God, it's dead in here. I really wish Stardock would make modding a priority.

from GalCiv3 Forums

I just want to make it clear that I'm not criticizing anyone on the forums - I just really feel like Stardock has made it clear in the early going that modding support is not a priority and I think that that has had a discouraging effect on the modding community. There are some great mods on here but I've noticed that new mods and even updates of existing mods has slowed to a trickle.

Stardock has been one of my favorite companies - not just developers, favorite companies - for a long time. I just really feel like they screwed the pooch on supporting a modding community in a big, big way. The game has been out for 5 and a half months and there is still no announcement of workshop support for total conversions. There's no easy way to download and add buildings. It's still ludicrously difficult to do even very basic things like creating color sets and custom shipsets.

I've built my own Star Trek mod for personal use (I can't distribute it because I don't own the ship designs), and the mod sucks because I'm not talented and I don't have any collaborators. Paraphrasing a post I read once: this game has got a Ferrarri engine and we're using it to power golf cart. The untapped potential of this game is enormous but I'm not sure we're going to build the community necessary to unlock it.

Anyway, I guess I just wanted to vent. For those of you doing active work in the mod community, I thank you. I'm not saying things are never going to change but I will say that SD has squandered the early excitement that accompanies the release of any game. If a modding community like the one I imagined for this game is going to get going I would guess it will be many months from now, perhaps even years. My big worry is that there won't be a very big modding community at all. It's just a huge bummer.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I bet Stardock wanted to make sure they squished all the early game issues first. Then the last couple of months I get the impression they were focusing on Ashes. IMO they should soon start pumping out new updates to help the AI and then finally the modding community. 

Although really Ashes is a different team and shouldn't have affected GalCiv, but this is the impression I got...

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Full-on workshop support is the key, tbh. Releasing a mod here and on the nexus might get you a thousand downloads, but the workshop allows you to reach an audience massively larger. I know several of the early full XML modders from a few months back have pretty much switched to just doing downloadable ships or races, because the distribution channels for real mods are presently so poor. 

 

Consider - Gauntlet's mod (the most popular actual mod on the Nexus, as opposed to a collection of graphical assets) has less than 2000 unique downloads since June. Meanwhile, the most popular item on the workshop is at nearly 10k subscribers, and was released nearly a month later. Only 4 mods on Nexus have over 500 downloads in total, and those may not even be unique downloads. With these kind of download numbers, it's hard to see much point in releasing TC mods. Over on Paradox's forum, a decent mod at this stage in the game's life cycle can expect 5-digit download figures per release; here, you're doing well if you break 100 downloads before the next base game patch breaks your mod. 

 

I'll keep writing my own mod as long as people keep playing it, but tbh I agree that SD's strategy has strangled any serious modding community in the crib through limiting the workshop to ship sets and races made using the in-game editor. It's bizarre, really, since the game is so very moddable; the xml is easy to learn and the in-built mod folder is perfectly good for the task (it wouldn't even take much effort to build a mod launcher for it). I also doubt that we'll see any resurgence; most of the people who would've formed the core of such a community have largely drifted away now, and the few who remain have mostly halted activity to wait for the 1.4 changes (there's little point trying serious alterations when 1.4 is changing the way the economy works). 

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I don`t do Mods on steam. I go Nexus.

Also, the main game should be concentrated on first, Mods later. Mods only work as well as the quality of the game, ie  fixed and free of most problems.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting naselus, reply 2

I also doubt that we'll see any resurgence; most of the people who would've formed the core of such a community have largely drifted away now.

This is exactly what I fear. I think you might be right. At this point, I'm thinking it will only be a small cohort of obsessives rather than the large, vibrant community that could have been.

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Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I feel your pain and agree 100%. If not for naselus mod I'd be sitting around twiddling my thumbs or playing another game, as (in the current state) the game is going to take a long time to get polished.

 

Even the workshop support is pretty weak right now. I got thousands of ships, but nothing to but play in a one man role play game. Nobody else to play with as it is too complex to get the AI to play along as the downloaded faction and actually use the appropriate ships.

If the game was close to a state of completion I might agree with Seafireliv, but there is a loooong road ahead of us, and many playstyles and map sizes don't seem to be a priority, not too mention the host of bugs and/or half implemented features.

 

There is a lot to this game, it's very complex, why not let us actually play around with it and improve it on our own (and properly share the work) while we wait?

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Oh, I have a mod on the back burner. It's currently being converted to 1.4. I won't let you down.