanks, it means a lot to me to hear that you're enjoying the mod!

I'd like to branch out into events or story pack stuff at some point. But as I said before, that's just very time-consuming and gets into coding and balance stuff that I don't want to mess with unless I've got the time to do it properly. But who knows!

You are such a great writer! I hope that one day you make an events mod, or story pack.

For anyone wondering, today's updated to the 2.2.6 Beta does not conflict with the current version of ACEP. The mod remains up to date with the current test build as of this posting.

@starchitec Regrettably, this mod is updated by more than just diplomacy updates. It's because in order to have the Extended First Contact events fire after the vanilla First Contact events, I need to insert a few lines of relevant code in said vanilla events. But those events are in the large on_action_events files which includes a ton more events, not just first contact, but also stuff to do with ascencion perks, traditions, etc. Mooost updates indeed do not update the on_action_events file and thus ACEP is generally not incompatible. But last time I used the 2.2.* I had someone who did get a bug because of it, so I'm just version specific now. :D

neat. oh btw, you know you can write 2.2.* in the .mod file version number and then it wont give a red [!] alert every time they do a minor update. I imagine this mod is mostly unaffected until they actually update diplomacy. Might save you a few REEE UPDATE posts.

@Metal_Serra and @Starchitec a belated thanks for the support! Its great to here people are still looking forward to and enjoying expansions of the roster!

As I wrote in the latest update, I've got megacorps all covered for now, but I still feel there are some holes and imbalances in the roster I hope to fill as I get around to it.

Version-wise, I've updated to the test build again. But based on what the dev's are saying, 2.2.6 should go live soon enough, and unless if there's a new test build with truly major fixes, I expect to switch ACEP back to the main branch with 2.2.6.

Thanks again everyone!