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I. Summary:

This mod adds the new faction, Arian Empire in the Alphard system in the northwest of the core worlds, nearest the Westenesse system. The original idea for this mod is simple: I want to pilot mechs. Thus, the core ships of the Empire consist of massive Expansion Ships which resemble stations rather than battleships. They are slow and cumbersome, but all of their core modules (which you control) come with the special Panzerkleid system - which spawns a special mech you control fly around with.

The Empire's tactics revolves around these Expansion Ships. They do have smaller ships in the fleet, but they are all slaved to their home bases, much like their fighters. And speaking of fighters, the faction exclusively uses mechs and tanks for fighters. The faction's lineup is filled with short-ranged brawlers, built to slug it out with near-peer ships or swarm around larger ones to slow them down enough for the Expansion Ships to get into position and finish the job using immense firepower.

In-Depth Details:
This roster is made of two types of ship: First is the Expansion Ship, large, armed to the teeth, and equipped with multiple shield generators centered around a *very* fragile core. The ship itself is too slow to get into the thick of battle, so you use its shipsystem to generate your Panzerkleid and join the lighter forces. The second are the Dedicated Combat Craft. Small, cheap to produce but packs respectable firepower. These will make up your frontline and they come with special mods that make them extremely cheap to run and makes losing one not a big deal.

The ships all come with a base black coat with green undertones and gold trims. I recommend using a more military-themed portrait pack to go with the theme, such as Haze's Girls Frontline Portrait Pack! Yes, they are all girls too.

The weapon list features cannons and seemingly low-tech gear. Facsimiles of WWII era weapons such as flak cannons and rocket artillery, for the most part. This is juxtaposed by mech infantry armed with bolt-action rifles and hand grenade. And just like their inspirations, the faction works well with slow, grinding warfare.




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II. Latest Update:



Latest Minor Patch : 1.0.1

A. New features:

- Light mode: Poking around and playtesting has suggested there might be an engine-related problem with spawning AI fleets involving ships with modules. That is - every single expansion ship offered by this mod. Due to the fact that this causes a critical error and leads to a crash, I have prepared this workaround for people who wish to play with Arian ships but would prefer not to suffer crashes caused by this problem later in the game.

What does light mode do?

Simple - it stops the Arian worlds from spawning. It seems you can still start out with an Arian commission (for commissioned crews, for example) using Nexerelin, and there doesn't seem to be a problem caused by this quirk.

For you to obtain Arian ships in a game on Light mode, two new submarkets were added to Nortia and Nova Maxios respectively.

Another benefit to using light mode is that there will be 1 less faction operating in the sector, and less active planets means better performance late game.

That said, you will not be able to access some features such as the new trade goods provided by Aria without the planets, but if you're fine with just playing with Arian ships and weapons then I can fully recommend playing on Light mode.

How do I turn on Light mode?

1. Go to data\config\settings.json
2. Find the line that says "aria_LightMode":false,
3. Change it to "aria_LightMode":true,
4. Save.
5. Start a new game

[!] Important [!] : Light mode takes effect at system generation and will do nothing for an ongoing save! In any case, you shouldn't be adding Aria or updating to v.1.0.0 if you still have an ongoing game!

B. New ships and fighters:

- New, massive Expansion ships:



- The Freikorps, (mostly) midline ship and fighter skins:


...and a heavily refitted one:



- New Panzerkleid, Schwarzer Regen:



- Improved Panzerkleid, Weisser Schnee with a new ship system:




- New Command Tanks, able to command a large number of fighter LPCs at once and at low deployment cost, but cannot replace fighters:



- New cosmopanzers, supports, half-gravs, infantry and cavalry:



- New unique starting ships (Nexerelin only):



...the ship comes with the camo on the left, but you can go into the graphics\ships\destroyers\ and rename aria_destroyer_nashorn_black.png to aria_destroyer_nashorn.png if you wish to use the standard faction paint style.

- New HVB for Vayra's sector:



...if you don't have Vayra's sector, or, like me, you are having trouble getting it to work, the Cosmopanzer 1000 "Ratte" was also added as a super ship start if you have Nexerelin, so it is not necessary to install Vayra's sector to try out the Ratte in your campaign!

C. New weapons:
Lots of new weapons, rounding out all types of ballistics weapons from small to large! Here are a few examples:



D. New hullmods:













E. New Industries:









F. New Trade Goods:

[!] Important [!] : These are not available when using Light mode!





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III. Lore:

Just like Yuri Expedition, the concept is so far removed from Vanilla that there is no way that this mod is lore friendly. I did, however, add some internal lore regarding each ship and weapon system, because I enjoy that sort of thing. Also, Aria and Caparice share the same lore universe, so there's that.

- So, first things first: How did they get to the sector?
In the early years, around the time of the First AI war, a dimensional crack appeared in the dense, intractable jungles of Keine, of the Alphard System - a middling Persean League member with a Monarchical Polity. The crack originated from the Arian home dimension. For many cycles, clandestine operators roamed the world, blending in with the populace in part due to their natural resemblance to humans, in particular, human girls. They siphoned all information they could - human language, first and foremost, then culture, economy, technology, and military strength. All of this was in preparation for a much-awaited expansion into 'Dimension Drei' - the endless Lebensraum.

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IV. Known Issues:

- The Panzerkleid system might be a bit iffy if you set your flagship to autopilot (since the script checks for the ship you are piloting) - I hope to improve this in the future

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V. Incompatibilities:

- High Tech Expansion bricks when activated alongside Aria. *UPDATE: Please check Posts section for a fix to the crashcode posted by HighOnMemes!

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VI. Still to come:

- More story missions fleshing out the lore

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VII. Special Thanks:

This mod was made possible only by the generosity of the community spriters who made their works available within the Kitbash Database and the Free Community Sprite Resources. It wouldn't have done for a faction made entirely out of (not)gundams! That would have been dull (and a big pain)!

Shellster - a particularly big thanks for his nice and boxy shipset in Spiral Arms II. Just what I was looking for!

Agreion - many thanks for providing the market and encounter BGM! It's really great!

Mechs are heavily edited sprites from Mobile Suit Gundam: Cross Dimension. Actually, some are so heavily edited, I might as well have made them from scratch...  :'(

Sounds:
Taira Komori, taira-komori.jpn.org
Kyutwo
C&C Red alert sounds
Jim Rogers, Mark DiAngelo
WWII weapon sounds
Company of heroes

Decals and portraits:
milihime taisen
peddinghaus-decals.de

Commodities, Industries, Hullmods Art:
geduan
asuteroid
robert knight
aamond
u.s.m.c
h2so4
honzawa yuuichirou
sibu
ddal
ryosios
armored core
genya
androth
roke
15k
blewandwhite
shigeta satoshi
hariken
niko p
108

For coding and internals-related help:
Alex
Histidine
Sundog

For help with German terms and word construction
Nia Tahl
Xenoit

Scripts:
Black magic to remove minus hullmods if over OP by Dark.Revenant

References:
Most everything related to faction creation by Tartiflette
Panzerkleid takes control of fighter by Tartiflette
Drop Booster by Tartiflette

And again, a big thank you to the Starsector team, who created this wonderful game that has, by now, claimed hundreds thousands of hours of my life.

And finally, you. Thank you for trying out ARIA. I hope you enjoy it!