TimGraham2001

Join Date 02/2008

Mass Effect/Systems Alliance Mod

Hello everyone,

A couple months ago, a mod appeared on the Steam Workshop for the game Stellaris. It was called "Systems Alliance Ships" and was a mod that used models for the Systems Alliance from the Mass Effect games.

This mod became rather popular fairly quickly, however Steam removed it from the workshop, citing that the models had been stolen from a "Mass Effect mod for Sins of a Solar Empire."

Personally, I hate mod thieves with a passion. Considering the fact that a big majority of mod creators (myself included) would happily give permission to use our content as long as credit was given, there is no logical reason to steal anything from anyone. And if I had been the author(s) of that mod, I would've been beyond pissed.

That being said, I see a lot of messages across the Stellaris community desperately wishing that mod would return. People seem to be absolutely in love with those ships.

I'm an author of one of the most popular and subscribed-to mods for the game, New Ship Classes & More. I am always getting messages from people asking if I can add the ME ships, to which I have to reply that I can't because the original mod was stolen.

The purpose of this post is to attempt to get in touch with the author of the original models and see if there is any possibility that anything can be worked out in terms of reposting this mod on the workshop, with all due credit where it is deserved.

If this is not possible, or the author does not wish to provide this permission, then nothing will be done. But it would be really cool to have these ships available for the game again, but this time have it done the RIGHT way, with full permission and credit given.

If the author of this mod is willing to do this, please contact me, whoever you are. No one knows for sure which mod these ships came from, so I have no idea who to contact directly. If you are the original author, you may reply to this thread or contact me on Steam under the name CaptainX3.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to read this.

Sincerely,

Tim Graham aka CaptainX3

modding

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GoaFan77

Join Date 10/2008

+629

Well Dawn of the Reapers would be the likely suspect, as its the main Mass Effect mod for Sins and the only one I know of that was publicly released. You should probably ask them directly.

However, this has been happening a lot to many big Sins of a Solar Empire mods. Star Wars, Star Trek, now Mass Effect. The whole not asking before taking assets thing is really hurting the chances of good relations between the Sins and Stellaris modding communities, which is really too bad. This kind of thing did not happen with Sins predecessors, Homeworld and Empire at War. Perhaps by lowering the barrier to entry, Steam workshop has inadvertently encourage this kind behavior by making it easy for those who do not care or do not want to make a proper mod project to get large followings re-purposing others work without permission.

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One of the users here has given me the name of the original author of the models that I'm referring to, and I've reached out to that person to see what the response is.

But you're 100% right. Stealing mods/models is one hell of a lousy way to start community relations between the two games. Sadly, Sins and Stellaris are so similar to each other in basic concept that most people here probably own both games, meaning there's no reason for great relations between the two communities and lots of mod sharing. And it's a real disappointment that a few thieves stand to ruin that for everyone.

I haven't done much Sins modding myself, although I've used lots of Sins mods. I'm guessing that the models used for Sins are easily converted to Stellaris, which is something the two communities should be celebrating and sharing, because modeling from scratch for Stellaris is both difficult and expensive (Maya is the only format the game will read). That being the case, there's a severe shortage of good ship sets for Stellaris, which is probably what led to thieves grabbing models.

Hopefully the two communities can eventually reach an equilibrium and work together for both games... but the mod stealing has to stop, it's ridiculous for sure.

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Nomada_Firefox

Join Date 02/2008

+21

If modders defend the rule from do not take nothing from everybody without permission, there will not be problems.

The unique community where I have seen people defending how they can take things from everybody without ask, it is the EAW/FOC community, a guy named Jedi_Clone_X2 from BattleFront Commander (who at the end uses thousands of nicknames around the net) and Burnstrobe from Vong at War defended how they can take everything from a Star Wars mod because anybody can be the owner.

It can be true reading Disney rules. But by respect, for years people have respected and taking in consideration the work made by others.

At the end, the attemps from this bad people named themself as great modders when they are not more than leeches were stopped by Moddb rules and other legal attemps.

Here at SOASE and other communities. Never I had a problem. I have shared freely with everybody when they asked me and everybody shared with me when I asked them. Respect and be friendly is the main matter from everything.

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