Dark Avian Shipsets (Advanced) Mod

Dark Avian Shipsets (Advanced) Mod

The Dark Avian Shipset mod adds 12 new, dark Avian ship appearance types to the game, each equipped with appropriately color coordinated engines, lights, and forcefields. These new ship appearances will only be useable by the player. The only way to get the AI to use them is to create a custom empire with one of these 12 ship appearance types selected and adding said empire into your new game via the Phoenix looking symbol next to that empire in the empire creation screen. The 12 colors available with this mod are seen in the image right above this paragraph.

NOTE: This mod is only meant to introduce a new graphical culture for shipsets. This mod doesn’t support any other form of culture addon (like city sets, species appearances, etc), and those that come with this mod are NOT meant to be used. DO NOT select them. This is a vanilla issue I cannot fix. Pretend they don’t exist and choose another option.

The “pureness” of each color is dependent upon the star and system lighting of the system you are currently in. Each effects each ship color differently. If you start with a blue shipset in a red star system, it will look more purple, if you start in a blue system with red shipsets, then it will again look a bit off. This is not ugly by any means, but you will notice the different in color for most of these shipsets when you go from a red-base to blue-based system and vice versa. I cannot fix this without royally screwing up the game’s lighting system, which I don’t think should be done anyway.

Update 5.3 – 6/7/17
Updated Mod to support Ship Classes Extended by Princess Stabbity & TheGrandN (Nessa)

Update for color-coordinated habitats in progress. Please be patient as a take the time to properly recolor the new habitat diffuse. Thanks.

This mod is an updated version of Alastor’s Dark Avian Shipsets. His original mod has set idle for so long that I decided to reupload the mod here instead of seeing his hard work go to waste. Full credit & Authorship of this mod goes to Alastor for his hard work in forming these ship appearance types. Alastor returned here and gave me his blessing for the continuation of my version of the mod. [This can be verified in the comments section.] I still give full credit and authorship of this one to Alastor.

While it’s technically not a required mod, it is very highly recommended that you use Antharis’ Stellar Trails Disabler mod in conjuction with this mod. The Disabler mod removes the blue “streak” behind ships whenever they move. This looks particularly strange behind all but the blue-based Dark Avian variations, and thus the need for the mod.

Stellar Trails Disabler mod also works with the latest patch. Ignore outdated version warnings!
Or you can use Clean Space – No Exhaust Trails by ButtJunkie if you want the same thing that doesn’t throw warnings.

This Dark Avian Shipsets (Advanced) mod is part of a series of dark hull based ship mods in a collection called “Dark Species Shipsets”. This collection adds shipsets with a dark hull and 12 color choices to all 7 main species for your enjoyment. You can visit the Dark Species Collection link at the top of this description to be able to subscribe to all the mods together, or you can look through this listing below and mix and match as you like. Other than Dark Avian here you have:

Dark Arthropoid Shipsets
Dark Fungoid Shipsets (Recolored)
Dark Mammalian Shipsets
Dark Molluscoid Shipsets
Dark Plantoid Shipsets
Dark Reptilian Shipsets

As I said in the disclaimer above, my purpose with this updated Dark Avian mod is to provide updated and maintained compatibility for Alastor’s original work. With this in mind, I have not only updated compatibility, I have increased it. Below is a listing of all mods that this Dark Avian mod currently has support for:

ZBeautiful Battles – by Blackthorn (Should be fully compatible)
Downscaled Ships – by Chondrite is now compatible via the Dark Avian Shipsets – Downscaled Ship Patch.
New Ship Classes & More V5.0 or New Ship Classes & More: Streamlined – by CaptainX3
ISB Balance and/or ISB Doomsday – by Ankain
Ship Classes Extended – by Princess Stabbity & TheGrandN (Nessa)
Stellar Expansion – Voidcraft – by King Lemming
Realistic Ships – by Tal Ara’nh
(Important:: You will also require the use of the Dark Avian Shipsets – Realistic Ship Patch in order to use Realistic Ships properly. Without this, Realistic Ship’s species-based Heavy Dreadnought will not appear for any of these cultures. Please read the patch’s description for important details.
NOTICE: All the mods supported here may not be compatible with each other, please check each mod page before using them together.

A very special thank you to Alastor: for creating this mod, and very kindly giving his blessing for this version of the mod, which I hope is a tribute to his excellent work.
Special thank you to Borei: for helping finish my education on what I needed to make this mod work, and for patiently helping me solve some strange phantom bugs I was having developing it.
Thank you to CaptainX3: for assisting me with setting up this modpage and helping design some of the “special” mod images you see throughout this modpage.
Thank you to Antharis: for helping settle any worries about competing over a purple Avian shipset, and giving me permission to use some of his work as a starting point for my Violet colored variant.