Dev Diary #18: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Chiss-mas!
Chiss planetary colonisation, Waypoint Stations, the Galactic Overhaul, Christmas gifts, and the v1.34 release schedule...
The Essential Guide now has 330 subscribers! We’re building a growing community, and I’d like to say a special thank you to my 34 paid subscribers, including several who joined to read the recent series on all planned playable factions coming to the mod (see parts one, two, three and four). Your support makes content creation and modding viable for me.
Chiss Ascendancy Overhaul
As regular readers know the way secondary space stations work is being totally overhauled in v1.34: you’ll be able to sell them, upgrade them, and there will be more of them with 7 orbital construction slots per planet!
Each faction will have defense platforms (including Golans or equivalents, and Hangar Containers), economic stations, and colony stations, a listening post, and a repair platform. As well as special shipyards for some factions.
Factions in the known Galaxy will share common designs like the XQ1 (with aesthetic variations) and design language, but in the Unknown Regions a new approach is needed. Not least because the Unknown Regions are so wild and dangerous.
Waypoint Stations
The Chiss, instead of having many different orbital structure types, will rely on a single secondary orbital structure type: the Waypoint I Station. This is the basic control node for the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet. It is essential to serious development of any Chiss planet, because unlike in the known Galaxy, you can’t simply build a load of Space Colonies in the Unknown Regions and leave them unguarded. The defenses have to come first.
The Waypoint I can be built on any planet with a Level I shipyard. It is armed with Heavy Megamasers and Proton Torpedoes, and two squadrons of Clawcraft.
The Waypoint I can then be upgraded to the Waypoint II, which has stronger hull armour and shielding, as well as a bank of Concussion Missiles. The Waypoint II in turn unlocks a whole range of upgrade options:
Waypoint II Trade Hub
Waypoint II Colony Station
Waypoint II Hangar Container
Waypoint II Repair Station
The Chiss have to invest more in order to set up these stations than other factions, owing to the many dangers of the region they call home; for instance to get an economic station they need to build: