u/ChillAhriman

So I've put together a lot of changes with this little modlist for a specific kind of playthrough (that will absolutely not break apart when I get stomped by an unlucky raid! Haha), mainly: transforming the world. Like, socio-politically.

The lore of this world is as follows: a nearby human planet (that's just a measly ~40 lightyears away), begun a colonization program of a desert world centuries ago, through which they'd take various sorts of criminals, turn them into impids, and use them as forced labor to build the initial infrastructure after the bare minimum terraforming had been completed. They also created two variants of impids on-site: tadpids and toxpids, not completely specialized for their tasks due to technological constraints, but nonetheless genetically modified to better perform fire and waste controls. Eventually, the isolated incidents with the prisoners became a rebellion, and the planet-prison wardens decided to leave, but not without leaving the imps a final fuck you: activating a mechanoid protocol to have them hunt the imps forever.

Through the centuries, the nearby human civilization has attempted to reassert its control over the planet twice, both with similar results: they overestimated the dangers of the planet, the colonization groups fell apart due to the attacks from the mechanoids and the imps and their own internal disputes, and suffered technological regressions until they became unable to go back home. Thus, I have several types of factions in the planet: new settlers (civil outlanders, hostile outlanders and rebel waster pirates), old settlers (from vanilla factions expanded - settlers: rough settlers and bandits), and impid tribes (red imps, blue imps (tadpids), green imps (toxpids), and imp confederations).

Now, the cool thing about my new imp factions is that some of them begin with supremacist+raider ideologions, but they're not natural enemies. What does this mean? That their natural good will is -100 at the start of the game, *but* if I manage to reform their ideologions, I can change their natural goodwill to 0, making them non-hostile factions. Imp confederations are the only impid faction type that starts without supremacist/raider, because they're groups of smaller, varied impid tribes that have banded together through diplomacy.

I have various goals in the playthrough: form a self-sufficient and withstanding impid settlement, achieve technological advancement, unite the impid tribes, wipe out the settlers who want to eradicate the imps, and achieve world peace.

Some important mods that I'm using in this playthrough:

All Ideoligions Are Fluid - This allows me to reform an ideologion that isn't mine under some conditions. The conditions are fairly to meet in-game, but I'll put some roleplay into it - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2872901762
Vanilla Outposts Expanded and World Domination - To transition into a Grand Strategy playthrough mid-game, when half my goals have been met - https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2688941031 & https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3646291383
WVC - Xenotypes and Genes - It has some costemic genes that I wanted to give my imp xenotypes, I think I've properly disabled most of its features though - https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2886992038
Xenotype Spawn Control - I wasn't capable of modding the xeno proportions of the PawnKinds (this is, pawns that may appear in your playthrough that aren't affiliated to any faction), so I've used this to make the vast majority of them be impids https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891975564
Vanilla Factions Expanded: Settlers - To give me a big bad to confront through the mid-game - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2052918119

While I'm not using them in my playthrough, I used the files of Impid Races Expanded ( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3693105485 ) and Demonic Impids ( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3247542085 ) to quickly learn how to make simple mods, so shout-out to them.

Our only missing sister is Silva. She took a shot to the brain... And then another. She ended with two permanent brain injuries and 10% consciousness, so she's been resting in her casket for a week already, waiting for the engine to be ready. We can only hope we'll find the means to heal her in our destination.

This run was really fun, but also so tense! I tried a few runs to reach the ending at 100% difficulty many years ago, and always lost at some point. Then I moved onto more relaxed, heavily modded runs for a long while. I returned to the game after a year-long hiatus and decided to give classic gameplay another go. So that's a debt settled with this game, and didn't even use turrets! Next time I'll lower the threat scale to 10% and get me some mods to tame dragons.