Kolyn when you will add the fallen empires weaponry to the mod, i just question i know that you´re very busy with i want to thank you for this awesome mod.

@Atrion Not my immediate priority right now. Once I finish with adding those Ascended Empire subjects, I will move on to buildings. Maybe I should put it to a vote what comes after that, Hive Mind/Machines, or weapons? (Or Ringworld starts?)

Hey kolyn, I came up with a really hot, (at least in my mind) idea for a machine empire. More specifically for the rogue servitors. So, as it know in the current game of stellaris we have the ancient caretakers, who have survived a past contingency cycle (spoilers) and on their ringworlds are multiple ruined stasis chambers which once contained millions of not trillions of organics. This machine fallen empire obviously fell, but would if machine rogue servitors could become what the ancient caretakers were, producing sanctuary against threats from across the galaxy. This machine empire would take the role of a lost-fallen ancient caretaker and their prime directive would be to protect organically against crisis, or other vengeful awakened or fallen empires. They would also come with unique buildings, for example, “Stasis chambers” “millions upon millions of stasis chambers, fill the interior of this enormous room, where organically are out into stasis by the machine empire, to protect them from galactic threats.” The stasis chambers would produce a certain amount of society research, and some unity, (you know, because you’re protecting the weak meatbags). Also if the planet, ringworld or habitat these chambers are built on get overrun by a crisis or if another default empire captures them a series of events would occur to determine the fate of the individuals inside the chambers. I would go on but I've already written to much. This is just a suggestion though. I can expand in this if this becomes a thing. You can of course tweak this to your liking.

Also for the fanatic spiritualist ascended empires, you should allow them to have more than one holy world, much likes spiritualist fallen empire, and you would be able to declare all of them holy worlds, and if a default empire attempted to colonize them, or (god forbid planet crack them) another series of events would occur, with your people wanting you to take action against the empire who did it, so on and so forth

I know this has already been briefly discussed in the comments section, but I rather enjoy the diplomatic aspect of Zenith. The random events you got involving issues your subjects made me really feel like the galaxy was paying attention to the new "galactic superpower." I don't expect 2.0 to have that aspect again in the near future, since the base mechanics are still being worked on, but one thing you might consider for the future is adding more of these events both for subject empires and for the galaxy at large.

@sharee Sure. I did consider linking Servitors somewhat to the FE machine empire. The multiple holy planet is more difficult, as there needs to be some interesting gameplay or reason to do it aside from stacking +10% unity per planet until you run out of influence to use that edict.

@FiddleSticks I'm glad someone liked those events. They hardly ever get mentioned by anyone lol. If you really want me to bring those back I can take a peek and see if they are copy-and-paste jobs.

Is there any chance we could see the option to not use a fallen ship set like the previous version of the mod had? It would allow players to side-step the issue of new ship classes being boxes if they don't care about the AI building the ship classes.
Also, I personally enjoyed having the option to keep my base ship set in the previous version when using high quality ship sets, such as KUROGANE ships and stations.

In regards to weapons, I think it would be nice if any included in the base mod have different functionality beyond simple things like range and color. How weapons types in Stellaris 2.0 have different specializations could be used as a base for differences.
Using the plasma weapons from the first version of Zenith as an example:

• Blue Plasma could have same good vs shield, bad vs armor properties of Kinetic weapons.
  
• Green Plasma could have the high accuracy, good vs armor, bad vs shield properties of Beam weapons.
  
• Orange Plasma could be an improved version of regular plasma.
  
• There could also be another color added for a Plasma equivalent of autocannons that only goes in small slots.

The players might not care if AI Ascended Empires build Escorts/Battlecruisers that look like coloured boxes, but the player will also see coloured boxes in their ship designer if the aforementioned shipsets do not contain the graphics for these fallen models. This extends for every 'ship class' that this mod adds, including stations.

The previous iteration only got away with this by splitting the options in two different time frames and allowing players to acquire the ships before actually being Ascended Empires. It's the other way round here - you must be an Ascended Empire before you can get the ships.

I already talked about the design decisions in Designer's Note, and while I understand it's disappointing not to be able to use the ship set you want, this decision takes away a lot of problems on my end and the mod works better because of it.

Sounds food to me

Good* XD

Understood, I was hoping the default / fall back ship graphics mechanics of Stellaris would be enough to cover any issues like in the previous version where you would just end up having silvery ships with no special colors.
Looking forward to the further development of Zenith 2.0.

Hey when the next update for this mod comes out will I have to start a new game to use the new features?

@Zammerson No new save required!

:D

I would be nice if we could pick the new ship and city sets based on color rather than ethic when ascending
I love the black and white authoritarian ships but I don't usually play authoritarian

Can't wait to see how the mod delelops! This is one of the few I'd never play without