Here is a new vonBiomes Special Edition with all the Moons being at the center of extensions and orbits coming to life! With a new "Moon City" biome, and daytime compatibility for all other moon missions, your battlefields get a major expansion. And when orbiting a planet in your Leopard dropship, there are now finally things happening - other ships, stations, and even a Dropship Convoy, depending on how many Mechs you ship around in storage...
vonBiomes 26 Mod Downloads:
Direct Download on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/152235266
or on Nexus and Steam.
What's new in vonBiomes 26?
New Biome: Moon City
This new one features hand-crafted mega structures built on the surface: huge pillars with domes, radar dishes, and platforms. I have built new map tiles for the new biome and 3D models, materials, and textures for the massive structures. I have taken extra care that nothing is overlapping with, e.g. bases and spawn points, but if you encounter any troubles, please let me know! It is always possible that something slips through. The new Mon City biome also is using the new lighting, weather, and sky expansion in vonBiomes 26 for supporting various daytimes instead of only night for moon/vacuum worlds:
Open up the Moons!
Moon Biomes have only had night missions before - not anymore!
All vonBiomes Moon types and also vanilla ones can now also be happening with morning hours, evenings, dusk and dawn, or even afternoons. This brings the sun back - because a moon not only has a dark side. I built a whole new system in vonBiomes to make missions on the various moon biomes compatible with special lighting with sometimes a thin atmosphere and the stars always present.
New Leopard cockpit view
The static and somewhat stale cockpit look & never felt satisfying me. Now the view features a moving camera, and I have built and crafted new animation for panels and computer screens. Those also show the current owner of the solar system, and a merc company logo on the side. I hope you like it!
Dropship Convoy
I am sure you have also asked yourself the same question: "Where are all the Mechs stored, which we carry around with us on the Leopard?"
There is now an answer to that. Depending on the amounts of Mechs you have on your roster, up to four Dropships are spawned as a convoy for your mercenary company. Furthermore, the above-mentioned mod options are there to disable the Dropship convoy if you prefer or your performance is impacted.
In the future, I also plan to make an optional C-bill cost to that, like if you have more Mechs, you also need to rent more transporters - or as has been suggested on the vonMods Discord, build a secondary mod for that.
Orbits are alive
When in a planetary orbit, there are now (random) dropships and even a chance for stations, traversing around the planet. This was quite a difficult task, and I spent many hours getting things to work and being possible within many restraints - and finally it got somewhere to work smoothly enough.
I think it is important to not be alone in a dynamic and action-packed universe like Battletech with its rich backdrop of stories. This was also true for one goal in vonBiomes: to bring cities on the outskirts of missions, and civilization and human-built structures back to the battlefield. The new orbit ships extend on that, and they also now give a good reason, where the many Mechs, Tanks, and VTOLs are actually coming from in-mission. We have an invasion to go to!;)
In the future, I plan to make the number of ships and stations in orbit depending on in-game parameters like tech level or missions in the solar system. And if you encounter a performance impact, there is also a mod option to deactivate all orbit add-ons already in the current new version 26.
Quick note: if the new orbit animations and dropships are not appearing: please be sure to save your vonBiomes Mod Option once at least and then restart the game.
It may be necessary so that the game gets the correct setting entry on the game.ini file.
More Lighting and Weather Updates
Much more fine-tuning (as usual) did go into the vonBiomes dynamic lighting model and I have further been working on the fallout of the DLC7 breakdown, after which I had to rebuild much of mod and re-tune how all the many parameters and variables play together.
In vonBiomes 26, I have calibrated many layers of the dynamic lighting model, which is capable of serving unique looks at every mission to you.
The galaxy is not-always-the-same, and neither are the planets your missions take place on. The integrated vonBiomes lighting and weather system reflects that with a ton of calculations based on a broad spectrum of factors, and I have balanced the system further. Sometimes it really feels like tuning a musical instrument with dozens of strings;) Crazy stuff. Much work has also gone into nighttime lighting too in vonBiomes 26, which now reacts better to sky bodies and nightly fogs.
Mechwarriors, here is something to check!
Since the new version has changed some of the many calculations under the hood, it is highly recommended to check your mod options, and it is best to start with the recommended standards:
- If you have adjusted the numerical values of the mod options like contrast, brightness, saturation, GI strength, please set them to the recommended standard values first and take a look at some (not only one;) mission - you can adjust after that to your needs, hardware, and liking.
- If your GPU is modern-ish, you can activate GI, high quality clouds, and high quality shadows in Mod Options, too.
- And as usual: please make sure no other mod is overriding (at least if not intended), especially in terms of weather and sky, otherwise many parts are cut from the mod.
If you do not have the Mod Option mod installed, here is the download on Nexus: https://www.nexusmods.com/mechwarrior5mercenaries/mods/537
I probably forgot other details, extensions, and smaller stuff - the new vonBiomes 26 is quite a package and brings new life to Mechwarrior 5.
And it is you, who makes this possible. Thanks for your support and contributions; it means a lot and fuels the ongoing development with ☕🍺🍕
Cheers and have fun with number 26, Mechwarrior!