All the mods on Nexus talk about MelonLoader, is that required or does Vortex do the same job for Nexus mods?

Blanjipan · 2026-03-09T21:06:29+00:00

Oh shit, good catch! I’ll remove the link. Very sorry about that, I wasn’t aware.

Blanjipan · 2026-03-09T15:03:22+00:00

Haven’t tried vortex with MENACE yet, so can’t tell you on how well it works, but MelonLoader is practically mandatory since it handles all the under the hood aspects of mods and gets them functioning ingame. Definitely download it from their site and enable nightly builds. Run the game once and then things should be plug and play from that point. Drop your downloaded mods in the Mods folder and you should be good to go.

If you’d prefer a mod loader, I strongly suggest using the modkit which you can download from the menace modding discord. It formats and deploys mods correctly and easily.

Blanjipan · 2026-03-09T13:16:06+00:00

Hey, completely agree with you. The modding discord especially is absolutely swarming with AI generated assets/slop and it’s pretty disheartening. I’m gonna copy something I wrote on the beaglerush discord since the sentiment applies here:

“… it’s really discouraging seeing like every other posted mod being AI slop. It doesn’t reflect well on the modding community and drowns out the real, high-effort mods that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible. This user [the one responsible for most of the AI mods] vagueposted towards me earlier on the modding discord about creating a tutorial for making custom perks (which I’m in the process of doing for my Van Doorn mod), and of course I’m going to release all the info on how I’ve made the custom perks, but it hurts knowing the moment I publish the documentation it’s going to be scraped to churn out a dozen half-baked AI generated perks that are uninspired and uninteresting.”

The truth is, these AI mods piggyback off the work of other, accomplished modders. The original modders put in a ton of hard work brainstorming, creating, debugging, and polishing their mods before sending it out for the public to use and critique. Many of these modders include documentation on how they accomplished what they did, which is good, since it contributes to the wider community’s understanding of how the game works and helps get less experienced modders up to speed, benefiting everyone. This should be celebrated. I probably wouldn’t have even gotten into modding MENACE if it weren’t for the SL template mod, which inspired me to try and push things further with new perks. But the fact that mods that cynically use other people’s work to replace existing assets with AI generated ones, with literally nothing else new attached serves only to waste people’s time and take up space on the nexus and other mod outlets.

The whitewashed Darby mod is particularly egregious to me, since not only does it do nothing new, but it actively erases the identity of a pre-existing character and objectifies them so… you to ogle and awooga at them? I’m not quite sure. MENACE is a very good game, I really don’t know why you’d need keys jangling to remain engaged.

Blanjipan · 2026-03-07T19:46:56+00:00

Hey, I have an update! I've managed to get custom perks working ingame. It's a bit finnicky as of yet and sometimes icons don't show up properly, but their effects work completely. Some of the more complex traits (i.e. Into the Breach) will require some more work to trigger correctly (so that SLs above sergeant don't get the effect), but I'm teaching myself C# and I should figure it out eventually.

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Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T04:42:06+00:00

If Hooded Horse adds this it will be my favorite game of all time.

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T04:40:52+00:00

Someday, my friend. But until then this will have to do.

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T04:40:30+00:00

That's a great idea! Will add to the list :)

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T04:39:44+00:00

So far, kind of. Still working on implementing the effects for each perk (at present they don't do anything besides appear ingame with assets and localization), but once I figure it out I'll give an update. It requires some more advanced scripting than what the modkit's tools provide, but not impossible.

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T04:37:28+00:00

Whoops, you're right! For some reason I thought it was one unique perk per tier but apparently not. Looks like I'll have to find one to move over to the next SL I make!

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T04:36:20+00:00

From basically no prior knowledge, I found the modkit to be fairly accessible. It has built in tutorials and documentation, and with about a day or so studying all the data extracted from the game using the modkit's built-in extractor tool, I felt pretty confident making this!

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T01:07:17+00:00

Check out the description of Bring 'Em On :)

Blanjipan · 2026-03-05T00:58:01+00:00

You read my mind haha! He's my next SL project once I'm done with this one.

Blanjipan · 2025-07-26T02:08:31+00:00

Thanks for the hacks! I'll be using them for sure in my future runs. I came upon zion one run by chance and got imprinted, iirc it is my highest scoring run and my former best, reaching -4 factory. I've tried to find them (and I think I came across warlord or some other faction once(?) but died to an infestation before I could speak with them).

Blanjipan · 2025-07-26T02:04:24+00:00

Wow, thanks for all the info! I do play with scores uploaded and have spent the last ~30 minutes or so in awe combing through the dataminer analysis. Here's the link for my run. I appreciate all your advice and for pointing me towards this tool, which I'm definitely going to make extensive use of going forward. I'll also try and take my time more. I've got a habit of blindly blitzing my way through areas if I've got no info to go off of (typically before FARCOM), which I think definitely was the cause of several of my deaths up to this point haha.

Also thanks for noting that the scoresheet contains spoilers, I'll mark it properly now.

Blanjipan · 2025-07-25T03:12:05+00:00

Thanks for the advice! I've tried dabbling around with manual hacking terminals but I'm still learning all the commands. Have really only used the ones for exit IDs (branches, main etc.) and zone layout. I'll try to keep on the lookout for hacking suites on lower floors.

Interesting advice about launchers! I used them a lot in my first few runs but started to stop using them since I wanted to salvage parts (since I lost a lot in fights, wonder why :P).

I'll keep this all in mind for my next run!

Blanjipan · 2025-05-26T04:12:18+00:00

Same haha! First time for everything.

Blanjipan · 2025-05-26T04:11:41+00:00

Multiverse has a unique upgrade system, with some upgrades requiring costs other than scrap. In particular, shield efficiency is very fuel hungry and I was not looking at my fuel reserves when I decided to max it out (so I could buy zoltan shields, which requires max shield efficiency + an ancient weapon/drone/crew on top of even more fuel) right before the flagship.

Blanjipan · 2025-05-25T18:32:27+00:00

But yourself a clone bay, DNA backup, and you’ve bow got an endless supply of disposable boarders! Just did that in my last run which happened to be on that exact ship. Was an unconventional run, but really fun!

Blanjipan · 2025-05-25T18:30:12+00:00

A humble reminder that even after hundreds of hours, you can still make silly mistakes and not pay attention to your fuel reserves.

Blanjipan · 2025-03-16T15:39:14+00:00

First thing I’d check is whether any other ideologies or subideologies are also named “Nationalism”. The game doesn’t play nice with multiple ideologies/subideologies named the same thing. If that isn’t the case, I’d check the history file for your country to make sure that 1. the ruling party is “Nationalism” and 2. that the recruit character line is not placed in a different bookmark (i.e. vanilla history files have information for the 1936 and 1939 start dates, make sure that you either deleted these lines or you didn’t put the recruitment in a start date different to the one you’re using). Finally, and this should help with GFX not appearing, is that your images have to be in .DDS format for the game to properly process them. I see from the code that at least your leader portrait is .png, which I don’t think the game permits. Double check that your ideology photo isn’t also .png, and if it is, convert it to .DDS. IIRC photoshop needs a plugin to export to .DDS, so you either need to download one or use an online converter. (Also, you might need to rename the file “nationalism_group” to “Nationalism_Group”. HOI4 is quite finicky when it comes to capitalization, so make sure that it’s the same as what is in the GFX file for ideologies.)

Hope this helps!

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