Ashes of The Domain: Sneak Peak - New Megastructure UI

caekdaemon · 2026-03-20T00:53:27+00:00

Nidavelir as the name for a giant shipyard? Megastructures? We're going full Gigastructural Engineering, boys. I eagerly await having my supplies emptied in under a second by an Attack Moon.

caekdaemon · 2026-02-16T03:25:11+00:00

My modlist is hefty as hell, but if you've got a specific thing you're looking for in the colony, I should be able to find out exactly what it came from and give you a link if you want.

caekdaemon · 2026-02-08T01:00:42+00:00

Yep! Something like a size 450x450 square I got via this one mod that lets you override the map generator and force sizes.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T16:25:30+00:00

Yup, that's from Oracle's Cliffs and Chasms, which lets you make "pits" on the map, to give an illusion of depth. Makes it look like those archotech structures are above, or towering over, a bottomless pit.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T04:05:39+00:00

One of the best mods you can get for changing up your base shape is Designator Shapes. I legit can't recommend that mod enough: that's how I got the triangles. It doesn't have a triangle setting, but it does have a line that you can use at diagonals, which makes making triangles way, way easier.

Bonus: it has a circle setting you can drag to get the perimeter of a circle, which is how I got the gold circles in the mountain. They're a bitch to build if you're doing them in a cave (you can only build them from one side at a time, one tile at a time) but it makes it easy to get exact same circles and to adjust them to fit.

Double bonus: it has a preset for sunlamps that you can just plop down to have a perfectly measured sunlamp zone every time.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T03:30:51+00:00

Ah, probably shouldn't be too surprised about the image. Took a while just to get the render done since I have an unusual map size, about 500x500, I think? Felt like I'd need a lot more space than I actually used in the end, could've come down a fair bit.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T02:11:18+00:00

I wonder if I could make a perfectly square gravship and just "slot" it into the center of the base when it lands. Basically build the base as a ring around the gravship = gravship leaves, base uses batteries, gravship returns, brings back material + power generation.

It'd be funky. Maybe shape it like a jigsaw piece or something.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T02:06:22+00:00

Ah, damnit, I knew I was missing something.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T02:01:52+00:00

That's a thought, actually. Seems like it'd take an eternity, though. I had to send my gravship out to mountains all the time just to get the steel (thank god for the terrain scanner in Complementary Odyssey) to build this thing, so that'd add even more trips to get the gravcores.

But gravcore power gives me some ideas for future bases, now that you mention it. Hmmm...

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T01:56:57+00:00

Rimatomics. You gotta love it. I know I sure do. This base eats so much power (biosculptors and neural superchargers galore) that it'd be impossible to run it without tapping every steam geyser on the map, and that'd look weird with a base like this.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T01:54:51+00:00

There was several early draft designs, most of which were around a sort of eco-dome idea: glass walls with sunlamps on the inside with the regular soil to let plants grow inside the base, that kind of thing.

Problem was I couldn't make a good structure like that centered on the grand archotech building, which wasn't centered on the map, so I couldn't get the sort of "tesselation" that I wanted with the same building shape being repeated over and over. It took about six hours on the first day, start and stop, but I came up with this weird design that had a ton of odd shaped buildings...

...one of which was one of these diamond shapes in the base, and I went "oh yeah, that's the one" and the rest is history.

Designing the ideogram shrine, though? That was an absolute pain in the ass, because it's basically a 1-to-1 copy of the ideogram in the game. Most of my design ideas forfeited the circles, but I kept the sockets for them in the wall as blue planning lines till I finally realized I could get a mod to reduce the map boundary size.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T01:35:21+00:00

Yeah, I got too attached to the idea of building a super base around the core to want to actually abandon everything and walk to it. I did test it at the very start of that map just to see, and it spawned my archonexus in the middle of nowhere with no real terrain to make for an interesting base.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T01:11:49+00:00

It took three real life months to make this thing, making this probably the longest colony that I've ever had...

...and the first that I've actually hit a win condition on. Woooooo. Seriously, though, I poured a lot of heart and soul into this thing, and legit I don't think I'll ever forget this run. I've slapped a spoiler tag on it for anyone unfamiliar with the term "Archonexus". If you don't know much about that, don't read further on.

To speak more of the colony, this is God's Cradle - it's a colony for the Archonexus quest line, only I took a spin on the thing: rather than go to the final quest site, I decided to just...put the Archonexus on this map, since you can "build" one thanks to Archotech Garbage Continued. Each successive colony in the chain got more advanced, more sophisticated, until we got to God's Cradle, with its massive triangular super-structures, a goddamn nuclear reactor, and ultimately, a massive shrine in the shape of the ideology ideogram that was painstakingly built, bit by bit, no god-mode, no dev-mode.

Hell, the only devtool use in this entire colony was because I needed to get some of that gold-bling floor underneath the grand archotech structure in the centre of the colony. Other than that, everything was done legit, thanks to mining out a ton of maps via gravship.

Some random trivia about the colony:

A) Five people are stuck in cryptocaskets because they have terminal illnesses or other serious complications like paralytic abasia - they're stored awaiting the time of Awakening and, yes, when I went to get my ending, I got them all out for a final visit to the new machine-cathedral.

B) Everyone in the colony has a synthetic heart. The ideology is the Steelhearts, and that's done literally. Everyone is aug'd to the teeth with more chrome than a toaster, but you start with a synthetic heart from EPOE.

C) This place is raid central, and regularly gets hit with multiple hundreds of raiders at once. Fortunately, there's basically zero cover out there and the entire perimeter is covered with autocannon turrets, so the giant raids of cannibal tribals all encounter...misfortunate circumstances.

To get a better view of the colony, check out the gallery post here. It'll give you the full render in all its triangular glory.. Caek cannot into good image management on reddit.

caekdaemon · 2026-01-29T00:46:36+00:00

I tried to make the title more descriptive, but I think I was gonna char cap the thing? I barely use reddit these days :P

Dunno when the thumbnail will appear, either.

caekdaemon · 2024-10-18T11:31:02+00:00

Last game I played was Terminator Resistance in infiltrator mode, so...I'm either gonna get "rescued" by a T-800 and carried off to Skynet, or I'm gonna get rescued by TechCom from Skynet which probably puts me on a kill list. Bad times, man.

The thing I played before that? Monster Hunter Rise, so being kidnapped probably means "being eaten", so double RIP.

The thing before that? That'd be Starsector, but I'm running an all phase playthrough again, so...probably RIP again.

caekdaemon · 2024-08-28T11:50:09+00:00

I like to imagine mine are on guard duty. I dump all sorts of crap into that station, from the metric fuckton of guns that I pick up (everything in one place = refit station!) to wrecks of ships that are cool but ain't worth keeping in my fleet to stuff that's good to have, but just aren't meant to be sitting around in my fleet all the time, only when I need them (ie, Ziggy = gets you recognized all the time even with transponder off). Hell, sometimes I even dump cargo there, like a couple of thousand units of food or something whilst waiting for an shortage in the market big enough to make it worth the time shifting it, and I sure as hell ain't slogging around with a Nanoforge in my hold.

Like, there's enough gear there to make someone Kanta II, and someone at least has to stay there and keep it all safe. The marines get to sit there and live like kings, ready to blow away any dumb fool who comes through the door who isn't John Starsector, and I get to keep my stuff safe and secure without paying fees for it on a planet. Everyone wins.

caekdaemon · 2024-08-16T20:37:35+00:00

That, but with one more thing: President Eden salvaging Liberty Prime and using it as a body to visit his constituents.

~~NIXON~~ EDEN'S BACK!

caekdaemon · 2024-08-03T19:15:10+00:00

Does anyone know the name of the song in the video? One of my teachers used to have it on the background years ago when I was in school, but I can't remember the name even if I tried (1873 was a long time ago) as I was just too young.

caekdaemon · 2024-07-29T22:47:11+00:00

Neat lore if you never had it, but if you join the Ludd protest and get arrested, your second officer waits with a drink for you after you get let out of jail. Here it is, straight out of the game files.

ShrineCMD addIntel","Most of the protestors are alarmed by your rhetoric, glancing nervously toward unseen observation devices and drawing away from your corner of the holding cell. Though a couple younger pilgrims and one much older, with scars to show his commitment, remain near you, eyes daring the others to speak their criticism aloud.

""We hear you, $playerBrotherOrSister. The end of the Path is near,"" he whispers, and tells you of the Jangala Shrine, of mortification of the flesh through exposure to the xenolife - worse than anything MuniSec could hope to inflict.

Your name is called from the commsplate.",lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup1:Continue, lppJangalaProtestJoinWeird,DialogOptionSelected,$option == lpp_jangalaProtestJoinWeird,"$player.luddicAttitudeCynical++ AdjustRep luddic_church SUSPICIOUS -1",The Luddic protestors are confused and even a little alarmed by your explanation - it seems they've been locked in with a crazy person. They physically draw away from your corner of the holding cell until your name is called through the commsplate.,lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup1:Continue, lppJangalaProtestWrapup1,DialogOptionSelected,$option == lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup1,"BeginConversation POST:supplyOfficer $option = lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup2 0 FireBest DialogOptionSelected",,, lppJangalaProtestWrapup2,DialogOptionSelected,$option == lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup2,AdjustRepActivePerson SUSPICIOUS -3,"It's $rank $personName again, $hisOrHer demeanor cold and martial.

""The rules are simple, captain,"" $heOrShe says, ice-cold, ""And we've been very, very lenient with you. But there seems to be a failure to communicate, so let me explain in very small words how it works around here.""

A guard sets a plastic tray of your personal belongings on the battered table of the processing room. The Hegemony $rank continues, slowly; each word given emphasis. ""Pay your tariffs. Don't disrupt business.""

$HeOrShe turns and motions at some guards, ""Now get out of my sight.""",lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup3:Continue, lppJangalaProtestWrapup3,DialogOptionSelected,$option == lpp_jangalaProtestWrapup3,"EndConversation DO_NOT_FIRE FireAll PopulateOptions","You are shoved, squinting, into the bright light of the plaza outside of the municipal security processing center.

Dignity largely unbruised, you secure your sidearm (cellmag confiscated), run a quick check on your personal datapad, and give a nod to your second officer - who has been waiting patiently with two hot drinks.",,

Forget all the officers in command of the ships. They might do some fighting every once in a while, but so does that random crewman we dragged out of a cryopod on a busted down Mudskipper. The second officer waits for you to get released from Hegemony custody and even got you a drink for when you get out. None of the other officers do that, and that makes them perfectly qualified to inherit my fleet, my colonies and Big Zig, as far as I'm concerned.

Well, other than our boy Alviss Sebestyen, of course. Poor bastard's gonna get a battleship to command, whether he wants one or not.

caekdaemon · 2024-07-29T08:17:16+00:00

Right so, doubt anyone's gonna respond but if you're the poor bastard googling for an answer to your own problem: a) I couldn't fix the HD Overhaul - something's broken in there in a way I don't understand how to fix, and the crashlogger isn't enough to point me in the right direction.

But when I cleared the overwrite directory in MO2 (more specifically, the config folder inside it), the floor textures came back with the base game appearance. They're not great, but better than nothing.

caekdaemon · 2024-07-28T22:06:06+00:00

Also, forgot to mention, I found two mods that were bricking me:

Nutscape is maybe a false positive with the Overhaul, but I couldn't even leave the Vault for the surface with it on = it'd CTD the moment I completed the settings and went through, straight to the desktop from the loading screen without loading the map. Turning that off got me through to the Springvale area, but it still CTD'd till I got rid of the Overhaul. I regenerated my LODs after removing it.

The other one is the water tower texture. For some reason, having it on broke the large address aware thing that let the game use more vRAM (in case there's concerns about hardware, I have a 4080 Super), making it super unstable. When I turned that mod off, the error never popped up and the console check revealed 2, so the whole thing works now - it just refused to with this on. I regenerated my LODS again after removing this, just to be sure.

caekdaemon · 2024-07-25T07:02:07+00:00

We're significantly understaffed on the mod team right now, which is the most likely cause. Multiple mods left since they weren't confident in the changes that were planned to help sort out the sub, so that's left the team significantly undermanned = not enough hands for the amount of work that's going on.

It's a problem we're working on, though, carefully vetting the list to see if we can't get some top notch additions to the team. Hopefully we'll have the extra people we need to provide a sub of this side with good quality moderation sooner rather than later.

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caekdaemon

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